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The Watchtower was the same as it always was. With an exception.
A kid.
Clark couldn’t quite wrap his head around that.
A kid.
In front of him.
On the Watchtower.
How did a kid even get on the Watchtower? How had no one noticed?
He was dressed primarily in black, a vigilante standby the community over, and stretched across one of the rec room sofas. Stomach down, propped up on his elbows, feet kicking the air behind him. The kid was fiddling with something that wasn’t quite a cell phone.
Maybe “kid” was a bit much. He looked like he could possibly be in his mid or late teens. And that was still crazy young, for life in a mask alone, but definitely for being on the Watchtower. Ya know, since no one was supposed to know about the Watchtower, in the first place.
Clark could feel a headache coming on. He wasn’t going to be the one to tell B about the uninvited guest.
The kid glanced over.
Clark straightened and gave a tiny, hesitant wave. And how ridiculous was that? Superman reduced to bashful waving, in the face of confusion. It was just. It was unprecedented! Short of B himself, Clark couldn’t even think of anyone who would break into the Watchtower (and that had been about testing the security).
The kid waved back, hesitant smile creeping onto his face. “I don’t bite,” he said.
Clark coloured , slightly. “What?”
His smile widened and he sat up. “You’re just hovering in the door like I’m some kind of bomb.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
The kid snickered. It was a vaguely familiar snicker, but only in so much that Clark had heard it in passing at some point during his career, h e was hard-pressed to actually place it. “Don’t worry, I’m only visiting,” the kid said.
“Visiting.”
“What? No one ever visit you guys up here?”
“Uh. No.”
Not even Wally or Roy. Clark knew them well enough to consider them heroes in their own right, sure, but they weren’t quite League material. Yet. All their League interactions had been planetside , so far.
“No?” the kid raised his eyebrows behind his domino, and the mask seemed to move to accommodate the expression. Weird. “I didn’t know that. But I guess it explains the whole... hovering,” he motioned toward Clark again.
Oops.
Clark slowly put himself on the ground, soon as he was aware that he’d slowly defied the gravitational pull of the Watchtower floor. “Who are you, exactly?”
The kid’s smile grew a little tight. “I’m not—well.” He stood and fidgeted in place a bit. “I’m not really supposed to talk about myself. Bad enough I can’t stop making quips on the field, ya know? B’s paranoid like that. Gotta keep things quiet.”
“B,” Clark felt himself deflate in relief. He had no idea what the kid would be doing with B ats , and that didn’t begin to answer the question of why he was on the Watchtower in the first place, but it made sense that Batman was the root of this particular mystery. Who else would even think to bring a... coworker? Who else would bring a guest up to the Watchtower without even thinking to ask the other Leaguers? “So, you’re with Bats.”
“I take it he didn’t mention any of this.”
“Any of what?”
“Oh, okay. I guess that means you guys have no idea who’s updating your security, either.”
Clark stared for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “I’m not following.”
The kid set a hand in the air, horizontal at about the height of his shoulder. “Yea tall, dark hair, bright costume, constant bedhead? Constantly carrying a cup of coffee around?”
“You’re saying... someone else is up here, too.”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m seeing how much has already been said. So far we’re at what looks like a flat zero. He really hasn’t said, like, anything? About any of us?”
That last statement was ominous in how it alluded to more parties. Clark hoped to god that none of these other mystery people were on the Watchtower at that moment. As it stood, Clark was upset with himself for missing this kid, let alone this other – younger? – kid.
Clark sighed through his nose, slowly.
“Well,” the kid stretched. Clark was getting awful tired of calling him ‘kid’ though. “This has been enlightening, but I guess this means I should find B, huh? Seeing how I could be just about anyone or anything, since he never vouched for or mentioned me. Care to be my escort? You know, for appearances.”
Clark clicked his tongue. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.
“That does happen, sometimes. But hey! Don’t look so down about any of this. I’m not here long. I’m just here to... well. I’m here as escort for your apparently secret security savant.” The kid had a bunch of blue breaking up the black of his costume, in something like an arrow design crossing his chest, with stripes down his arms.
Maybe Clark would just think of him as Blue, for now.
“All right,” Clark nodded. “Let’s track down a Bat.”
