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“I’m telling you, I’m totally fi- I’m f-… ACHOO!”
Both Barbara and Tim recoil back from the sneeze, which to Dick’s dismay has a significant splash zone. The eldest ex-Robin slouches deeper into the couch while Jason slow claps nearby.
“Dick, you can’t push yourself like this,” Barbara admonishes gently, shooting Jason a look to get him to stop, “The team needs you, you know. All in one piece, preferably.”
“Here, here,” says Alfred from where he’s carrying a tea tray up the stairs to where Dick is cocooned up on the couch.
“Don’t be such a baby, big bird,” Jason chimes in, pushing off the wall and snagging the cold pack from the tray as Alfred sets it down. Dick tries to stand like he’s gonna make a point and Jason simply shoves him down with one huge paw of a hand. Dick flops back onto the couch and Jason plants the cold pack across his eyes while he whines. “Even Bruce had his off days. Not that he actually took them off, but…”
“Ngh…” Dick grumbles, “I know, I know… but…”
“We’ll bring you the first bowl of matzo ball soup from Wetzler’s Deli in the morning,” Tim vows kindly, and helps pull Dick’s legs up onto the couch, while Babs lays a blanket over him.
“I’ve also taken the liberty of locking up the Nightwing suit, sir,” Alfred adds, “As I will be out with Lucius and his family this evening…”
Cisco suddenly emerges from where he’d been hiding and anvils his small black body on top of Dick’s chest as if to add a punctuation to everyone’s insistence. Dick grunts as the cat has the nerve to purr at him and make little kitty biscuits across his chest before settling on top of him.
“Seems like you’re outvoted, Dickie,” Jason declares with a laugh, pulling an arm around Tim to noogie him, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch the kids tonight. You get your beauty sleep.”
“Hey! Who are you calling a kid?!” Tim complains as Jason just half-carries him down the belfry stairs, Alfred following with a shake of his head.
“Hey,” Babs says from nearby, helping to wipe Dick’s runny nose with a tissue in a motherly way. It’s moments like this that make Dick want to marry her, and it’s also moments like this that make him realize she’s way too good to be tied down to him. “We’re a team, remember? And we’ve got this.”
Dick sighs, leaning into her hands. They’re soft and smell of vanilla. “Okay, just… be careful,” he says, hearing Tim and Jason arguing even as they’re suiting up, “And keep an eye on Jason. That chip on his shoulder hasn’t gotten any smaller after we lost Bruce again…”
Babs smiles and nods, giving Dick a peck of a kiss on his slightly sweaty hair. “You’ve got it,” she says, and hands over the cup of cough syrup. Dick downs the shot, already sleepy, and lays his head on the pillow. Babs clicks on the Kordflix app, turning on a playlist titled ‘Dickie Is Sickie’ and The Greatest Showman starts up first on the list of comfort movies.
Dick barely feels her leave him, eyes closing, half-mouthing words to the music of the movie.
“…don’t fight it, it’s coming for you, running at ya… it’s only this moment, don’t care what comes after…” he mumbles, slowly trailing off as he begins to doze, “Your fever dream, can’t you see it getting closer…?”
=-=-=
“—these are somebody else’s wishes, somebody else’s dreams—”
“Yeah, but you know what? This one. This one right here. This was my dream. My wish. And it didn’t come true. So, I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back—”
When Dick’s eyes crack open again, it’s not just the dramatic moment of Goonies that brings him to wakefulness. There’s an alert on the comms. Just a red light flashing, because of course Alfred put it on silent, but it’s enough to bring him out of his slumber, that steady pulse of warning light.
Dick rubs at his face as he walks shakily down the stairs, blanket covering his head and body like a nun’s habit. He still feels chilly in spite of that, even wearing his most fuzzy pajama bottoms, one of Jason’s sweatshirts (it has to be his because Dick doesn’t remember owning one that says ‘Ask Me About the Afterlife’ on it), and thick wooly socks. The Belfry is obviously not the most insulated building but still, Dick’s thinking the others might have had a point about his illness. Still, that warning light draws him in, and he presses the keys, surprised they hadn’t locked him out of the computers.
