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The heart of the issue, Dick knew, was that it had to be in here somewhere.
If he had not seen it months ago, if he didn’t know Bruce so well, it likely never would have occurred to him at all. But he had seen it, did know Bruce, and so he stood in his dead father’s room, searching for the dog-eared paperback he’d seen him reading weeks ago.
There’d been a time when he’d never seen Bruce without him being at least within arm’s reach of a book. Cheesy business how-tos. Bodice rippers, with swooning women and well-muscled men on the cover. Cheap and poorly-bound pulp novels he likely found in the revolving doors of whatever airport he’d stopped by on this trip or that. Heavy, leatherbound classics pulled from the Wayne family library, leaving the smell of ink on your fingertips when you turned the pages. Children’s books he’d bought when Dick first came to live with him.
They’d been too young for him at first; he remembered that, too. The first few boxes of toys, clothes, books, (purchased discreetly by Alfred when Dick was still not quite ready to stray into the public eye), had been neat, entirely inoffensive and without personality. Plain black trousers, cotton shirts that buttoned up to the collar in a range of soft grays, whites, and beiges, with blue, green, and red sweaters to pull over them. Leather shoes with gold buckles that squeaked when he wandered down the shiny, finely polished floors of the manor.
Though his parents were- or rather had been, raising him with manners, Dick could not help but wrinkle his nose at the plush toys, the books with simple drawings to emphasize the sparse sentences over the page. His English was not as strong as his Romani, his German, his French, his Spanish, his Italian, but it was good enough that he lost interest quickly.
Bruce, who still scared him a bit with his hollow-eyed stare, noticed his distaste, no matter how quickly Dick smoothed his face into an approximation of gratefulness. “I can get more,” he offered, in that slow, stilting way of his. As if he was not sure what to say to Dick, like a foreign traveler testing for understanding. It would have made him snap, if he wasn’t certain that Bruce was that way with everyone, always looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else than in the conversation he was having.
“They’re for babies.”
Bruce nodded, slowly. “We could go together,” He said, “when you’re ready. Find something you might like a bit more.”
And they had. Dick had not liked to read as much as he enjoyed to run, spring, walk on his hands and fly through the air, but he’d liked the bookstore with its big, open windows and winding aisles. He’d enjoyed the books they’d dragged home in towering, teetering stacks on their arms; stories of extraordinary children doing extraordinary things. Dick read them in the late nights before Bruce came home to check in on him, tuck him in and make sure the glass of water by his bed was full. Bruce never read him to sleep- he might have, had Dick asked, but he didn’t and Bruce never offered. It was not from a lack of affection but respect for Dick’s tentative line in the sand. Guardian, caretaker, mentor. Bruce was all of these things. Father wouldn’t come until later.
Somewhere along the way, Dick grew up. Bruce got old.
None of them talked about it. Even Jason, who had never met a bruise he didn’t like, never pushed too far on that particular subject. You could tease Bruce for being stubborn. You could shout at him for being sanctimonious. You might even be able to hate him for a bit. For months. For years. You could spend your teens and early adulthood far from home, telling yourself you wouldn’t have answered the phone anyway for every second you spent hating that it hadn’t rung. And when it finally does ring, when you come home to bury your brother, you still don’t let yourself think about how old your father has gotten.
That was a long time ago.
At least, Dick thinks, there’d been a little gray in Bruce’s hair when they buried him. No one ever thought he’d make it that far.
After an hour of searching for the book, the room is a mess. He’s torn clothes from drawers, upturned shelves and opened every nook and cranny he knew about. Only a handful of Damian’s drawings, lovingly framed and precious, were set down with any sort of gentleness. A still-life of the Gotham countryside lays face down in the center of the room, frame and canvas bent from the force he’d used to rip it off the wall. Dick sits down at the edge of Bruce’s bed and stares at nothing.
The curtains are closed. There’s no cold cup of tea to be taken to the kitchen, no slippers by the front door or robe tossed over the back of the bedpost. Alfred had whisked it all away, cleaning in preparation for Bruce’s return home. All of them had thought he’d get at least one more trip back. Maybe two.
There’s a half full jar of something medicinal smelling on the nightstand. Bruce had smelled mostly like that, towards the end; Icy Hot and hospital and antiseptic. On nights he would go out, the smell of blood could linger for days on his skin; not from the people he found in darkened alleyways but on Bruce’s breath, from the cracked fissures on his knuckles and the slow ooze from his nose. But mostly, he smelled like a hospital.
Dick scrubs his face with both hands.
He sits with his grief. He holds it in his hand and thinks in a litany; not fair, not fair, not fair. Not fair to be an orphan three times over before he turned 30. Not fair that he should never know the wrinkled, white-haired shape his father might have taken had Bruce only been given the chance. Not fair that he could not find the only thing that might have brought him a moment of comfort.
