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Bruce stares at the card, his throat slowly working up and down.
Dick swallows and casts his eyes down. Turns to his hands, scrapes peeling pale-glitter polish from his thumbnail to keep from choking on love and fear. My kid, he thinks, triumphant—and—my kid, he thinks, despondent.
(You weren’t here. I was.)
“I didn’t…” Dick swallows again. “I don’t want to…replace you,” he whispers. “I—I couldn’t if I wanted to—Dami, he—he loves you, he looks up to you—”
A hand lands on his shoulder. Dick does not flinch, because this is a hand that has never hurt him in twenty years of touch. A hand that held his to cross the street, a hand that felt his forehead to gauge his temperature, a hand that sewed steady stitches into his skin, a hand that tied tiny braids into his hair.
(A father’s hand.)
(Does Dick have a father’s hands, too? Does Dick have his father’s hands?)
(Which ones?)
“Chum,” says Bruce, whisper-soft. “Did…did you think I’d be mad?”
(He won’t tell you with words and he’ll eat what you put on his plate because he knows better than to let a meal go to waste but he doesn’t like crusts on his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)
(He likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)
(He’s nine.)
Dick does not meet his dad’s eyes.
“Sweetheart,” says Bruce. Now he sounds winded—or wounded? “I—”
The two of them, orphan boys who would (could) never speak quite right, built a language between them: words, yes, and grunts and hums and gestures—one eye squeezed shut just shy of a blink for you okay?, two slow blinks for alive and well (one for alive and unwell, none for—). Dick is fluent in his father—they’ve taught their language as a family heirloom, passed down from sibling to sibling, but Dick was the first (and once the only) speaker. Dick understands Bruce. Dick fills in the blanks where words fail Bruce—oldest child, mediator, interpreter.
Here, Dick does not know what Bruce wants to say. Dick cannot finish this sentence for him.
He doesn’t have to: Bruce says, slow and measured, “I will never begrudge you being his parent.”
“You’re his dad,” Dick says, shaking his head—half reassurance and half resentment of Bruce’s hard head; how dare he disavow the starved son who turns into him with a gravitational pull? How dare he absolve himself of his responsibility? “B, he loves you, he needs you—”
“I know,” Bruce soothes. “I know, chum.” He cups Dick’s cheek in his broad hand, and Dick warms to the touch as he has since he was nine himself. “Do you remember what I said when I offered to adopt you?”
[“I know I will never replace your parents,” Bruce said, forms held between him and Dick, big hands overlapping small on the paper. “The hole where they were… I know I can’t fill that, and I promise I’m not trying to, alright? But you mean the world to me, chum, and it would be an honor if you would let me make this your home for keeps and be your father, if only on paper. I love you, Dick.”
Blinking big round eyes at him, Dick said, “I…I love you too, B. Mom and Dad will always be my parents, but I think…I think maybe I love you like how I love them.” Dick shuffled his feet. “Is it…is that okay?”
Bruce smiled and sniffled a little and said, “Feelings aren’t okay or not okay to have, remember? We can’t help what we feel, but we decide what we do with our feelings.” (Cue eye-roll from Dick, who had heard this shpiel a hundred times and would hear it a thousand more.) “But you’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I know, Dick—if anyone’s got enough room in there for all that love, it’s you, baby.”
Softly, Dick said: “Alright, then…if you really wanna, I think…I think maybe it would be okay if you were kind of my dad. ‘Cause Dad would want me to be safe and happy, more’n anything, and you make me those things, so he wouldn’t mind sharing me with you, I don’t think.”]
“…sort of,” says Dick. “You said you weren’t replacing my parents?”
(You promised not to steal their son—you promised not to do to them what I’ve done to you.)
“I did,” Bruce agrees. “And you said…” A mouth-twitch smile, there and gone. “You told me your dad wouldn’t mind sharing, because he knew you needed a father, and I was there.” Crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “Dick, sweetheart, he needed a father and you were there when I—when I wasn’t.”
(He needed a father and I was there.)