“—dammit, Tim, watch your six!!” Jason shouts over the radio.
“S-sorry—they’re just too fast—augh!” Tim’s voice breaks in pain. There’s a sound of impact and then a grapple line being tossed.
“—not this time—there’s not going to be a lifeline for you, you unworthy fraud!!”
Dick doesn’t recognize this voice. It’s distorted in the way that reminds him of the face masks that Talia’s Shadows wear. He does recognize the sound of a blade slicing through a cable. And their cables aren’t easily cut. Whoever this is, they’re a player. They know their equipment.
“Tim!!” Babs calls out in fear, and he can hear her boots and gloves impacting bodies as she no doubt rushes for the edge of the roof.
Dick grits his teeth and starts pushing buttons urgently. He’s trying to tell himself to calm down. They’ve got this, he’d just be a liability they don’t need. He looks up and sees that his suit isn’t just locked down—it’s gone. Along with the others’, obviously. He couldn’t even go if he wanted to so--
Dammit, why didn’t he listen when Babs and Tim were explaining how to run the monitoring equipment in the Belfry?? No wonder they hadn’t bothered locking him out of this…
Somehow Dick manages to bring up the video feed from Jason’s helmet. It’s cracked and flickering, so clearly Jason’s taken some shots to the face—not good. Another sign this wasn’t just someone messing around—the knowledge of how much pressure took to crack Red Hood’s titular hood. Mask. Helmet. Whatever. Jason sucked at naming stuff.
“Heh, I remember you…”
Jason’s been immobilized somehow, though the camera jerks about like he’s trying to get loose. In those moments Dick can see that there’s just blades pinning him in place. One being a katana that the shadowy figure above has buried deep into a shoulder blade. When Jason attempts to get free, they twist it cruelly and Jason howls in pain.
“Tt… talk about unworthy of the power you were granted by the Lazarus Pit…” they say. Dick strains his ears to hear. Through the distortion there’s something… young about the voice. “Come on, show me the gifts you received.”
There’s a green glow that illuminates the feed, Jason roaring in anger, and then more wet stabs of the katana. Through it all, Dick sees the attacker’s face—or rather, the mask they’re wearing over it. It’s an onyx color, an oni-style visage with bared teeth and two distinctive points of ears or horns on the top of it. It looks almost like the cowl…
“The cowl…” Dick says to himself, and then twists to look behind him. They’d found one of Bruce’s suits intact in the Cave after some quiet excavation had been done to observe the aftermath of Bruce’s coup de grace of the League and Court via blowing up the Batwing within the cavern… and they’d put it up alongside the other artifacts to keep his memory.
Alfred hadn’t put in any security measures. He—everyone—probably thought nobody would be bold enough to touch that suit. Dick lets his blanket fall to the ground in front of the computer, staring into the silhouette of Batman for a long moment. He hears Tim breathing hard, Babs calling out, Jason snarling in pain…
His body moves before he realizes it is. He leaves Dick Grayson on the Belfry’s floor in a pile of messy clothes, pulling the dark cowl over his brows.
It fits. He hates that it fits.
=-=-=
Jason’s helmet has been shattered in half, and he spits out bits of circuitry and safety glass so he can speak through bloodied lips, eye fluttering to try and keep from getting scratched.
“You seem to know a lot about me—” he grunts, “So who the hell are you?”
“Someone who knows not to let you talk too long,” the oni masked assassin responds, and stomps on the hand Jason is trying to subtly reach for a flashbang with. Jason hisses in pain, staring angrily upward. “And someone who knows the secret. The Big Secret.”
Jason laughs at that, shaking his head. “Don’t leave me in suspense, shorty. Lay it on me already.”
