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Metropolis was beautiful at night. Dick sat on the edge of a skyscraper, legs dangling over the edge, and admired it. It was dizzying, how large the differences between Gotham and Metropolis were. Where Gotham was smog and darkness, Metropolis was clean air and light. Instead of filled with sirens and squealing tires, the wind was sharp only with cold and the low murmur of evening shopping. There were people moving below him, but they were unhurried, unalarmed, even for ten o’clock on a weekday. In Gotham, the city would be mostly empty by now, people retreating to their homes. There was no official curfew, but fear curbed behavior more completely than any rules. Gotham made its own rules.
It was a relief, to be somewhere those rules didn’t exist.
“Are you even allowed to be here?”
It was a sign of how scattered he was that Dick jumped, spinning around to look behind him. He supposed it wasn’t really a surprise that when you went to another city the heroes who lived there would find you, but he wasn’t expecting it quite so quickly.
And he had kind of expected Superman, honestly. Although Conner wasn’t a bad alternative.
He grinned at him as he walked across the rooftop towards him. “Are you getting territorial over your city now?”
“Batman is,” Conner retorted, but there was no heat in his voice. “I’m just saying, if I’m not allowed in Gotham, why are you allowed in Metropolis?”
Because Superman is a lot more reasonable than Batman. That wasn’t something he was supposed to say out loud. He pursed his lips and looked back over the street below. “You’re allowed in Gotham. It’s just Superboy who isn’t.”
Conner scoffed; Dick had to admit that it was a fair complaint to have. He forgot, sometimes, when someone talked about ‘metas’ and ‘aliens,’ that it wasn’t a thing that his friends turned on when they put on their costumes and turned off when they went home. Conner was Kryptonian, whether he was Superboy or Conner Kent. He had some experience with knowing what it was like to be forced to hide half of yourself.
Conner sat on the ledge next to him. “I was joking,” he said. “You know I don’t mind if you guys come visit.”
“Conner, I know when you’re actually upset. You’re not that subtle.”
Conner kicked his leg. “Then why do you look like someone died?” And then he froze. “Wait. Did someone…”
“No.” It was a fair question, Dick supposed. The reminder twisted his mood even further. “No. Just… wanted to get away from it for a while.”
“…From Gotham?”
The fact that it was a question was surprising. Conner was more perceptive than he let on sometimes, more sensitive to others’ feelings at unexpected times. He supposed that meant they were doing a good job in teaching him to be better than the anger he carried at the beginning.
But it was inconvenient, sometimes, to be so transparent.
“All of it. Including Robin.”
Conner hummed, glancing down for a second before turning forward to watch the city instead of staring at him. Not that there was anything to see, anyways. Dick wasn’t wearing his uniform, not even underneath his clothes, but he couldn’t stop himself from following the stupid rule about wearing sunglasses and a hoodie to cover his face. Maybe it was hiding, a little bit.
Maybe he should have come in uniform. He had patrol soon, it was smarter to at least wear it under his clothes so he would be ready… but today, when he went to pull it on, it felt wrong. Too tight. Too heavy. He left it lying on the floor and ran to the zeta, to Metropolis, the polar opposite of Gotham in every way. Gotham had heroes, Metropolis had super heroes. Gotham had people, Metropolis had gods.
Gotham had a mean streak a mile wide and the filth was buried so deep you couldn’t pull it out and he was so damn tired.
“I’m just… not sure where to go from here,” he admitted, a lump in his throat. “If I’m going to… to keep being Robin when I don’t believe in it anymore.”
Conner exhaled heavily and loudly; when Dick glanced at him, he looked uncomfortable. He supposed he didn’t usually have these conversations with anyone but Wally, but… somehow, he didn’t think Wally would understand this time. That was part of the problem.
But Conner might. He didn’t have as firm of a grip on himself and what he wanted to be, since he was younger than all of them.
“What do you mean by believing in it?” Conner asked at last.
