Chapter Text
It ends how it started: Dick Grayson on the floor, and a hand outstretched.
Another day, he might’ve lingered on the blood under its fingernails, the exact angle of the stinging stripe on his cheekbone, the ice-cold baptism of shock, how even the slightest sound echoes like the entire Cave is a theater and he and the Bat are players in the proscenium. Hell of an act.
Self-pity is a cardinal sin and therefore Dick will not entertain it. The story’s not in that ringing walk up the stairs, nor the quiet look exchanged between old man and boy, nor the way his hands shook on his car keys, nor the silent drive home. It begins thus: halfway down Robinson Freeway, his car sputters, hiccoughs, begs God for mercy, and dies. Later, an Advanced Auto Parts employee with blown-out 00Gs will tell him that its death knell was a coolant reservoir crack and a hopelessly overheated engine, and he will send his faithful shitbox to that great garage in the sky called Greasy Sal’s Junk Cars and get five hundred dollars cash for his troubles; now, he stands on the side of the road breathing in the smoke spilling under his hood, Monday afternoon traffic whizzing past him 20 miles over the speed limit, and he laughs. He laughs into his hands so hard he has to brace himself on the guard rail. The balding man in coveralls who’d pulled over to push him onto the shoulder out of the kindness of his heart looks up from Dick’s broiled engine, concerned, and in a gruff but not unkind tone habitually adapted by the kind of blue-collar men who help strangers on the freeway, asks, “You alright, son?”
Dick laughs more, until the laughs warp into sobs, and he gasps in engine smoke and Gotham smog and the frigid awful plunge that is the first few years of your twenties intertwined in his raw, bloody grief, and he says, “My brother’s dead.”
He guilts that poor man so bad he gets a free tow, a business card, and a case of Budweiser he will not drink. He bequeaths the six-pack upon the auto shop employees, who are, to say the least, enthused, and he nurses a Gatorade they’d gifted in return while he sits on the crumbling front steps, watching his useless lump of steel pull away toward its next life as a soda can. All his car’s contents (loose change, emergency clothes, user manual older than him) sag in a fireworks-print Jansport at his knee. He’s not quite sure how long he sits there. However long it takes to let a half-empty Gatorade get tepid. Then, staring into Fruit Punch depths, like his coolant reservoir before him and the sanctity of the Cave before that, the last of his will fractures inside. He stands. He puts his backpack on. And he walks.
His feet take him west to the gas station near the bridge to the mainland, to the driver’s side door of an old guy with Pennsylvania plates on a well-kept pre-90s Ford F-150, where fifty dollars and reassurances about his fussiness buys him a seat in the truck bed. Passenger seat’s got a chunky old Rottie who couldn’t possibly be moved, you see. “Through Philly,” the guy had said, with a twinge of a rural drawl, “Then on to Fuck, Nowhere. Drop you at the Amtrak.”
He keeps his feet hooked in the tie-down straps on pallets of specialty horse feed and his head braced on the truck’s back window. Gotham cops to the tune of seven see this flagrant breach of road safety and do nothing. Reversed perspective on what 55 mph looks like is strange to behold from anywhere in a car, much more in the open air, where the overpasses whiz by before he realizes they’re coming, and motorcyclists blur past him at a respectable adherence to Gotham’s real speed limits, which hover around 95 in 70-mph zones.
It’s a sunny day in Gotham. Cirrocumulus frills drift lazily across stark summer blue. For the perennial winners of Rainiest City in America, brighter weather is a treasure. Families have picnics in Robinson Park. Hapless Midwestern tourists wade in Gotham Sound in water shoes and rash guards. Men in bad outfits play ultimate frisbee on college greens. Outdoor music festivals spring up with alacrity. Alfred Pennyworth flings open the French doors on the back veranda and makes lemonade that will go unsipped. Dick Grayson cooks alive while a dog enjoys A/C. Robin rots in the shade of a hawthorn tree.
He does not call Wally, he does not call Kory, he does not call Donna; he doesn’t reach for any number of friends he knows would be here in two seconds flat, zero questions asked, who’d be able to take him wherever it is he’s running, who’d sit and pet his hair while he didn’t cry and who’d say it’s not his fault, who’d call Bruce Wayne a cunt to Dick’s face and have the tact to be embarrassed about saying it out loud, who’d let him turn into a melted glob of person-slop on their couch and they’d never kick him out and they’d hover and they’d fret and they’d wonder and it would make him feel even more like garbage, and it’s the first place a Bat would look. Dick turns his phone all the way off. Dick takes a lighter to his one card and flings the smoldering, dripping remains onto the asphalt.
The truck trundles out of Jersey. From Philly, where? Away, but how far away? How far is enough? Where won’t he follow? Where can’t he follow? How long? Every traffic cam he passes, squinted at under hands used as sun shields, glints in the blinding summer light, Gotham’s stifling watchers. Dick curls into a ball on his side and he hides.
True to his word, the old guy drops him down the street from the Amtrak station. Dick leans on the man’s windowsill to wave goodbye to his canine usurper at the man’s good-natured behest. The elderly Rottie, taking up one and a half seats, slits its eyes to glance at Dick sidelong, and huffs wearily.
“Thank you, really,” Dick says, faux cheer disguising the tired croak in his voice. “Drive safe.”
