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There's a place in the woods Bruce doesn't know about.
Dick finds it his second month staying in the Manor. He's listless and angry, tired of how long it's taking for Batman to find Zucco, wary of the man who's brought him into his home. He's taken to exploring the grounds just to escape the suffocating quiet of the Manor, a place that's more like a mausoleum and so very different from the brightness of the circus. It feels—better, to be out in nature.
Bruce is hesitant to give him permission to go where he wants at first, saying that he's only nine and shouldn't be trekking through miles of nature by himself. Dick's grateful to Alfred for the fact that the man told Bruce he would be perfectly fine, and that he knows how to be responsible and not go too far.
(He does know. He just doesn't know if he cares about being responsible.)
With Alfred's encouragement, Bruce caves. Even tries to 'relate' or whatever by saying he used to love exploring the forest behind the Manor a little bit when he was a boy as well. He gets a bit of a funny look on his face when Dick asks why he doesn't anymore, the way adults always do when they think kids just don't get something.
Dick thinks maybe Bruce would be a little less stressed out all the time if he spent a day following the river, but he keeps that opinion to himself.
And so, Dick explores. The Wayne estate is quite large, and right behind it is untamed land that technically belongs to the city but that they're not doing anything with. Dick spends his days mapping it all, returning periodically for check-ins that make Alfred feel better.
And then he finds the place in the woods.
It's—still, there. No birds, no breeze, no animals scurrying through the underbrush. The leaves far above him aren't just green like the rest of the forest, but red and yellow as well, as if they were in the middle of Autumn instead of Summer.
There's a silence to the place that has Dick barely daring to breathe for fear of disturbing it, his steady pulse extremely loud in his ears. He thinks for a moment that he's afraid, that the oddity of the place is crawling under his skin in a bad way, but then he feels...warm.
The wind comes out of nowhere, and Dick lets out a startled shriek as his shirt is blown up to his armpits, his shorts buffeting around his thighs, his hair twisting in a million different directions. His shriek turns into delighted laughter, his face hurting from how wide his smile is. The leaves rustle above him, almost seeming to tinkle like bells. There's a sudden cacophony of animal noises, but Dick can't see any anywhere.
Dick is very used to the feeling of having eyes on him, having grown up in the center of the ring. It's a familiar sensation, and one he feels now. It has him turning in a slow circle, still excited but wary, too, as he fails to see anyone who could be watching him.
"Hello?" he calls out. "Is someone there?"
The wind spins around him, cutting through the grass and branches of the trees with a whoosh. It—it's warm and welcoming, and Dick gasps as he realizes that it feels like hello.
And then it keeps speaking.
Bruce doesn't know about the place in the woods.
Dick assumed he would. Bruce said he used to explore the grounds, after all, and that magical place isn't even too deep into the forest, not really. So Dick didn't hesitate to talk to him about it, nearly tripping over his words as he described the afternoon he had with the trees that sing, the wind that plays, the forest that lives. He figured Bruce had to know.
But Bruce treats it like a child's imagination. Indulgently, not telling Dick he's wrong, but so clearly not believing him. Alfred is the same way.
It doesn't make any sense to Dick, the not-knowing. How could they not? How could they have that...that and not be aware, not be in awe. How have they never seen the leaves go alight with fire, the grass go blue as a river rushes by from nothing. How could they be ignorant of the—the magic that is living in their backyard?
He doesn't try to bring it up to them again. They didn't know, and that means maybe they're not supposed to. Even if Dick could convince them, why would he? If the forest doesn't speak to them, it's not Dick's business to out it.
Day after day, Dick goes back.
It's addictive, this place that makes no sense. Dick sees the universe between the green, red, and yellow leaves, and nothing in real life means as much as what Dick's now seen. Being here makes it easier to feel okay, something that's been truly difficult since his parents died. Nothing is okay, not in this horrible city in that empty manor with his parents' murderer still running free.
But if trees can breathe and rivers can run upward, then maybe anything is possible. Maybe he can find Zucco himself, despite Batman's insistence that he let him handle it.