“I mean that… Robin was my mom’s name for me,” he admitted. As soon as he said the words, his skin started to prickle beneath his hoodie, on the back of his neck, as if there was a sniper’s scope trained on him. Stop. You’re fine. You’re safe. It was impossible, now, to turn off the paranoia. Once you had everything taken from you, it was too easy to imagine it could happen twice.
Conner cleared his throat, looking down instead of at him, a small attempt at privacy. “You, uh. You don’t talk about your parents very much.”
“Not much to talk about.”
“…Ah.” Conner’s hands tightened. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was years ago.” Dick swallowed, trying to make his voice light like everyone expected. Maybe it wasn’t expected now, talking about this subject in particular, but it was hard to turn off the performer once you got used to it. “Just… that’s why I took the name. Because she called me Robin. Because she told me that… that being Robin made me… magic.” The word felt so damn childish, all of a sudden, hanging in the air between them, that he laughed sharply. “Silly, right?”
“No.” Conner frowned at him. “Kids believe things like that.”
“Yeah. But I’m not a kid anymore.”
Conner hummed, eyeing him critically. “Yes, you are.”
“Not technically.”
“Fifteen is still a kid.”
He was right, but suddenly this wasn’t an argument he wanted to have. “I stopped being a kid the first time I had to hold the hand of a woman who had been shot while she bled to death.” He had lied to her, he remembered clearly, ten and terrified and her hand in his so much like his mom’s that he almost couldn’t breathe. You’re going to be okay. The ambulance is coming. You’re going to live. The last thing someone said to her was a lie. He didn’t know if it was the right thing when her eyes closed in relief and her pulse fluttered out beneath his other hand. It felt like the right thing at the time but he’s never been able to make up his mind.
Conner didn’t flinch, though; he just leaned back on his hands. “I get it,” he said quietly. “And your city is… is meaner than most. Metropolis has some problems like that, but it doesn’t have the same…” He trailed off, trying to think of the right word. Maybe one that wasn’t quite so judgmental. Artemis and him got a little touchy, sometimes, when people compared their cities to Gotham.
He had no such problem today. “Claws.”
“Yeah.” Conner leaned forward, peering out over the city. “I guess I hadn’t thought you could… outgrow a mask.”
“It’ll happen to all of us,” Dick said. “In the back of my mind, I think I knew it was coming, I just… wasn’t prepared for it to hit so suddenly.”
“Won’t happen to me.” Conner’s voice had gone brittle, suddenly, his shoulders rigid as he looked out over the cityscape. He was watching Superman, flying in the distance, and usually they were okay now that there was a few years’ trust between them… but this time, when his eyes caught the light, they seemed longing.
Dick’s breath caught in his throat in sudden, horrible guilt. He was talking about growing up to someone who wasn’t going to grow up at all—and suddenly, now that they were talking about it, what that meant stretched out in front of him. Conner would graduate high school, maybe college, but he would look the same. He would feel the same way as him, as if he had outgrown being called ‘boy’ because of the things they had seen and done, but it wouldn’t match the outside. He would keep being Superboy because the person he was meant to ‘replace’ wasn’t aging either, because Superman would never give up his title and he was practically invincible. He wouldn’t even have the choice of moving on unless he gave up his ties entirely, and since that was his family, the odds of that were low.
“Sorry,” he managed. “Sorry, Conner, I—”
“It’s okay.” He wasn’t a very convincing liar, his throat bobbing as he swallowed harshly and looked back down at the streets instead of watching his brother. “We’re talking about you.”
“We don’t have to be,” Dick retorted, maybe a little desperate now that the opportunity had been presented. “We can talk about your problems instead.”
“Gee, thanks,” Conner said, rolling his eyes, but he pursed his lips and thought for a second before shaking his head. “I’m okay. What you’re talking about, though… it’s like when Speedy changed to Red Arrow because he decided to get serious. That doesn’t have to do with aging. And… I don’t think that’s going to change for me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve always been Superboy.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Because it was my name before I had a name. Superboy is just… me. It just means that I work alongside Superman, that I try my best to be like him. It just means hope.”