The figure presses their boot harder onto Jason’s hand at the jab at their height. They then lean in, crouching close. Jason can hear Tim being pulled back onto the roof by Barbara, which is good. But there’s still a wall of Shadows in the way that they’re fighting through. He could stall a little longer—
“I know that Bruce Wayne was Batman,” the distorted voice whispers, “And since he is dead, so is the Batman.”
Jason isn’t sure he entirely schools his face into something believable. The surety with which the assassin speaks tickles a little at an old memory. But worse, is the way they just know without even seeing Jason’s eyes dilate for a fraction of a second before he laughs outright.
“Are you high? Richie Rich was Batman? Pull the other one, shrimp, it’s got bells on it,” Jason sneers.
“Then where is he now?” they ask, tilting their head at Jason. The mask makes it look fairly creepy and Jason’s a bit impressed at the eye for aesthetic the little Napoleon is displaying. “Maybe if I cut you just right… he’ll show up just in the nick of time to rescue you, hm?”
Jason can see his reflection in the katana as it twists, lays over his now exposed neck. The figure looks triumphant above him, and did not seem to be afraid of cruelty as they add—“Though that didn’t really work out for you last time, did it, Jason?”
His throat bobs and a little sliver of a cut is made there as the blade presses in. Jason keeps his eyes wide open, unafraid. Thankfully, that stupid ass sense of machismo and need to keep his street cred by not flinching at death means he is able to peep something in the shadows behind his attacker.
“Hey. I got a secret for you too,” he whispers, making the figure lean in curiously. He grins and spits blood into the eyes of the mask, making them recoil. “Batman’s right behind you, bitch.”
The assassin turns to engage Batman with his free blade, while Jason works to try and free himself from the one pinning him to the roof. Jason’s savior is wearing Bruce’s suit, but it’s clear it isn’t the man himself. There’s far too much flipping and sliding and evasion, and not enough brute force in the movements. But the small oni masked figure can’t tell the difference, clearly, going at Batman with a ferocity that shows a crack in the calm façade.
“Jason-!” Barbara kneels by him as Tim thwacks another assassin back with his bo staff. She grabs the blade and helps yank it free from Jason’s shoulder, having the leverage he didn’t to do so. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Jason sighs as she cradles his head across her thighs, using a Wayne Tech temporary suture patch to pull the shoulder wound closed. “But I’ll be better when you tell him off for showing up.”
“Is that…?” Tim’s voice trembles a little in awe, watching the Batsuit-clad figure dispatch anyone who tries to intrude on the 1v1 he’s engaged in with the small assassin.
“Psssh,” Jason shakes his head, “You don’t know who’s in that suit? You gotta work a little more on those detective skills, Timbo.”
Batman manages to catch the blade in the spikes of one gauntlet, ripping it from the short attacker’s hands. It doesn’t seem to matter, the figure just snarls viciously and jumps at Batman, fists alone hitting hard and harder and like they wanted to rip the other apart.
Dick no longer can just keep evading; he has to end this. So, he does. With a firm headbutt that cracks the oni mask in half and sends the small figure skidding back. They start to rally, to stand, and then fall dizzily to the ground. The broken mask falls off their face. Barbara gasps.
“He’s… so young,” she says in shock, as blood runs down the forehead of the young boy revealed behind the mask. He’s passed out from the blow, but his eyes flicker. They’re a bright green, not entirely unlike Jason’s Lazarus-touched ones, but not quite the same either.
Jason’s not really thinking about that so much as he is thinking about how much the kid looks like Talia. But also… like Bruce. He’s pretty sure Dick’s thinking the same as he anxiously pulls back the cowl and goes to check on the kid’s vitals after making sure to pull the rest of the weapons off the little ninja. The rest of the assassins are out cold on the roof thanks to Barbara and Tim’s efforts.
The kid is breathing alright, but looks like he got hit by a car, all dazed and unsteady as his head lolls on Dick’s lap. He blinks a few times up at Dick, clearly disoriented.
“…father…?” he asks and then passes out, leaving the group utterly confused in the cold rain.