The first time Dick ever goes to the place in the woods at night, it's because he's had a dream that is tearing him apart. Watching his mom and dad fall again and again and again on a never-ending cycle, a horror show Dick will never escape, and he just needs to run.
So he does. In the silky pajamas Bruce gave him, Dick leaves Wayne Manor, running across the fields behind it and not stopping and not stopping. His bare feet hurt, but he doesn't care, tears streaming down his face as he gets as far away as he possibly can from the city that took his parents from him.
He didn't think he was headed towards that magic place, but he ends up there anyway. The stillness and the silence, so unusual compared to the rest of the world or even the rest of the forest, and once again Dick finds himself falling still and silent as well.
He's trembling with rage and despair, he's still crying, and he just wants to fix it all. He wants to be strong enough to do what he needs to do. He wants to stop being in the hands of every adult in the world. He wants it to change.
Around him, the air seems to thicken, as if with humidity but no heat in sight. The leaves rustle above him, not tinkling like bells but vibrating with something deeper. Lines of shining gold rise in the trees around him, lighting up the small clearing with a soft but powerful glow.
Something moves in the shadows. The grass curls in unusual directions.
The spirit of the forest speaks to him. Not with words, not with anything he could possibly describe to another person, but he understands it perfectly nonetheless. He feels the fear it thinks he should, but he feels brave like it believes him to be, too.
He feels strong and alive like he's never felt before, as the spirit fills him with light, showing him what it can do. He feels tons of rocks weighing on his shoulders when it tells him what it expects from him in return.
It's like the first time he stood on the platform way above the ground of the big top, a bar grasped in his small hands and his mother smiling at him in encouragement. The feeling of being on a precipice with his whole life laid out in front of him, a pathway he can take on if he only chooses to step off the platform. If he puts fear behind him to become something great. If he gives up on the possibility of a normal life to serve a calling bigger than just him.
He chose that greatness with his parents. He stepped off the platform.
And here, in the middle of the night in a place that exists for no one else, Dick does so again.
When the Batman secret has come out and Bruce agrees to allow Dick to join him in the field, Dick knows Bruce can sense a difference in him. He obviously doesn't know what it really is, he can't see. He just thinks Dick is determined, and it's made him seem like more of a presence. That's all.
No one can see it, no matter how many people Dick interacts with, looking for any reaction to him that will show others are Aware in the way he is. But no one does.
It's only him who sees the way his eyes shimmer with something not-human. Only him who sees the faint lines on his arms and legs, the ones that twist and change. Only him who sees the slight sharpness to his teeth and ears.
But that's okay. They don't need to know. It doesn't matter for any of them, doesn't impact them. The gifts Dick's been granted, the way they physically manifest—it has nothing to do with them. It doesn't even really have anything to do with Bruce.
This is a bargain Dick struck, and one that will help him get justice for his family. A bargain that will help him help the world. And he has no regrets about taking it on.
Bruce frowns at him when Dick tells him what he wants his name and costume to be. He says it's not practical, tries to push Dick towards changing both or at least one or the either. He doesn't understand why Dick refuses to budge a single inch on it, despite the fact that there are better options for the partner of Batman.
Because the spirit gave it all to him. He's a Robin from the magic woods, and he'll cloak himself in the colors of their leaves the same way Bruce cloaks himself in fear and darkness.
Batman was born of trauma and loss. Robin is born of magic and hope. And Dick knows they will make an excellent pair; it's okay if Bruce doesn't see it yet. He will. They all will.
And until then, Dick will simply continue on. And he is truly, perfectly happy with that.
When Bruce tells him he's fired, Dick can do nothing but stare at him.
It doesn't—compute, in his head. The words don't make sense. He can't be fired, not from Batman's partner, not from Robin. He—he is Robin, something intertwined deep and violent in his soul, something settled so far under his skin that he doesn't know where it ends and he begins. He's the one who stood in those woods and promised himself. He's the one who wore the colors and went by the name. He's the one who has carried the weight of this entity for eight years. He cannot be fired from Robin.