“Hope?” It was a poignant way to sum up your existence, and it felt breathtakingly personal, but he had never heard Conner say it so plainly before.
“That’s what the crest actually means.” Conner put his hand on his chest subconsciously before lowering it back to his side. “It looks like an ‘s’ in human languages, but it’s actually my house crest. And it stands for hope. That’s what Kal told me. That’s what it means to wear it: to bring people hope.”
“I get it.” Dick smiled. It was fitting. Conner didn’t have near the charisma of Superman—yet, maybe, he was still figuring things out—but he did have that light. That spark. When Conner straightened up, in times of crisis, and said we’re going to find a way, it sounded like the truth. When the newbies, like Gar and Tula and Karen, got discouraged, it made no sense for them to gravitate to grumpy Conner, but they did. He had something that drew people, that made them believe him when he said you can do this. Dick couldn’t put a label on it, but maybe the only thing to call it was hope.
“That’s what you want,” Conner said hesitantly.
“Something that makes sense, yeah.” He sighed. “Robin was about magic. And… the magic is gone. If it was there in the first place.”
Conner nodded, his lips pursing as if he was bracing himself for something. Dick waited, turning away to give him some privacy and watching Superman in the distance. It was no wonder, he thought, that Metropolis felt so different from Gotham. What would it be like, to know that if you called out someone would be there in an instant? What would it do to have someone who smiled with such sincerity and spoke with such kindness as your guardian angel? He understood the good that Batman did, understood why he operated in the shadows, but seeing somebody made them different. Not just human, but trustworthy. Dependable. No wonder everything here shone, if they had people like Superman and Superboy to protect them. You would feel so safe.
“You need a new story,” Conner said abruptly, “And… I have one.”
Dick glanced at him, biting his lip against snapping that it wasn’t that easy. This was Conner. He could at least hear him out. “Yeah?”
Conner nodded, leaning back on his hands to look at the stars above them. “It’s a Kryptonian story,” he said quietly, almost reverently. “Kal told it to me.”
It didn’t feel right, somehow, to have a Kryptonian story inspire his new identity. “I don’t—”
“Krypton had heroes just like Earth did, at the beginning,” Conner interrupted, a glint in his eyes that made him shut his mouth. “People that had great powers, in some cases, like we do here, but many of them were ordinary people—but that didn’t mean they didn’t want to help people.”
Like they did now. He crossed his legs on the edge of the building, nodding for Conner to continue.
“One of Krypton’s greatest heroes was called Nightwing. He was descended from Krypton’s gods, but he had none of their powers, so he was cast out of his family. Alone, he decided that he didn’t accept that he was powerless. There were people he wanted to help. People who needed justice.”
He couldn’t breathe. Justice. That was the word that Batman used, the word that kept him going night after night. We bring justice to people who can’t get it for themselves.
“He made himself a hero,” Conner said, voice low, gaze distant. “He dreamt of justice, of helping the weak, and so he became what he needed to be. He used his talents and skills to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.”
“He brought people hope,” Dick murmured, feeling transfixed, he had never heard Conner talk like this but now he sounded achingly familiar, like he understood, “Just like you and Superman do.”
Conner finally nodded and lowered his head to stare at Dick, his gaze intent. “Just like we all do.”
Nightwing. It was perfect, Dick thought dizzily, looking up at the stars as his vision blurred. When he became Robin, it had been about magic, about his parents’ love for him—but it was also about anger, and vengeance. It was about avenging his parents and making sure they didn’t die for nothing and that no one else hurt like he hurt, and now that he thought about it clearly for the first time… he realized that he had taken Batman’s story and made it his own, somewhere along the way. But that didn’t work anymore. He didn’t want to be Batman when he got older. He wasn’t about vengeance or darkness. Robin was magic.
The protector of the weak. Someone who became hope and justice with no powers at all, for no reason than because someone had to and he wanted to help. That felt like his story, too.