=-=-=
“Huh, didn’t know the League had a nursery school,” Jason says as he comes out of the shower with a towel around his shoulders, into the living quarters beneath the Belfry’s top floor. Dick is still at the bedside of the little monster, waiting for him to come to. Kid’s, of course, strapped down with soft restraints. “Learn more every day.”
“Very funny, Jason,” Barbara says as she arrives and puts a blanket around Dick’s back, handing him a cup of soup. The tongue lashing she gave Dick for going out while sick was pretty legendary so she held up her part of the bargain. “Tim’s finishing up the analysis on his gear, blood, and prints. We’ll know more soon.”
Dick shakes his head. “I don’t like this,” he says, “Keeping him like this. He’s just a kid.”
“You and I were just kids when Bruce dressed us up in short pants and made us fight psychopaths,” Jason declares, sitting on the other side of the bed. “You had a choice. You could’ve left him for the authorities or the League. You brought him here, Big Bird. Now you gotta take responsibility. Feed him, take him for walkies, all that—”
“Holy fucking shit, Batman!” is yelled from upstairs, heard even through the layers of soundproofing. Tim did have legendary shrieks, especially after a lack of sleep and an overabundance of coffee.
“Guess that means the analysis is done,” Barbara notes, handing off the first aid kit to Dick and nodding to Jason’s shoulder, now clean from the shower and only slightly weeping from the sword wound. “I’ll go make sure Tim didn’t have a heart attack…”
Dick manages to tear his eyes away from the unconscious kid, opening the first aid kit on autopilot to find the sutures and needle. Jason immediately goes to take them from him.
“Oh hell no, Captain Cough Syrup, the way you are right now you’re gonna somehow cross stitch ‘live laugh love’ into my arm,” Jason declares, “I’ll do it myself.”
Dick narrows his eyes, keeping the kit out of Jason’s grabbing hands. “I’m not that bad off!”
“And adrenaline’s a helluva drug, Dickiebird. Give it—”
They wrestle a bit beside the bed, Jason half on top of Dick as the other pushes on his face to try and keep the larger man at bay without hurting him. Their bickering and slap fighting is interrupted by another screech from above—not Tim this time—and the sound of feet hurrying down the steps.
Barbara’s face is pale when she arrives at the door. “We’ve got to call Alfred,” she says, and Jason freezes mid-pulling on Dick’s hair while Dick’s hand goes from shoving at Jason’s jaw to just holding it.
The two eldest Robins look at one another with understanding, silently engaging in a temporary truce.
Jason whistles low. “That serious, huh…?”
Barbara nods tightly and turns away to head back up into the Belfry proper.
=-=-=
Alfred’s the one that ends up doing the sutures. His face is tense and sad in turns, but true to his butler pedigree, he doesn’t voice his complaints as loudly as the younger people in the room.
“I can’t believe him, after all those talks about using protection—”
“You needed those talks,” Jason declares with amusement, “I was still alive for the ‘how do I raise a half alien baby’ scare…”
Dick glares at Jason for the side commentary, as Tim continues to check and re-check his work. Not only had the assassin’s DNA have a hit in the massive Batcomputer database—it got two. The profile images of Talia al Ghul and Bruce Wayne stared down at the group with silent authority in their gazes. The assassin wasn’t in the database, but his parents were.
“I can’t believe it. I mean, I knew Selina and him were…” Tim still has a bit of shame enough to blush as he starts discussing their dead mentor’s relationships, “But Talia? She’s only ever tried to manipulate and control him. We all saw what she did to him.”
“Yes,” Barbara agrees, shaking her head, “Maybe this is just more of the same? Could she have taken advantage of him? Drugged him?”
Alfred cuts off the end of the thread with a schk! of the scissors that gains everyone’s attention. “Master Bruce was complicated, to say the least. However, if he was assaulted in such a way… I would hope he would have trusted me enough to tell me,” he says, eyes going to Dick for a moment and then away. Dick swallows hard, thinking of his own mistakes of that sort.