Dick raises his head. “It’s not…” Dick shakes his head. “My dad was dead. You were—”
“Dead,” Bruce finishes. “For all intents and purposes.”
“You came back. I—I don’t need to—”
“You parented him,” says Bruce, “for a year. Do you really think it would be that easy to let him go? For him to let you go?” When words won’t come for Dick to answer, Bruce adds, “Can you honestly tell me that if your parents came back today, you would walk away from us—from me—without looking back?”
(Weigh eight years against twenty.)
(The scales tip.)
“No,” Dick says, soft. “No. I wouldn’t.”
“Then why would you expect Damian to walk away from you?”
[Dick’s door stayed ajar at night every night for his sweet little shadow to slip through. Dick slept as shallow as any self-respecting vigilante and woke without fail to the pad of Damian’s footsteps on the weathered hardwood. Dick would scoot obligingly back to make space on the edge, and Damian would arrange himself carefully there, stiff limbs and straight back. When his words came, they were never “I had a nightmare” or “I feel unsafe sleeping alone” or “I need you”—Dick did not need to hear those from Damian’s mouth. He knew. What Damian said was, “Will you tell me a story about Father?”, and what Dick did was tell him a story.
Come morning, Damian was invariably tangled around Dick, head pressed to Dick’s chest to hear his heartbeat.]
“How…how do you not hate me?”
“Dick,” Bruce says, as gentle as Dick has ever heard him. “You’re my son. There is nothing, in this world or any other, that you could ever do to make me hate you. And certainly…certainly not loving Damian. Not being the…the first person to show him the love he deserves.” Bruce pauses before he adds, raw and rough, “Sweetheart, you saved him. How could I ever hate you for that?”
“…oh.” Dick is a grown man, and even if he’ll never be as big as Bruce or Jason no one will ever call him little, but he feels somehow small and more fragile than he ever has.
(You saved him.)
(How long would Damian have lasted in the League? How many years before he was a split second too late to dodge an attack and a sword met its mark—before he bled out on the floor of the arena—before Lazarus stole his last breath and blew it back into his lungs? How many times would Ra’s have had to bring him back? How many years would Ra’s have allowed him before his patience ran out and he claimed his new host?)
“He will always, always be my son,” says Bruce, “but he’ll be yours, too. Just like you’ll always be my son and your parents’, and I’ll be my parents’ and Alfred’s. No one has to choose. Love isn’t…it’s not limited, Dick. You don’t lose it by sharing.”
Dick falls forward into Bruce, throwing his arms around his dad’s neck; Bruce grunts and holds him tight. “Thank you,” Dick murmurs into Bruce’s shoulder.
(Thank you for not taking him from me. Thank you for giving him life and the Wayne cheekbones and a home and a family and me. Thank you for letting me love your son.)
“Dickie,” Bruce whispers. He kisses Dick’s head. “You don’t…”
“I do,” Dick insists.
A sigh. “Alright. Alright, sweetheart.”
[Dick rolled over onto his back and stared at the shadows shifting over the ceiling. Not his ceiling, but Bruce’s, because he’d climbed into his dad’s bed after a nightmare—but even after Bruce had tucked him up against his side, Dick hadn’t fallen back asleep. Couldn’t, not after the dream where he’d been back in juvie and no one was coming for him and he’d never fly again. “B,” he whispered. “Are you awake?” A grunt came from Dick’s right that said if Bruce hadn’t been a moment ago, he was now. Softer, Dick whispered, “Thank you.”
Bruce rolled onto his side to face Dick, reaching out and brushing his bangs back from his forehead. Thick with sleep, he murmured, “Thanks for what?”
“For…for being my dad. For loving me, even though you don’t have to.”
“Baby,” Bruce said softly. “You…you don’t have to thank me for that. Ever.”
“I want to,” said Dick. “I want you to know. If I don’t always say it the rest of the time—I’m always glad I’m your kid.”
Bruce’s hand was warm and heavy on Dick’s head. “Me too, Dick. Me too.”]
