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A matchstick flicked onto a field of golden ash: that’s what Dick was as a child. Twirling around streetlamps, sliding down bannisters, drinking in the foggy moon—these memories were burned into Bruce’s mind, etched onto his very soul. When Dick was twelve, a few of the dams surrounding Gotham Harbour collapsed. Scarecrow’s work. Bruce spent the night waterlogged as he shattered Crane’s ulna, throwing the madman back into Arkham and mopping up loose ends. When he resurfaced, exhaustion burrowing its way to the essence of him, he found Dick. Or, more accurately, he found Robin, slim shoulders set as he called out directions for the response team, legs braced against gargoyles as he scanned Gotham with a bird’s eye view, eyes alight as he gripped the city with two calloused hands and heaved it back up on its feet.
Looking at Dick now, it’s painfully clear how little he’s actually changed.
There’s dust in the roots of his hair and blood staining a bandage on his waist, yet he could not be more incandescent. And for good reason; without the Titans, the Justice League would have lost today, clinging tight to their own hubris as they drifted away on flotsam and grave dirt. Dick led the fray—command threading through every inch of his voice—with Arsenal at his side, Wonder Girl at his back, and a plan weaved together with gloved fingers and sheer determination. They turned the tide, fighting as the world shook around them, and now they’re here, willingly trooping into the Watchtower, debriefing with each other and the JL in a habitual huddle, then slumping on top of each other like some sort of overgrown puppy pile. Other than a glance of confirmation after a few orders, Dick hadn’t glanced at him once. Bruce hasn’t been able to look away.
“Y’all doing okay?” rumbles a deep voice. Bruce shifts his gaze slightly to Clark, cape billowing around him as he touches down in front of the team, doing his rounds, baring open that unfettered Midwestern heart. “Cuts bandaged, bruises kissed?”
“No,” Wally pouts, holding out an arm. “Dick, my knuckles are hurting. Kiss it better.” Dick chooses instead to laugh, pulling himself out of Roy and Garth’s laps to smack a kiss on Wally’s cheek only to flop back down again.
“And everyone has a place to stay tonight?”
A chorus of hums reply, put-upon and a tad irritated, clearly just humouring him, but it’s hard to stay mad at Clark for long, especially when there’s nothing but care in his voice. Garth waves lazily towards Victor and Garfield, and Raven leans against Koriand’r. “I’ll stay with either Wally or Donna,” Dick says. “I’m good, Supes, thanks.”
“Great,” Clark responds before his smile grows a touch sad, slips into a sombre satin stain like he knows Dick won’t like what he has to say. “Could you check in with him before you leave? He’s been worried sick all night.”
That absolute mother fucker. Bruce cuts his eyes away before Dick can meet them, but he can still feel Dick looking over, perhaps for the first time tonight. His gaze is heavy, and Bruce feels pinned by it, a butterfly on a board.
Dick’s voice is quieter when he replies, small and soft-bellied and lost in the comedown. “Maybe. Maybe later. I’m not sure if…”
“Don’t be unsure of anything,” Clark says. Bruce can almost visualise it, floating down and knees bent all cross-legged, cape fluttering fondly. “And that goes for all y’all. You saved our hides out there today, we couldn’t’ve done it alone. I know every League member here is beyond proud, and grateful too.”
Clark isn’t wrong. Bruce knows most of the Justice League had seen the Titans as somewhat of a young-and-wild club; adored of course, but more so a handful of crook-winged angels taking in the stars for the first time, believers and lovers and feckless saints. But they had changed, tonight.
Or, no, that isn’t quite accurate. They hadn’t changed. Instead, the Justice League simply shifted their worldview up and to the left a bit until the Titans fit again.
Bruce can’t quite track the blood-hungry chrysanthemum blooming in his chest because Garfield is a little puppy in Victor’s lap and Raven is playing finger-sticks with Donna and the Titans were powerful today, they were an explosion of prismatic shards, they were the colour of warmth itself. Together, they were a storm. And only yesterday—or so it seems—Dick’s gangly limbs stuck out of his bright-red Superman pyjamas, with a yawn on his face and a twinkle in his eye and youth carved into every line of him.
He isn’t…he isn’t young anymore. His son has grown up.
It hits Bruce like a fucking brick to the head. Was this what Dick was screaming at him to understand, all those lonely months ago? Was this what Clark kept reminding him about, what Alfred kept despairing his inability to comprehend? Bruce hates it. He wants nothing at all to be different. Battles or not, masks or not, fear or not, he wants to stay stagnant.
Across the room, Dick pulls his foot into the horizontal splits, all the way up to lightly tap Clark’s arm, signalling him to leave them be for the night. Clark does with a quick chuckle and a hair ruffle. In Bruce’s mind, Dick’s feet barely touch the floor as they swing back and forth, on a picnic table or on the Batmobile or on a Gotham rooftop.
“Whoa,” A voice pipes up from his left. Bruce turns his head and finds the Flash, Barry Allen as opposed to Wally West, with a teasing expression on his face. “You look like a car just drove over your favourite bat. Figuratively speaking, of course.”
Bruce doesn’t deign that with a response.