“Yeah. Sometimes you make a bad call. Think someone will change if you just stick by them long enough…” Dick says, looking down at his feet a moment. “Besides that, Talia isn’t what I’d call sentimental,” Dick adds, “Why would she keep the kid a secret, knowing how Bruce is? She could’ve had him wrapped around her finger with this.”
“I agree,” Tim says, “Bruce would do anything for his kids.”
Jason snorts loudly and Barbara lightly smacks the back of his head for the complaint. Jason gives her a ‘what’ look and she replies, “Anything that didn’t cross his lines. Like homicide, Jason.”
“Killing Joker isn’t what I’d call homicide,” Jason says, pillowing his head back on one huge arm. “Pesticide, maybe.”
“Whatever way this young man has come into the world and into our lives is irrelevant,” Alfred interjects, “What is important is the young master is here now. We must decide how we will proceed.”
“I vote we dump the little brat into Blackgate,” Jason declares unfeelingly. “See if Talia pokes her head outta hiding to break his sorry ass out.”
“Jason! They wouldn’t even take someone his age there in the first place, and using him as bait? You can’t be serious—” Babs says in a horrified tone, when Tim pipes up.
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Tim says, and glances over at the larger man, “…for Jason, anyways.”
“Be still my heart,” Jason grins, “An actual compliment from the ice queen himself? I’m honored.”
“Either way, I second it. We should use this to our advantage…” Tim says, brow furrowed, “Excavation still hasn’t uncovered Bruce’s body. The Court wouldn’t have need of it with their facilities all but demolished, but the League…”
“Tim, please… don’t go down that rabbit hole again,” Babs urges, making the current Robin glare at her.
“I was right the first time, though! You all got on my case for not moving on—and Bruce was alive, under our noses! We can’t discount the possibility of someone trying to bring him back again,” Tim insists, fist hitting the desk in annoyance. “Besides, Dick can’t pass as Bruce, not for very long.”
“He fooled you,” Jason mumbles under his breath, earning a sharp ‘shut up’ from Tim that makes the older Robin grin a little.
“Also—Dick doesn’t want to try and pass as Bruce,” Dick adds, looking at Jason because he’s the only one who won’t give him some sort of disappointed look for the unwillingness to take on the cowl.
“Dick needs to stop referring to Dick in the third person,” Jason taunts in return, but doesn’t give any more grief than that, folding his arms across his chest.
“I think we need to wait. Keep him under observation, try and find out more about why he attacked,” Babs says, touching her glasses into place. “We just don’t know enough to act yet.”
“Great. We do jack shit. Fucking stellar, Babs—” Jason says and gets an eyebrow raise from Alfred at the crassness of his words. “…sorry, Al…”
“Master Jason, young men with an intellect such as yours can find far better words to describe their misgivings,” Alfred declares, putting the suture kit away, tossing the medical gloves. “…I agree with Ms. Gordon. We do not know more than the young master’s parentage at this point. It would be folly to forge ahead without something more to go on.”
“There you have it,” Babs says smugly, chin held up high at Jason. The scarred man just rolls his eyes at that, but still smiles because he knows how good an Alfred endorsement can feel for one’s confidence.
“Looks like Big Bird’s gonna have to be the tiebreaker,” Jason yawns, peering over at Dick, who has retreated to look out the window. “Gonna take a wild stab in the dark here, he’s probably Team Sit On Our Hands, yeah?”
Father?
The small confused voice echoes in Dick’s mind. It’s strangely hopeful and sad all at once. The kid never knew Bruce. Knew who Bruce was, sure, but through the lens of Talia’s delusions about him. He’d never had a scrape treated by Bruce. He’d never been told he’d done a good job by Bruce. He’d never been hugged tight by Bruce until the trembles stopped because some nightmares are just that bad.
Dick almost feels like he’d stolen these things from the kid. He wasn’t Bruce’s child, not biologically, but he got to experience all these things that this young child never will be able to. Things he should have gotten to experience, were the world better. Guilt hits him like a palm strike to the chest, like the blows the little assassin had rained down on him with desperation and hurt.