"No," Dick says faintly. He can barely form words, has no idea how to articulate this. He—he can't, Bruce can't just— "No, you...You can't take Robin from me."
"You're done, Dick," Bruce says sharply, the tone of someone who's made up his mind and will not have it changed. He sounds tired, too, but Dick doesn't care. Dick is the one who got shot, who is being betrayed. Bruce doesn't get to be tired.
"No!" Dick shouts. "No, I—I have to be Robin, don't you get it? This was never yours, I—this is who I am! This is what I carry!"
Bruce turns away from him, shaking his head. "Go to bed, Dick. This conversation is over."
Just like that, he's been dismissed. Like he's nothing, like fighting side by side for eight years is nothing. As if this man has the right to destroy his life, to rip him to shreds. As if Bruce is judge, jury, and executioner when Dick has always been the one who could do what needed to be done. Who had a force at his back and chose to use it to protect people. Who could've sliced Bruce in half any time he wanted to.
But he can't yell at Bruce's back. He can't beg for mercy. He can't demand what's his. He can only stand there, listless and lost like he hasn't been in so long, and then go upstairs to his bedroom like he's been told.
He spends less than a minute in the room that no longer feels like home before he begins packing up his things.
Bludhaven is a horrible, ugly, mess of a place, and Dick thinks there really was no chance of him ever setting down roots again in a place any better than this.
It's—good. It's a step forward. He's moving on with his life, creating something for himself. This is a city in desperate need of a hero, and there's nothing Dick could do but offer it him. It might not want him, it might want to sink into the smog and water to hell with everything, but he's here nonetheless and has too much experience handling people with rough edges to get scared off by a place like this.
Every day, he gets himself up and eats a balanced meal and goes to work and exercises and watches TV and goes on patrol as Nightwing. Every day he lives a life because he has to, carries on because he has to, acts as the best hero he can because he has to.
Every day, he pretends there isn't a wound in his chest, a gaping maw that used to be filled with life and strength and something so beautiful even thinking about it could make you cry. The spirit is gone because his bargain is done, and he is—empty inside, in the wake of its absence. He doesn't remember how to be a person without it. He hasn't been regular since he was eight years old.
He doesn't want to be regular. He doesn't want to feel like he's missing his soul. He doesn't want to be here, alone, when so recently he was the farthest thing from alone someone could possibly be. When so recently he was a literal part of something majestic and gigantic and terrifying and amazing.
He wants that back so badly he can barely breathe sometimes.
He wants Robin.
It gets easier as time goes on, because it has to. It even starts to become okay.
And then he learns Batman has a new partner.
Bruce is a black hole of emotion, ice cold in the face of Dick's heartbroken fury. He doesn't care about Dick's pain, doesn't care about the harm he's done, doesn't care that Dick has just started to recover when he hits him with this. He is implacable and immovable, treating Dick like he might as well be the gum under his shoe instead of a boy he raised like a son.
Dick isn't even eighteen yet. Technically, he's still Bruce's ward. He's still supposed to be under Bruce's care.
What a joke that is.
He hates how long it takes him to realize this is a pointless visit, a pointless conversation. He hates that he's trying so hard to make Bruce understand when the man so clearly doesn't give a shit about any of this. Dick doesn't know why he's surprised.
When he's storming out towards the front door of the Manor, he skids to a halt as a kid turns the corner and is right in front of him.
The kid jerks back, surprised, and then his expression shifts into something...curious. Hopeful, maybe. Nervous. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans and lifts his chin with confidence that is so obviously false, and Dick simply blinks at the boy who replaced him.
"Hey," the kid says. "You're Dick Grayson, right? Cool to meet you, dude. Do you..." He hesitates, licks his lips with nerves. Just a fucking kid. "You got a minute?"
No, Dick doesn't have a minute. He doesn't want to be here in this place that no longer feels welcoming, no longer is home. He doesn't want to be under the roof of a man who doesn't care about him, in a city that no longer considers him a citizen, so close to the woods that no longer breathe through him. He needs to be gone, be so very, very far away.
"Sorry," Dick says blankly, moving around the kid to continue his path to the door. Escape, escape, escape. "I don't."