But it wasn’t his. He knew that from how Conner was still watching him: with a tinge of regret.
“Is that who you’re going to be?” he asked. “Are you going to be Nightwing when you outgrow Superboy?”
Conner wrinkled his nose in distaste and looked over the city. “I told you, I’m not going to outgrow Superboy.” He hesitated, though, and then said, quieter, “But I think that is why Kal told it to me. In case I needed to be… someone else.”
“You might.”
“I might,” Conner agreed, taking a deep breath, and gave him a wry smile. “But I think Nightwing belongs to you.”
It was such a precious gift. Dick grabbed for his hand and squeezed it, relieved when Conner didn’t pull away from him or make fun of him. He had a feeling that someone else would have, but for all his faults, Conner didn’t judge people. His eyes, steady on his, were full of belief.
“You’re sure?” He made himself ask one more time, anyways, even though it felt like it resonated inside of him. Nightwing. Nightwing. Nightwing. It already felt like his, like something he could live inside and call his own. A new solid ground on which to stand. “I mean, it’s Kryptonian, and I’m not.”
“Kal said I could do what I wanted with it.” Conner squeezed his hand back. “And… it doesn’t feel like mine, so I can give it to who I want. And I want you to have it.” A smile twitched on his face. “Kal would want you to have it, too. It’s just… if you want it?”
“Yes.” His smile widened into a grin. He felt almost giddy, with relief. With purpose. “It’s just… how did you know…”
Conner smiled back at him, more open. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are, either. You’ve been grinding your teeth when we call you Robin for weeks.”
“Sneaky.” Dick rolled his eyes, sighing and turning back to the cityscape. “I was going to ask how you knew that story would work for me.”
“Oh. That’s because when Kal told me the story… it reminded me of Robin.”
His throat was still so tight. “Not Batman?”
“Batman is…” Conner hesitated, figuring out how to say it in a way that wasn’t rude. It took him a few seconds. “He doesn’t inspire people the same way. Not like Nightwing did. Not like Robin does.”
“Not like you and Superman do,” Dick corrected. It was still hard to believe, that Conner would let him have a legend from his dead culture, that he would let him have a name that had been almost given to him. “I think… I’d like to do what you do, instead.”
Conner gave him a crooked smile, letting his hand drop and standing. “Do it in Gotham,” he said, brusque. “They need you over there.”
“I know.” It was such a long, long road that stretched out in front of him, thinking about it. There was so much blood that would be spilled, in the war between Gotham and the darkness that kept trying to claim her. He couldn’t see how far it would go. What it would cost.
But he knew what he stood for, again. There was a spark in his chest that felt like hope, a stronger kind of magic than Robin had been for a while now.
He exhaled and stood up, too. “I’m ready to go back,” he said, grinning at Conner. “I have some thinking to do. Some designing.”
Conner rolled his eyes. “If you want my advice, lose the cape.”
“I’m telling your brother you said that.”
“Don’t you dare.” Conner turned, still looking him over. “You’re good to get back?”
“Conner. Your city is a walk in the park compared to mine.”
“Ma and Pa taught me to be polite, you ass.” Conner seemed completely relaxed, walking along the edge of the skyscraper like a kid walking on the curb of a sidewalk, until he reached the edge and grinned back at him. “Alright. See you later.”
He jumped. Dick watched as he vaulted across the air to the next building, five stories lower, and landed without so much as a stumble, turning to watch Superman. He hadn’t been eavesdropping—he was too polite for that, Conner had assured him more than once, even if he had the capability for it—but he had turned towards Conner and was watching him too. It looked like they might have been talking, from the way Conner’s head tilted to listen better like he did subconsciously. A second later, Conner took off running across the building and out of sight, Superman following with a slight wave in Dick’s direction. Dick returned it with a smile.
There were worse people to follow, he thought. If you were going to be somebody, why not be somebody who shone, who smiled, who inspired people?
Why not be somebody better?
He took a deep breath and disappeared into the shadows himself. It was time to be Robin—until he was ready to be better, too.