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It starts out very simple. Dick has always kept his hair short for practical reasons, and there’s nothing obviously gendered about his choice of costume. When Robin starts appearing alongside Batman, everyone assumes he’s a boy.
Dick isn’t sure what compels him to do it, but he convinces Bruce to go along with the assumption. “It’ll keep them from figuring out who we really are,” he rationalizes. “If they don’t realize I’m a girl.” Those last few words taste bad in his mouth, but he doesn’t know why yet.
Bruce agrees.
A few years later, Dick meets Kid Flash. Then Speedy, Wonder Girl, and Aqualad. Together they form the Teen Titans, and they only know him as Robin. It feels good to be part of the team, to have friends who understand what his life is really like. He doesn’t have to hide from them.
Eventually, though, the issue of secret identities comes up. Dick skirts around the issue, telling them Batman’s just too paranoid to let him go blabbing their real names. It’s not a lie, Bruce is pretty uptight about their secret IDs.
It’s just not the real reason he doesn’t want to tell them.
The robin is a small red-breasted bird. It's associated with spring, and with new beginnings. It made the perfect nickname for a girl born on the first day of spring.
But Robin is a boy.
Now, Dick is starting to come to terms with the idea that he might be one too.
“Hey Bruce,” Dick says. They’re hanging out in the Batcave, Bruce working on a case file while Dick literally hangs from one of the uneven bars.
Bruce grunts in response.
“You know how a while ago I told you to play along with people thinking I was a boy as Robin?”
Bruce sits back in his chair, pulling his attention away from the screen. “Do you want to stop? I know you’re close with the Teen Titans, now. Do you want to tell them you’re a—”
“But I’m not a girl.” Dick cuts him off, and as the words spill out he knows they’re true.
There’s no stopping it now. All the puzzle pieces Dick has been collecting slot into place, and the picture begins to appear. It’s hard to find the words to explain it, to make Bruce understand. It takes several conversations and some research to find that final piece, the word for what he’s experiencing.
Transgender.
With that word, everything clicks, and finally the scraps of identity he’s been carrying weave together. For the first time in a long time, Dick feels whole.
He is Dick Grayson.
He is Robin.
And he is a boy.