"But—" the kid sputters. "I—I just—Bruce doesn't get it, and I thought maybe you would." His tone is desperate by the end, and against Dick's will he finds his steps slowing. "Did you ever—I mean, when you were Robin was there ever a...thing...around you? Or...?"
Dick stops completely. He stares at the dark wood of the door right in front of him, the golden knob his hand rests on. Did the kid really just—?
When he turns back to the kid, he looks at him intently, and this time he—he sees.
The glowing eyes. The patterns twisting up and down his limbs. The sharpened ears and teeth. The otherness that rests around him like a cloak, an otherness Dick is so very familiar with.
It freezes the air in his lungs. His eyes are wide, his mouth gaping. He can barely wrap his head around it. This kid is—this child that Bruce found to replace him, is holding the bargain Dick made with the spirit.
Of course he is, Dick thinks faintly. He's Robin, isn't he?
"Did you tell Bruce?" Dick asks.
The kid shakes his head immediately, mouth scrunching up. "No way. Tell him what, anyway? 'Hey Bruce, you can't see it but there's something powerful and fucked up about me? Hope all's okay? Love, Jason?'"
Dick cracks a smile, fond despite himself. "Good," he says. "He'd never be able to grasp it. No one will."
The boy—Jason, he said—seems to perk up, something tense loosening from his shoulders. "So you know what it is, then? Because I—dude, it's a little freaky. But it's also—I mean it's..."
"Yeah," Dick says softly. His heart is aching, and he really doesn't want to deal with all of the horrible mixed emotions filling him up right now. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Don't be afraid of it, okay? You should respect it, and the power it carries, all the things it can do...But don't be afraid. Fear is for everyone else—you're Robin. You're theirs."
Jason's throat bobs. He doesn't look afraid; that's good. "What is it?" he whispers.
Dick looks past him, down the empty hallway, but there's no one in sight. No Bruce around to make him miserable again.
Maybe he can spare a little bit of time. He's the reason Jason's in all of this, after all. Maybe he can spare a little bit of time to help the spirit's new warrior understand the wondrous thing he has at his fingertips.
"Come on," Dick says, and pulls open the front door. "I'm going to tell you a story about a place in the forest."
On April 25th, Dick is woken from a dead sleep in his bunk on the Titans' spaceship a million lightyears from the Milky Way, to the sound of the woods screaming.
He doesn't need to return to Earth to know Jason Todd is dead.
"I won't go back," Dick tells Tim Drake bluntly when the boy shows up on his doorstep asking him to be Robin again.
He means it, too. There is not a single atom of him that wants to return to Bruce, that wants to be in that horrible Manor with that horrible man who hit him and threw him out of his home when he just tried to talk to him about a boy they both loved. He won't sacrifice everything he's built with the Titans and in Bludhaven to go control the moods of a man who doesn't want to be helped.
Dick did his time, being the barrier between Bruce and the world. The light to his darkness. The one who softened his rough edges. He did it proudly—and it ended with him screwed over again and again.
No, he can't do that to himself again, he can't. No matter how much he still misses feeling the spirit, how much the idea of wearing the green, red, and yellow colors of that place in the woods fills him with joy. It just—isn't worth it. Not when the price is having to pull Bruce back from the edge. Not when he knows that as soon as Bruce is better again, Dick will once more be dismissed from service.
And having to give up Robin again...
Honestly, Dick wouldn't survive the separation a second time. Not with that emptiness in his soul. He knows that would be the end of him.
The boy's desperation is clear, though, and Dick's never been able to look at someone who is afraid and still brave and turn them away. He doesn't even care about how Tim knows their identities—not yet, anyway, but maybe later when this conversation isn't so fresh—he just...cares about this kid with so much heart.
Jason had so much heart, too. He saw the magic of Robin before he even knew there was magic to be had, and he didn't flinch away from the burden in the gift that was the spirit's blessing. He listened to Dick explain what happened, what little he actually knows about the place in the woods and the entity that resides there, and met it all with determination.
He was a brilliant Robin. He did the colors justice. He was so kind.