Then, he gets to work.
He starts by peeling the sheets off the bed; shaking the pillows out of their cases and tugging the cover off the duvet. Dick abandons these on the ground at the foot of the bed before throwing the windows open. This far from the city, there’s enough of a breeze to rustle the curtains, send a few papers floating from Bruce’s desk. With enough time, it should hopefully whisk away the smell of stale sweat and sickness. He’ll need a broom to sweep up the paper and broken glass, but he can fix the bookshelves by hand. Dick sorts them absently. Classics go in one pile for Jason. A detective novel he knows Tim has been wanting to read goes in another. The rest are stacked for the others to pick through when they’re ready.
When he finds the slim, pink paperback, Dick stops.
It’s old enough for the pages to have yellowed, with a plump, grinning baby on the cover. The title reads Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care , with a smaller tagline declaring it revised and updated for the modern parent. When he peels the front cover open, the pages crinkle from the amount of tape holding the binding together.
To Martie + Tom , the inscription read. All my love, Jacob.
His breath catches in his throat as he flicks through it. There are notes on almost every single page. Some of it is in Thomas Wayne’s sprawling, tight cursive; Dick recognizes it vaguely from the notebooks tucked away in the attic. Most of the annotations are in Bruce’s own hand. Neat, tidy, with blocky E’s and S’s that sink and sprawl down to the line below. A few haphazard bookmarks flutter to the ground; receipts and check stubs and a bandaid still in its wrapper. Dick holds the book to his face and smells it. Old paper and a faded cologne Bruce hadn’t worn since he was in his 20s. Sandalwood and bright autumn apples.
A dog-eared corner marks a page with the following passage;
“Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of destiny; he thinks he is in the world for something important, and it gives him drive and confidence.”
Thomas Wayne, who Dick has been told was a man of few words, drew an arrow to this paragraph and circled it twice.
Bruce Wayne, decades later, traced over it in bright yellow highlighter, then underlined twice in dark pen for emphasis. Next to his own father’s brief note of fuss, Bruce wrote feeling of destiny . It continues like that for the rest of the book. Father and son, reaching across the span of years to have one last conversation. Both express disapproval of television (Thomas’ absolutely not flanked by Bruce’s own dry not that Dick is interested ), agree on the importance of keeping a tight schedule, and are equally aghast at the suggestion that children may benefit from being set down now and then.
Nonsense , Thomas rebuffs.
Physical affection noted to strengthen attachment between adopted children and caretaker, Bruce agrees. Then, in smaller print, he likes to be tall.
Two months before he died, Bruce had put Dick over his shoulder and carried him up from the Cave to the living room. Not for any reason that Dick could tell; patrol hadn’t been especially rough. Neither of them were injured. His father found him anyway, still damp from the shower and thinking about how much he was dreading the long drive back to Bludhaven and hefted him gently into his arms. The pad of thick muscle on his shoulder and back had thinned over the last few months; there was a fine tremble in the arms wrapped around Dick’s middle, but Bruce managed it. Alfred would be furious if he knew Bruce strained himself but in the moment, all Dick could do was hang on, grasping at the back of Bruce’s Gotham University sweatshirt.
“Getting too heavy for you, B?” Dick remembered teasing, even as the words tried to stick in his throat. His own smile was strained at the edges. There was salt in Bruce’s stubble; lines around his eyes. But those warm eyes were the same as they’d been all those years ago, heaving Dick up into the air as if he weighed nothing at all before catching him in careful, broad hands. His father laid him down gently, like Dick was something small, something fragile and precious.
“No,” Bruce had said, brushing the stray fringe from Dick’s face. “You’ll always be light as a feather to me, chum.”
Dick set the book aside. Now that he’s looking for them, he recognizes a few more yellowed parenting novels scattered around the floor. A quick skim through these provides nothing of note. One recommends spanking. The other advises on the importance of children clearing their plate at every meal. Dick disregards these as easily as he imagines Bruce did, back when his children were small and defiant and wounded enough already.
An overturned desk drawer produces another stack of heavily annotated books. Two Homes, One Childhood. Trauma Sensitive Parenting. The Adoptive Parent’s Handbook . These are neither so aged, nor heavily annotated. He remembers catching Bruce reading the latter on one of his few visits to the manor in his teens. Jason was still settling in; gap-toothed and sleeping with a pocket knife under his pillow. Dick oscillated wildly between pity and jealousy back then; still remembered the taste of sour envy when he’d found Bruce tucked away on the balcony reading.
Did you ever love me , he wanted to ask, can I still come home? Why won’t you ask me to come home?
“Trying out some new reading material, Bruce?” Dick had asked, trying not to sound too bitter.
“Old, actually,” was all Bruce said. They never brought it up again. Funny. Dick couldn’t remember why.