“Dick?” Tim asks, turning his computer chair around in concern at the vast silence that follows Jason’s verbal prodding.
Dick stares at his reflection in the glass. “Neither,” he says, finally.
“Uh, what?” Tim cocks his head, “Saying neither is the same as saying not doing anything which logically means you’re in favor of Babs and Al’s plan—”
“No, I mean it. Neither,” Dick explains, glancing back, “I say we let him go. And let him decide what he wants to do.”
“Uh, I think we’ve already experienced what happens when that little gremlin does what he wants,” Jason says, pointing at his bandaged shoulder for emphasis.
“No,” Dick shakes his head. “He’s angry. Confused. He wants his father. His mother’s probably not come back either. But even then, he’s like… the prince of the League, if he’s an al Ghul. He could be perfectly comfortable with them. But he wasn’t. Something drove him to come here and confront us.”
“Yeah, he’s pissed we didn’t save Bruce,” Jason replies, bitter, “Tell him he can join the fuc—frikkin’ club. We got shirts and everything.”
“Maybe,” Dick says with a shrug, “But he could blame his mother equally for that. Didn’t go after her, did he?”
“…that we know of…” Tim mutters distrustfully under his breath. Al’s frown makes him quiet quickly.
Dick runs a hand back through his hair. “I think he came because he knew we were Bruce’s family,” he explains, “And even though he doesn’t know how to express it, he needs family right now. And that’s us. And family doesn’t put family in restraints.”
“At least not without consent…” Jason says, giving Babs and Dick a knowing look and a grin. Babs blushes and hits him again, lightly.
“So you all can try and stop me if you want,” Dick declares, rubbing at his still slightly reddened nose, “But I’m gonna go and let him out.”
“Uhhhh, you might not have to…” Tim says, and points at the security camera monitoring the room they had kept their ‘guest’ in. The restraints were undone across the empty bed. Tim hurriedly turns around to lock down the Belfry’s exits while Jason curses and gets up to go run downstairs to search. Babs follows after, while Al leans over Tim to continue to scan the security cameras, trying to see where the kid had vanished to.
Dick hears a soft rumble coming from upstairs. Very very subtle and quiet, hard to pick out from the sounds of Tim panicking and Jason cussing. Fortunately the stuffiness in his head made it easier to drown out the loud noises and focus on the smaller ones.
The eldest Robin looks about, and no one’s paying him any mind. He walks up the stairs to the loft above and sits down on the couch heavily, ignoring the pair of cat’s green eyes staring at him from the dark corner of the area.
“I should have known it was you, Grayson. Putting on father’s uniform and playing at greatness like the clown you are…”
The words are so harsh from that young voice, that Dick can’t help but laugh a little to himself. “Mmhmm,” he says, “Clowning around is kind of my thing. Your mother didn’t tell you?”
The boy hesitates, shifting in the shadow a little. The source of the rumbling is now clear, Cisco is happily in the kid’s lap, purring away as the youth pets the cat with a halting tenderness, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to do it.
“Not really,” he says, “What I know I found by hacking into the League’s private servers…”
“Hacking? Wow, between that and getting out of those restraints without anyone knowing…” Dick says, sitting up a little more and leaning forward in interest, “You’re really something.”
“Tt, please, I hacked into NORAD when I was six,” the kid responds, “And those restraints were toys compared to what escapology my training required. I could break out of those when I was three.”
Dick’s not entirely sure if it’s all a boast. Jason’s talked a little about how crazy and zealous the League is about their training. But the kid’s so young. And he talks like an adult. He sounds almost like Bruce, if Bruce had more ego and less qualms about crowing about his achievements.
“Wow,” Dick says, “And how old are you now?”
There’s a small pause of hesitation, before the kid shuffles a little closer into the light. Cisco trills at Dick in greeting, hopping out of the child’s lap and going over to curl around Dick’s ankles, rubbing up on him.