And it's hard to not see him in Tim Drake, another kid taking on responsibility they shouldn't have to but not hesitating to do it anyway. Makes it impossible to turn him away.
"Tim," Dick sighs. "You seem like an amazing kid, and I admire you so much for coming all the way to see me because you're worried about people. But Bruce is..." A tyrant, out of his mind, difficult, hypocritical, in a mess of his own making, my dad who forsook me, "...someone you should probably leave alone. I know you want to help but—but just leave this be. Live your life."
The way Tim scrunches up his face in clear denial makes Dick's heart clench. He doesn't want another dead kid. He can't handle another dead kid.
Something nearly anxious unfurls in his chest as an idea occurs to him, and he doesn't let himself second-guess it, knowing that if he does, he won't go through with it.
"I'm not going to just let you go out there and get yourself killed," Dick says, the words coming out thick, and Tim winces, sympathy flashing across his face. "And I won't go back. But I...know a way to help you. To protect you, while you do...what you need to do."
Tim nods eagerly. "Yeah, okay! Thank you!"
"This is a big deal," Dick warns, and shuffles them both out of his apartment, locking the door behind him. "You need to think hard on whether or not you want to take on this responsibility. I'm not kidding, Tim. This is the kind of thing that alters you, if you take it on."
Dick doesn't know if he's being too vague for Tim to really understand what he's getting into, but he can't bring himself to be more specific, either. Not with someone who's still an outsider. He can't just tell someone. Jason's the only one he's ever told, and Jason already had the magic inside of him.
Thankfully, Tim's expression turns serious, and the nod he gives is grave. He doesn't quite get it, but he understands what Dick is saying. And he's not just jumping into this for fun.
Squaring his shoulders and wondering if he's doing the right thing at all, Dick drives to Gotham, heading for the place in the woods.
Tim takes to the magic like he was born for it, but then, that's always been the way, hasn't it?
Dick never had to figure out how any of it worked, never had to train his abilities like all the metas around him described, not even like he did to learn to fight with Bruce. It just—was there, and he never had to think about it. He just could.
Jason never reported any problems either, and seeing Tim handle it all without flinching makes it all feel so much more...real. Another bird is taking flight in red, green, and yellow, carrying with them an ancient power to help the people around them.
For the first time, Dick sees how this could live past him one day. That the woods will always be there, and there will always be kids who want to do the right thing. Always be people who would give their lives over to something bigger than themselves on the chance that it would give them the power to help those without any.
And Dick is just—so glad he got to be a part of it.
Dick doesn't know what to say, staring blankly at Tim. He opens his mouth, but the words won't come. He is utterly speechless, devoid of anything to say in response to what Tim just told him. Because that's...no. No.
"Are you okay?" Dick asks eventually, because something must be seriously wrong if Tim is quitting Robin.
"I'm fine," Tim says, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly. "I just...my dad's finally getting better, you know? And he's worried about me. Bruce is fine now, and Gotham has more heroes, so I'm gonna just...try being a normal kid. You know?"
No, Dick does not know. Leaving Robin behind nearly destroyed Dick. There was a hole inside of him, an absence of life that he could feel in each and every atom of his being. It was a weight on him that nearly dragged him down into a deep, dark place that he could never climb out of, that nearly shattered him at his core, and Tim is just...giving it up?
"Right," Dick says, because he's been staring at Tim too long and he has to say something that isn't screaming why, why, WHY. He just—he thought Tim understood. He thought Tim felt like this was where he was meant to be. He thought Tim was as intertwined with the spirit as Dick had been.
"Right," Dick says again. "Okay. Well." He tries for a smile, manages to pull one on that looks at least vaguely real. He doesn't understand. "I wish you luck! Don't be a stranger, okay? And congrats about your dad."
Tim smiles back at him, and darts in for a hug, squeezing him tightly. "Thanks for everything, Dick."
Dick puts a hand on the back of Tim's head, staring blankly at the wall. "Anytime, Tim."
When Bruce gives Robin to Stephanie Brown, Dick doesn't even know about it until he's been called to Gotham to help with the sudden gang war that's broken out.