“We are okay, right?” Barry asks, a touch more concerned now. “No double attacks, no nasty secrets the enemy’s been hiding?”
That Bruce can understand, can respect. (To be fair, Barry Allen’s always been someone Bruce can respect.) “No,” he answers. “We’re fine. It’s of a more…personal nature.”
It takes Barry all of two seconds to glance between Bruce and the one person he’s deliberately kept out of his sightline to come up with a conclusion. There are times when Bruce despises the speedster ability to fire neurons faster than anything humans can manage. Despises, desires, delights in.
“Aw fuck,” Barry says, grinning. “Finally realised Nightwing’s all grown up now?”
“And why would you take interest in it?” Bruce retorts coolly.
Barry simply swings around to Bruce’s other side and leans on the wall. “Because I know exactly what you’re going through.” He nods towards Wally. “Went through it myself not far back.”
Bruce doesn’t respond.
“It isn’t the same thing, obviously,” Barry chatters right on. “Wally’s not my son. Though, to be honest, I love him like one.”
(A part of Bruce seizes up. Careful, careful, you goddamn bleeding heart, his mind yelps, you’ll hurt him with that word. Love. You’ll hurt him like I hurt Dick with it. Bruce wills the voice to calmness in a matter of seconds.)
“The Titans are a strong team, and Nightwing is a fearless leader,” Bruce says. “He’s led them to victory many times over. I’m no stranger to their influence.” He’s trying his best to simplify the whirlwind taking over his rational thought as of right now.
Barry only frowns. “Well, it’s more complicated than that. They’re more complicated than that. And Nightwing’s more than just a fearless leader. ”
“I know that,” Bruce near-snarls, and suddenly he feels out of control, all ripped silk and scraped-raw skin. “Nightwing is—he is brilliant and he is brave and he’s so fucking young and—”
“Batman,” Barry interrupts, not unkindly. “He’s not yours anymore. He never was.”
Bruce’s voice goes dark. “I never said he was mine.”
“No,” Barry sighs, “but that’s how us heroes tend to think of people we care about. I’m working on it. And, well. We all pretty much know how hard of a time you had when he left the nest.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Bruce echoes the speedster’s words from before. “He just…” Barry waits him out. “Nightwing led two separate teams of heroes today. He never once faltered. He had his team at his right hand, he always does. We would have lost without him.”
“He’s Nightwing,” Barry says with a lopsided shrug. “He didn’t choose that name for nothing, y’know. The Great Rebuilder and all. I’m just saying, Nightwing’s grown up a bit since you last saw him. Maybe sit on that, a bit.”
Bruce hums as Barry offers him a tired grin, then wanders off. He catalogues Dick once more, now that he’s fairly certain his son isn’t looking. The wrists of his new suit are thicker, more densely padded, and there’s a new scar on the line of his neck, and his eyes are—fuck. Staring right at Bruce.
Bruce can’t count the times he and Dick have traded glances through the barely-translucent masks—a habit that’s seeped into his subconscious, sinking into his very soul—but this one has weight at the navel of it, concrete dust and red, red marrow. It’s sharp like broken glass, it’s a bruise all black-and-blue like the symbol smeared over Dick’s chest, it’s an angry sea frothing and biting at a lone lighthouse with not a ship in sight. And throughout it all, a kernel of love.
Dick turns, lying on his side to better meet his eyes, and Bruce’s tongue has lodged itself deep down his throat, but it’s okay, it’s all okay because Dick has been able to read Bruce like a book since day one, has been able to leaf through his pages and fold his corners and write all over him until he’d folded himself into Bruce’s very essence, until Bruce couldn’t possibly fathom an existence where he didn’t protect Dick from the world because goddamnit, that’s my son. Except that existence has blown away, so to speak, because Dick no longer needs Bruce to protect him from the world. In the depths of his nightmares, Bruce wonders if Dick no longer needs him at all.
Bottom line: Dick can read the concern in Bruce’s jutted chin, can see the respect in his covered eyes, can trace the pride in every cord of his body. His son saved Gotham. His son saved the world. His son.
For the first time in months, Bruce holds himself open, lets Dick take all of it in, and for the first time in months, he receives a small smile in return.
It’s blinding, it’s love enormous, it’s love perpetual. And it fills Bruce with hope, because above all that is what Dick has stood for, fought for, represented. He hasn’t broken his relationship with his son irreversibly, he can still fix it, and he thinks to himself, I will fix it. I will make it so. I will cut you a fruit and you can watch the juice drip down my palms, laughingly reading my fate line as you used to years ago. I will learn to slice soft fruit without crushing the flesh, that golden-yellow pulp on the wooden board, and cutting fruit is like surgery (as my father used to say) and cutting fruit is like childbirth (as my mother used to say) and it is like laying down railroad tracks to create a way for your children behind you to reach the other side of an insurmountable chasm. I see you as you are, a sadder smile and a grown-up mind but a heart as youthful as the day I met you, and I will learn how to make you trust me again.
“Bruce?” Clark’s voice snaps him out of his reverie. “You okay? You’ve been kinda…staring at Nightwing.”
“I’m fine,” Bruce says, soft, paperback and conspiracy yarn and a sweet bird call. “I’m just proud of him.