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Duke sits in the run-down diner, staring at his plate of soggy apple pie waffles. He catches snippets of the conversation around him, but to be honest, he’s been checked out for a while. It doesn’t matter. His friends continue on perfectly fine without him, just like they have for the past year.
Vivian taps him on the shoulder. “Look, Duke.” She shoves her phone in front of her face, showing him a TikTok where someone mocks the Riddler. Duke thinks of the Cursed Wheel, the crushing insecurity, his overwhelming fear as his powers manifested. He blinks. The video is over.
Duke laughs. It sounds hollow. Vivian doesn’t notice, too focused on rescuing her box braids from her ketchup.
“What was it like?” Lucas asks.
“An adventure,” Duke tells him.
“No, really,” Sofia says. “What was it like? I mean, you were in the system, and then with Brucie Wayne of all people.”
Duke shrugs. He wishes that the attention would shift away from him again. He doesn’t know how to talk to his old friends anymore.
“Was he even hotter in person?” Vivian asks. Duke wrinkles his nose. Vivian raises her hands in surrender. “Like, objectively. Was he objectively hot?”
“Stop it, Viv,” Sofia says. “Hey, can I have some of your waffle?”
Duke shoves it towards her. He’s not hungry. Vivian shoots him a look, which means Duke needs to cover. “I can tell you one thing,” Duke says, trying for some levity. “The food was better than here.”
“Cheer up,” Vivian says, snapping a picture of the monstrosity. “It’s still a waffle.”
It is still a waffle. And Duke doesn’t envy Vivian, with her steak that may or may not give her food poisoning within the next day. Or Lucas, who decided to play it “safe” and just got three orders of chicken fingers and French fries. Sofia, on the other hand, is living it up with her peanut butter chocolate banana pancake tower.
Duke could have predicted all their orders, more or less. They’ve been to this diner before, plenty of times, spending their allowance or the money they earned from their afterschool jobs on cheap chicken fingers and egregiously sugary breakfasts and thick milkshakes.
“Bruce has a butler,” Duke says. “A literal butler. He’s English.” Vivian squeals. Lucas laughs. Even Sofia smiles. “He’s a retired actor.” And a retired soldier. “He’s good at all these ridiculous disguises.” Lord, does Duke know that. “And the one thing he can’t cook is waffles.”
“Really?” Lucas asks. “That’s where his butler skills fail? Waffles?”
Duke should say something to continue the joke. Instead, he just shrugs.
“What about before that?” Vivian asks. Duke hears the telltale sound of Lucas kicking her under the table. “Did they put you with okay people? They didn’t, like, hurt you, right?”
“Those rumors about Brucie, was he—”
“Guys,” Lucas interrupts. “I don’t think he wants to talk about it.”
“It’s fine,” Duke says. If he’s silent, they’ll only draw their own conclusions. “They were all fine.” That’s not convincing, in the slightest. “My first few foster parents just didn’t give a fuck, and Bruce…he was a good guy. He wanted to help.”
“What were your foster brothers like?” Vivian asks.
“And sister,” Sofia adds.
“They were fine.” One of them turned him into the cops, although Dick at least apologized for that stunt. One of them didn’t think he was worthy of the title of Robin and made it everyone’s problem, but Damian was also a ten-year-old, and he was a cute kid once Duke got to know him. Jason trained with him a bit. Tim was…fine. “Cass is great.”
The other three look at Duke, waiting for more. He doesn’t know how to tell them more. He fought at his foster siblings’ sides. They defended each other from danger. They went through life-or-death situations together. They didn’t really spend much time playing video games and joking around.
“Are you okay?” Vivian asks. “I mean, it must’ve been really tough, looking for your parents.”
“It was like the flood,” Duke says quietly. “It was like the flood, except there was no way out. No one I could fight to take back the city. And everyone else was above water except for me.”
No one really knows what to say to that. Sofia pushes some of her pancakes onto Duke’s plate as an apology. Lucas jiggles his leg under the table. Vivian shoves her phone at Duke again, this time with a new TikTok.
Lucas says something, changing the subject. Sofia replies. Vivian makes a joke about aliens.
The door to the diner opens. Duke’s head snaps directly to the entrance. In a couple seconds, he’s assessed the couple entering. And then he turns back to his friends staring at him.
“The flood,” Sofia says.
Vivian shoves Duke’s waffles back at him. Duke takes a bite. They taste like cardboard. He doesn’t know if that’s on the waffles or him.
“When can we meet your new friends?” Lucas asks.
“Yeah, we need to know who kept your crazy ass alive without us,” Vivian agrees.
Duke takes another bite of his waffles. “I’ll try to get them together. They’re, uh, a bit different, though.”
“We all are,” Sofia says.
But it’s not the same. We Are Robin laughed too. They talk about silly, shallow things. But there’s always an undercurrent of reality. And right here, in this diner straight out of Duke’s childhood memories, that reality is missing.
Childhood memories. Duke was here a year ago.
Duke’s eyes unfocus. The lights swim together, like he’s looking at their reflections in the bay, the same bay that he’s been pulled out of during missions down by the docks. He’s suspended underwater, deathly still. Everyone’s voices are so far away.
“Duke?”
Duke doesn’t know how to pretend. He couldn’t pretend, when the Riddler flooded the streets. He couldn’t pretend when he out there, searching day and night for his parents. He couldn’t pretend, when the city was convulsing in chaos around him.
Duke’s parents would tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself. But he isn’t, not really. He’s still smiling, just as wide, just as bright. He just can’t be doing it all the time. He can’t float. He has to feel.
Lucas jostles Duke’s shoulder. Duke flinches.
“You good?” Lucas asks.
“Yeah,” Duke says. “Yeah, sure. What were we talking about?”
They’re at the diner again. Riko dunks her fries in her milkshake. Izzy and Duke share chocolate chip pancakes. Dax is stuffing his mouth with grilled cheese and tomato soup. Dre couldn’t make it. He’s in a psych facility right now. Duke doesn’t have all the details, because Dre doesn’t want him to know, but he knows anyway.
Vivian tries to talk to Duke’s new friends about some sort of TikTok challenge. Dax knows what she’s talking about. None of the others do.
Lucas tells a story about almost getting mugged and sighting a member of We Are Robin. Izzy’s eyes light up and she tells a story about bashing a mugger with a brick.
Riko’s eyes flit all over the room, cataloguing everything. Sofia tries to talk to her. She doesn’t hear.
“Wow,” Lucas says. “You really replaced us one-for-one.” Duke looks down. “I’m just kidding, man. It’s just funny that they are four of you. You’re like us 2.0.”
“There are six of us, actually,” Riko says.
“Five,” Dax corrects.
“She’s counting one of the…you know,” Izzy defends.
“Where’s the fifth?” Vivian asks.
No one answers her.
Duke should say something. He’s the bridge. He should find a way to connect everyone together.
He doesn’t want to, though. He doesn’t want them to understand each other. And he doesn’t want these lives to bleed into each other.
Duke looks down and is silent.
“You didn’t like them,” Duke says a few hours later, as they do inventory at the Hatch.
Riko, Dax, and Izzy exchange a three-way glance.
“Your old friends seem nice,” Izzy says carefully.
“They were fun,” Dax adds.
Duke turns to Riko, who gives him a sad half-smile. “They’re children,” she says simply.
They’re all the same age. Duke shared a class with Vivian, Lucas, and Sofia before he went to foster care. But the chasm between them is deep, now, and perhaps too wide to cross.
“They’re children.”
“Then what are we?”
Duke doesn’t ask. He already knows the answer.