It is—a very rough time, for Dick. So many things have happened, things that kept building and building, and then Catalina...
He's living day to day. And while he normally would be irritated at Bruce for demanding his presence when he has a whole city to defend himself, this time it was a true blessing. It got him out of a horrible decision he was about to let himself be talked into, it got him free, and he still doesn't feel like he's breathing easily but it's a little bit better now that he's away from her.
And apparently there's a girl in red, green, and yellow with glowing eyes and patterns shifting along her arms and legs. A girl who, like so many Robins before her, just wanted to prove herself to Batman and ended up getting into even steeper trouble because of it.
Dick only sees her for a brief instance, but she is—wonderful, honestly. She is fire and joy, determination and cleverness. She is a worthy successor; he just wishes—for the millionth time—that he got to be a part of the mantle being passed along.
And then she's getting captured and tortured, and Leslie Thompkins is declaring her dead.
Dick doesn't know why she's lying. He doesn't know why Leslie is putting Bruce and everyone else through this grief. He can't even prove that she is lying. He has nothing backing him except the fact that he remembers Jason's death vividly, remembers the way the connection between Robin and the woods was severed, the way it echoed through Dick's bones. And Stephanie was Robin, no matter if only for a short period of time. The spirit would not be peaceful in the wake of her death.
Dick doesn't know why Leslie is lying. But Dick's loyalty is to Robin and Gotham first, so if Stephanie wants to get away—well. He's not going to be the reason she can't.
Tim comes back.
Dick doesn't know whether he should hit him or hug him, and settles for doing the latter with a big grin on his face.
He tries, but he doesn't think he ever quite rebuilds the trust he had before. He's so glad to have Tim back, to have a wonderful Robin out there in the world fighting for people, but Tim walked away once. He had good reasons for it, yes, but still he walked away. And it's hard for Dick to not keep his eye on the spirit he would do anything for, when it's in the hands of a boy who already broke his promise to it once.
(But at least Tim doesn't falter again. At least he stays; over and over he chooses to stay. He does the mantle of Robin proud. And that will simply have to be enough.)
"I miss it."
Dick goes perfectly still. His eyes flick around his dark apartment, tracking where the closest weapons are, anything nearby he can use in place of them if necessary. He doesn't know what the Red Hood wants with him after all the shit he's done, but—
"Dick."
The air in Dick's lungs almost seems to get sucked out of them with that one word, the agony and desperation wrapped around it. He knows when he turns around that he'll be faced with his little brother for the first time in years instead of the villain who's been attacking them again and again, who tried to kill Tim, who murdered people while using Dick's name in New York. This will be Jason.
He looks—exhausted, is the first thing Dick thinks when he sees Jason. He isn't wearing the helmet, so Dick can see the dark circles under his eyes, the sallowness to his cheeks. His shoulders are slumped like he's carrying a great weight on them, something Dick can certainly understand. And he's looking at Dick without any of the anger or derision or sadistic mirth he's worn every time they've met the last few months.
He just looks like a tired teenager.
"Miss what?" Dick asks softly. He doesn't move closer, not yet, not until he can be sure this isn't an elaborate trick of some kind. Jason's clever enough for it.
"The magic," Jason says, voice hoarse and eyes slipping shut.
Dick chest clenches, and he realizes the wounded noise hanging in the air was made by him. He's moving before he's even consciously aware of it, closing the distance between him and his brother and pulling him into a firm hug.
It's different than it was before. Jason used to be a foot shorter and definitely a lot thinner—now he's built like Bruce, like a tank, and the fact that he's wearing his Red Hood getup only adds to his size.
But Jason folds into his arms like he's still that fifteen-year-old with so much heart and so many dreams about what to do with it.
"I do too," Dick says, sliding one hand up and down Jason's back, lifting it to run through his hair. "And it'll take a long time to get used to, Little Wing. But you'll be okay, alright? Just stick with me, Jay. I can help you, so please just—just let me."
Jason doesn't answer, but he clings to Dick tightly, which is just as good.