Dick swallows the lump in his throat. His hands trace carefully over the worn, broken spines. He imagines his father reading them; imagines the hours it must have taken to annotate each of them so carefully, to read them until the pages came loose. When he brushes his knuckles against his cheeks to check for tears, he’s startled to find he’s smiling.
“Sap,” He whispers. “Always such a sap, B.” Carefully, he tucks each of them back into place before standing up. He bundles Bruce’s sheets in his arms before dumping them down the laundry chute. There’s no ghost in them. Not anymore. Just the smell of medicine and distant rot. A distant murmur of voices floats over from the East Wing as he heads downstairs. Somewhere, deep in the house, someone is playing a Bobby Darin record.
A bit of tension bleeds from Dick’s shoulders as he hops the staircase railing, slipping easily from the third floor to the first in seconds. It feels good to have life in the manor again. Feels good to have everyone he loves in arm’s reach.
“I sent some stuff to the laundry room, Alfie,” Dick calls, stepping over Jason’s muddy boots and into the kitchen. “If you have the kids dump anything they’ve got down the chutes, I can get it started before dinner.”
Alfred huffs a quiet sound of exasperation but raises no argument. His arthritis is a polite fiction in the household; he pretends that he isn’t in pain and they pretend not to notice that he is. Crooked hands chop expertly at a shrinking pile of vegetables. When Dick leans over to grab a fistful of carrots, they’re not twisted enough to save him from a swift reprimand with the butt of a knife. Still, Alfred smiles under a wispy, neatly trimmed mustache. “Very well, Master Dick. I’ll be sure to let them know. Will you be staying for dinner?”
“Sure.” Dick slips into the seat closest to Alfred, tucking his elbows on the granite island and resting his chin in his palms. “What are you making?”
“I’m roasting a chicken with some vegetables on the side. I believe Miss Stephanie and Master Tim mentioned something about cake for dessert, but they aren’t home just yet.”
“Sounds good.” They sit in comfortable silence. Eventually, the smell of fresh herbs and baking bread will draw the rest of the hoard down. Alfred will try to kick them out to the formal dining room with its oak table and good china, only for each of them to trickle back into the kitchen and gather around the plain, too-small table set aside for servants.
“Ah,” Alfred says, “I’d almost forgotten. Did you find that book you were looking for?”
“Oh,” Dick says, unable to keep a note of disappointment from creeping into his voice. “No. No, I didn’t see it. It probably just got lost in the shuffle. I’m sure it’ll turn up.”
Alfred hits the wooden serving spoon gently against a pan of vegetables, looking thoughtful. “Watch these for me, won’t you?”
“What? Sure, Alf. No problem. You doing okay?”
“Yes, yes. I’m not an invalid just yet, no matter how much you all cluck about retirement.” Alfred undoes the bow of his apron, replacing it on its hook before shuffling down the hall.
“Stubborn,” Dick calls out, taking up the recently evacuated space by the stove. He’s barely begun to pick out a few overly browned bits of onion from around the side when Alfred comes back, now holding a small duffle in his hand.
“Turn the heat down if you’re not going to stir, my dear boy,” Alfred says, aghast. There’s a brief flurry of movements where Dick steps back to let him take up the pan, dumping it unceremoniously into an awaiting dish.
“It was doing fine until it wasn’t,” Dick admits. “Think you can salvage it?”
“We’ll make do. A bit of butter, a bit of pepper. But here, come here. Is this what you were looking for?”
Dick recognizes it immediately as one of Bruce’s overnight bags; one of a handful that were on constant rotation and usually left, fully stocked, by the front door for those final few mad dash hospital visits. There’s a wistful look on Alfred’s face as he begins to unpack it, stroking the collar of a worn t-shirt, examining a pack of chocolate protein bars. “Would you believe I’d forgotten all about it, until now?” He murmurs. Low and soft, like it’s a secret. “Perhaps you’re right, Master Dick. A man gets old. His mind starts to wander.”
“Alfred,” Dick says, just as softly.
Alfred smiles at him, eyes glossed over and far away. “Apologies, Master Dick. Here you are.” He pulls the book from a bundle of sweats as easily as a magician frees a rabbit from the hat. Dick feels his breath catch in his throat as he reaches out, takes it gently and holds it to his chest.
The book itself isn’t anything special. There was a copy of The Moonstone tucked away in the Manor library somewhere; leatherbound and embossed with a Wayne family seal. Jason definitely owned at least one, too. But this one, mass market paperback cover and dog eared corners, had been Bruce’s.
Holding his breath, Dick flips it open.
Inside is a folded bit of newspaper. The paper has been worn smooth over the years, ink faded at the edges from someone constantly petting at the corners. WAYNE HEIR WELCOMES NEW WARD, the heading declares. Beneath it, there’s a black-and-white photo of Bruce carrying Dick down the steps of the Gotham city courthouse. They’re smiling.
Dick stares at it, unaware that he has begun to cry.