“He’s the best kid in the world,” Dick mumbles. Bruce gives a hum of assent. “I love him—I love him so much, B.” Tears rise like suns in Dick’s eyes. “He—he—he makes me feel like my heart is clawing out of my chest.”
Bruce chuckles. “Welcome to parenthood.”
“How…” Dick’s words come as a whisper. “How do you stand it? How do you not feel like…like this?”
“Who says I don’t?”
(Oh.)
“He loves me, B,” Dick says—no doubt, never a doubt. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do with it.”
(He says our names in his sleep. Did you know that? Sometimes he screams them.)
“I don’t…” Dick breathes deep through his nose. “I feel like…like part of me—like my heart is wandering around outside of my body.”
“I know.” Bruce starts to pet Dick’s back. “Trust me, I know.”
“That’s normal?”
Dick feels the shift of Bruce’s shrug underneath him. “We’re a family of vigilantes,” Bruce points out. “Nothing we do is normal.” A pause. “But…yes, as far as I know. From the books and…websites I read when I took you in.”
“Websites?” Dick pulls back to stare at Bruce, who averts his eyes. “B, did you…did you read mommy blogs? Did you read mommy blogs to figure out what to do with me?” When Bruce’s eyes stay averted, Dick says, scandalized, “Oh my God, you still read them, don’t you?”
Bruce grumbles. “I find them…fascinating.”
“Bruce,” Dick says. “Please be honest with me. Do you run a mommy blog?”
“I am no one’s mommy,” Bruce deadpans. “Don’t misgender me, kid.”
“A da—nope,” Dick says, “that’s—that’s something else.”
Bruce pats Dick’s shoulder. “I’ll be pretending I didn’t hear that.”
“Appreciated.” Dick rests his head back on Bruce’s shoulder. “You’d make a terrible mommy blogger,” he says. “But you make an alright dad.”
(I don’t know who I would be without you. I don’t want to know.)
Bruce hides his smile in Dick’s hair. “Thanks, chum.”
(You don’t know who you would be without me. You don’t want to know.)
“I mean,” Dick says, “you got some duds in there, but I turned out great, so…”
Bruce chokes on a laugh. “Dick,” he says, “you can’t call your siblings duds.”
Dick heaves a sigh. “Fine, they’re perfect little miracles, all of ‘em.”
“Yes,” says Bruce. “You are.”
[“Gr—Richard,” Damian said, and his given name on Damian’s tongue—strange on anyone’s, but on Damian’s—gave Dick pause. He met his brother’s grave gaze, took in the furrow between his brows. “Am I…” Damian took a deep breath. “Do you think I am a bad person?”
“What?” Dick said, startled, rage blossoming in his chest—he wanted to break the world that had broken his baby. “Damian, why—what makes you ask that?”
“I have done…things…that I now understand were wrong,” Damian grated out. “I have…hurt people. Unforgivably. I wanted to hurt you.”
Dick wanted to bundle Damian up, wanted to smother him in love, wanted to put himself between the world and this child. He said, carefully, well aware that he was swinging through a minefield, “I know, Dami. But that’s not…that isn’t who you are. You were—you are a child.” He did not say you didn’t know any better, even if it was true, because he liked his teeth where they were. “You weren’t given a choice, or the knowledge you would’ve needed to make that choice. You have a choice now, yeah? And what have you chosen?”
Damian dropped his eyes to his hands. “Robin,” he said, meaning not killing, meaning this family, meaning you.
“That’s right. You chose Robin. And you’re my little Robin,” Dick said, “and my partner, and partners know each other better than anyone else, right?” Damian nodded slowly. “Right. So you can trust me when I say I know you and I know you’re not a bad person, Damian.” He took a risk and Damian’s hands in his, sandwiching small between big. “You know what you are? You are very brave, and very strong, and very clever, and you have a very big heart. You are my Robin, and my little brother, and you are good. Okay?”
You are a little miracle, Dick thought, his heart aching as Damian’s head bobbed, up and down. You are my little miracle, and I will never be done giving thanks for you.]