Blue snickered. “Do you guys lose track of him a lot?”
“Yeah,” Clark shrugged.
"Yeah,” Blue echoed. “He’s like that. Won’t even stand still for the Commish .”
Clark hummed in a facsimile of agreement, but he could only assume that the ‘ Commish ’ was the officer B dealt with, the only one B would deal with, in his city. He filed that away, not that he thought he would be allowed to ask about anything Gotham-y, and closed his eyes.
It only took a moment to find B’s heartbeat.
Huh.
There was a child’s heartbeat near at hand, too.
“So there’s two guests,” Clark mused.
“You know, I think that’s in your file.”
Clark opened his eyes and startled.
Blue smiled in return, much closer than he’d been a moment before, but as noiseless as B in his movements. Apparently. “Sorry,” he said. “But the,” he motioned to the side of his head. It looked like the blue stripes drew all the way down to his fingertips. “Super-hearing, right? You went off and picked out his heartbeat.”
“Yes?” Clark said.
“But you’ve never, like, done that in off hours?”
“How do you mean?”
Blue tilted his head, more amused than he’d already been. “You could have unmasked the Bat ages ago, man. You could have tracked him down whenever, wherever, if you know his heartbeat like that. But you didn’t, did you? Man.” He shook his head gently. “I sure hope B knows what a good friend he has.”
“Why would I want to do that?” Clark asked.
“To know the face under the cowl?”
“But if he doesn’t trust me enough to tell me himself, it’s not worth anything.”
“No, I guess not.” Blue motioned to the hall behind Clark. “Let’s hunt him down, speaking of that gravel-gargling gargoyle. I’ve got a thing or two I gotta ask him, myself, at this point.”
Clark nodded.
--
If Clark thought he was going to get anything out of Batman, he was sorely mistaken. He didn’t even get to be privy to any verbal communications. He and Blue just sort of faced each other, exchanged a few microexpressions , then settled, as if the discussion Blue had wanted had been had. Without a single word being spoken.
The other kid was there, too, and Clark decided to call him Red, since he didn’t expect to find this kid more forthcoming than the first. He was as tall as Blue had said and his hair was a definite mess. He even had that omnipresent coffee.
“B,” Clark spoke up.
That startled the shorter kid. Red managed to tip his chair over with a shout of, “Holy shit!”
Batman tossed a glare over at the kid, presumably in response to the language used, then turned his attention to Clark.
Red righted his chair, muttering all the while, and plopped back into it. Blue came up behind the chair, leaned into it, and looked over Red’s shoulder at the bank of computers he was fiddling with.
“Clark,” B said.
Clark huffed in irritation. That meant he was at a definite disadvantage. These kids knew his secret identity – no other reason B would call him Clark in their presence, really – and he didn’t even know these kids’ codenames, or if they had codenames. “Who a re they?” Clark motioned toward Red and Blue.
“ Hn ,” B turned to look at them, then turned back to Clark.
“Look, if you trust them, I trust them,” Clark said, because he trusted B with his life, regardless of how irritating B could be. “But who are they? Where did they come from? How long have they been visiting the Watchtower?”
B continued to just stare him down.
“Seriously, B,” Clark ran a hand down his face. “Why are they even here? Don’t you think the rest of the team should have at least gotten some kind of notice? What if we’d thought they were threats or something!”
Blue snickered.
A glance told Clark that Blue was, in fact, snickering at him. “What?” he asked.
“That’s probably the point. Spontaneous training,” Blue said.
And, okay, that sounded like something B would do. But still. Kids! Clark leaned in and lowered his voice. “They’re so young, B,” he said. “Why are they here? And dressed like that?”
“ Nightwing ,” B said.
Clark snapped his mouth shut and tried to figure out what that meant.
“And Robin,” B added.
“ Nightwing ?” Clark echoed.
“Yes. I believe it’s from Kryptonian mythos,” B said wryly.
“Not that you remember it, but you told me the story yourself, Superman,” Blue said, grinning. “ Me’n Wally.”
Wally. That was a name he knew. “You and... Wally,” Clark echoed.
“KF.”