“Ten,” he says, a faint flush just barely showing on dark skin, “And three quarters.”
Dick smiles at that, remembering how important ‘three quarters’ could be when one wanted to be taken seriously. He wonders if Bruce would have smiled or frowned at this. Dick thinks he would’ve smiled. Maybe not wanted to but done it all the same.
“Well, you know my name, so… what’s yours?” he says, without any pressure attached to it.
The kid steps out of the shadows, still curiously looking at the cat rather than into Dick’s eyes. “…Damian…” he says, distractedly.
“That’s a great name,” Dick replies, and reaches down to chuck the cat under the chin, scritching gently. “This is Cisco. He’s kind of a family pet now.”
Damian approaches cautiously, sitting at the far end of the couch, looking ready to bolt. It reminds Dick a little of Cisco when they first discovered him in the Belfry, before they’d bribed the feline out of hiding with the ‘fancy stuff’ as Dick dubbed the tiny tins of cat food. Dick tries not to stare too hard, trying not to piece what parts of Damian were Talia and what parts were Bruce.
“Mother didn’t approve of pets, typically,” Damian says, watching Cisco hop up onto the couch and sniff at the edge of the long shirt Dick had put Damian in when he’d taken off the layers of armor he’d been wearing. “I only have one and he doesn’t stay in the house.”
“Oh? What kind of pet? What’s his name?”
Damian pets Cisco, who cuddles up to the boy like he knows Damian is a kindred spirit. “…Goliath,” he says, “He’s a bat dragon.”
Dick blinks a few times, processing that. “I don’t know why I believe that but I totally believe that,” he says with a little laugh at the glare he gets, “Sorry. I’m still not feeling great.” Dick picks up a tissue from the table and blows his nose on it.
Cisco purrs away as Damian pets him and lets him curl up in his lap. Damian’s own posture untenses, less ready for a fight and more resigned. There’s definitely something of Bruce in the tightness of his lips as he frowns to himself.
“Can I ask you a question, Grayson?”
“Shoot,” Dick says, wondering if he should tell the others he found their missing child soldier. Eh. They’d figure it out soon enough.
“Why did you want to let me go?” he asks, “It is a foolish idea. Either of the other plans that were brought up for discussion were far superior to that. I could just kill all of you.”
Dick lounges back on the couch a bit, shrugs. Damian makes a face as Dick’s sock-clad feet get too close to him for his liking. “You heard why. You and me, we’re family, Dami,” he explains, and punctuates it by letting his eyes fall closed. Showing without words that he wasn’t afraid of Damian hurting him.
“Tt… a biological accident doesn’t make us family, Grayson,” Damian hisses. Dick opens his eyes a little, noticing that the boy is looking firmly away from him. “Besides, you’re not his blood either.”
“But I knew him like I was,” Dick says, gentle, “And I’m just sad that you didn’t get to. You deserved to know him.”
Damian is silent, considering the words. He shakes his head again. “You’re so emotional, Grayson,” he complains, but it isn’t a dismissal of the words exactly.
“Yeah, well… as I keep reminding Jason and Tim, being a little brother means you gotta put up with your big brother’s eccentricities,” Dick says with a grin, and reaches over for Damian. There’s a flinch there, an expectation of violence. Dick just tousles the other’s hair with a hand. “You’ll get used to it.”
“…tt…” Damian’s lip curls up in a slight smile. Just barely there, like one of Bruce’s quiet smirks under the shadow of the cowl. “…we’ll see.”
=-=-=
Alfred’s the only one unsurprised to find Dick dozing on the couch upstairs after their frantic search of the lower levels of the Belfry. He smiles and pulls the blanket carefully over Dick, who has an arm half curled around Damian, still holding onto the cat as he sleeps.
“Master Bruce always trusted in your wise heart, Master Dick,” he says quietly, watching a moment, “So I shall endeavor to do the same.”
With that said, Alfred lowers the light and heads back down the stairs to let the others know they would have another permanent occupant in the Belfry.