Ah. It clicked. The passingly familiar snicker, the way he said things, even his basic build. “You’re... Rob,” Clark said, slowly. “Wally’s friend.”
Blue – Nightwing ? – saluted. “Yes, sir. Well, no. Rob is just short for Robin.” Maybe the other one was Nightwing . No, that didn’t make sense, the colours would be all wrong.
“Robin,” Clark glanced back at B.
“He was Robin, first,” B said.
“Third,” piped up Red.
“Yeah, he’s third,” Blue leaned over the computer chair to hug the shorter boy around the shoulders.
There was a long quiet moment. The elephant in the room was “what about the second one,” but Clark felt a sense of dread around asking that.
“He died,” Red said. Robin, Clark supposed. Robin said. He looked over at Clark.
Clark looked around to find B gone. “Uh...”
“He died,” Robin repeated. “He probably didn’t say anything, B I mean. But. It was a bad scene.” He turned back to the computer, completely ignoring Blue ( Nightwing ). “He wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t pulling punches. People were afraid of him. I mean, more than usual. He’s not better, but he’s better than he was.”
That struck Clark as familiar, too, come to think of it.
There’d been a sense of heaviness, for months, only a handful of months back. Maybe a year? Little more than a year? He couldn’t place it, really. It was a vague time where the sidekicks all seemed a bit worse for the wear, and B hadn’t been around, and mentors were feeling the depression of protégés . Roy’d disappeared for a week or so. Wally and... Rob. Oh. Wally had just been constantly curled around his friend, trying to comfort him. That friend had been. Oh.
There were others, of course. The dark cloud rippled from one end of the community to the other, though no one could pinpoint a source. And it hit the sidekicks, the protégés , the hardest. Clark was just most familiar with Roy and Wally.
“Yeah,” Robin muttered. “I made him give me the position. Batman needs a Robin, and all that. I’ll never be much more than a poor reflection, but it seems to be working.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Nightwing smoothed his hand through Robin’s hair. “Lil Wing couldn’t have picked a better successor. He probably would have loved you, if he’d gotten the chance to meet you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m doing the job, and the job needs to be done.” Robin shrugged him off. “Speaking of, I need to finish this. Can you plaster yourself to someone else until I’m done?”
“Let me love you, Baby Bird,” Nightwing resorted to hugging the chair back instead.
“Hn.”
Nightwing dropped his forehead against the back of the chair. “I’m surrounded by emotional constipation.”
“Cool,” Robin said.
Nightwing sighed into the chair, then turned back to Clark with a smile. “So. What did we learn today?”
“Excuse me?” Clark frowned.
“C’mon, you’re an investigative reporter. Have you read between the lines? Who am I?”
“ Nightwing ,” Clark said.
“Who else?”
“Uh. Rob? Wally’s friend? The... first Robin?” Clark shrugged. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me, here, to be honest.”
“B’s partner against crime,” Nightwing tacked on. “Presumably a Gothamite , and therefore a Gotham-based mask. No powers, by the way. No metas in Gotham and all that.”
“Well, you know B well.”
Nightwing snorted.
“Very well,” Clark smiled in return. “You had a conversation without saying anything. You’ve known him... a while, then. It just seems odd to me.”
“What does?”
“Why is B working with kids?”
“Nineteen,” Nightwing said cheerfully. “I’m an adult.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Robin muttered.
“He’s a baby, though.” Nightwing ruffled Robin’s hair.
“No offense, but nineteen’s still a kid, to me. And if you’ve known B long, then you must have been working with him, gosh, years, maybe?”
“ Mmhm , doesn’t make sense, a grown Bat toting around random costumed kids.”
“No. No, it doesn’t.” Clark eyed him. “You’re... are you his?”
“His?”
“His kid,” Clark’s eyes snapped wide. Because that actually made some level of sense. Wally was Barry’s nephew, and Roy was Ollie’s kid. For the most part, the kid hero scene was built on legacies and family. This... this had to be the Batman’s family, then. Right?
“Yep,” Nightwing popped the ‘p.’
“Are you both...?”
Robin snorted. “I’m the neighbour ,” he deadpanned.
“He’s basically part of the family,” Nightwing dismissed. “Long story, you should wheedle it out of B. If anyone can, it's you.”