“Me and Batgirl will be just fine,” The old guy laughs, and pats Batgirl’s hindquarters. She rumbles in response. Dick can’t help the incredulous scoff. More of a bark. “Good luck.”
Dick gives him a strained smile and waves him off.
Philly is not as vertical as Gotham. The Schuylkill slogs underneath a lattice of bridges choked thick with traffic, dog-walkers and bikers whizzing underneath on the green sliver nestled close to the river’s brown current. A gaggle of canoers drift alongside, paddles held aloft, stressing the shit out of a chihuahua in a spikey pink coyote vest, who is in turn stressing the shit out of its owner, a middle-aged woman that’s attempting to herd the chihuahua toward more constructive things to bark at. Pedestrians dodge blue e-bikes on the sidewalk. Dick side-steps potential bi-wheeled assault with all the grace of a fake-retired acrobat.
Inside the station, shafts of midday light spear the dust in the air through slatted windows, high stone ceilings echoing announcements and the roar of conversation, hundreds of travelers passing by, a beautiful but temporary gateway to wherever it is Dick decides to go. The clerk at the counter seems bemused by his request for “soonest and farthest,” but she sells him a 1:00 ticket to D.C., sixty dollars.
Dick finds a secluded corner in the main hall to coil up. Under his thumb, departure time smears, his sweat slicking away the delicate letters. He cradles it in his hands like it’ll tell him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. He can’t just up and leave the Titans — he has responsibilities. But being so near Gotham, to hallowed ground (or cursed ground if he really wants to get pedantic), it scalds. So many times he’s ran from that goddamn city, and so many times he’s been called back, and he’s heeled, like a trained dog. Like he’s leashed.
He needs to prove it to somebody, most of all himself. He is not bound. He is not muzzled. He goes where he likes. He does what he wants. He owes him nothing. He can’t ask him for anything. Not anymore.
Something inside him crumples, like paper under cheap scissors. Ruffled hair and shined shoes and macaroni cards. Chicken noodle soup and aftershave and bad doodles on a bright yellow cast. Rare smiles and the thrill of victory that came with it. He’d loved a darling little boy, once, and he’d lost another. The ticket crinkles under Dick’s black-smudged thumb.
Before Dick can fall back into his earlier useless wallowing, a shadow ducks behind an advertisement board next to the arrival and departure times, and his Bat-trained instincts clock that he’s being watched. Suspicion is carved into his bones deep as the trapeze was. He hates it. It’s still useful. It tells him with that two-second glimpse the person watching him is small and nervous.
Without alerting his stalker, Dick sticks his ticket in his pocket and slings his backpack over his shoulder. He wanders over to the center of the hall under the guise of admiring the windows, hands in pockets, dragging his feet. This movement has alerted the person watching him, who peeks out from the board. Dark hair, small stature, gray shirt, jeans. A woman or a child. He hopes it’s not recognition that makes this person’s shoulders hunch with anxiety, because of all the things he’s had to deal with today, paparazzi who pursue children of C-list celebrities like Bruce Wayne is just one step too far.
Dick ambles closer. His approach makes the person less nervous, not more. This doesn’t quite compute in time. His stalker steps out from behind the board at the same moment Dick snags them by the elbow and yanks them into the sunlight.
“Oh, thank God, it’s you,” the person is saying, at the same time Dick says, “Who the hell are you?”
The arm in his grasp is skinny as a toothpick. He can wrap his whole hand around it. The little boy who looks up at him can’t be older than ten or eleven, built like a stick with none of the height that signifies puberty, high voice unspoiled by teenagerhood, with giant blue eyes, a gray shirt he’s swimming in that declares I paused my game to be here!, chunky sneakers, and cuffed blue jeans. A fancy DSLR dangles around his neck and a red backpack hangs off both pointy shoulders. He’s looking up at Dick like he hung the sun in the sky.
Dick blinks. His thumb leaves an ink smear on the boy’s elbow. “You know who I am?”
The boy scoffs. “Do I know who you are. I mean, yes, I do. Richard Grayson? I mean, I’d better, right?”
Dick holds the boy at arm’s length to get a better look at him. The boy’s fumbling for his backpack, arms twisting and flailing like a pale skydancer, the truly disorganized movement of someone who’s grown a few inches recently and hasn’t figured out how to move all that extra body. He twists himself to get his hand under his armpit and unzips his backpack. Dick lets the boy go so he won’t dislocate his shoulder trying to get whatever it is he’s scrambling for.
“It’s good you came up to me. Can you imagine if I’ve just been following around some rando?” the boy says, with a snort. He’s got an unmistakable Gotham accent. Not a local kid, then. He pulls out a rainbow paper folder, the kind from the dollar store, which bulges with photographs and print-outs.
“Why are you following me? Did someone put you up to this?” Dick says.
“No, I’m pro bono,” the boy says. He leans the folder up on his thigh and starts flipping through the chaos contained within.
“Pro..? Listen, I’m not playing games with you,” Dick says. “Go home.”
“Neither am I,” the boy says. “It’s important.”
His backpack is stuffed full. Balled-up Goku socks roll off the top and bounce on the marble station floor. He’s packed for a trip longer than Gotham to Philadelphia. This is a runaway who’s latched onto Dick for some reason. Dick sighs internally, mourns the sixty dollars he’d spent on a train ticket, and clicks into responsible adult mode to escort a child back to the place he’d just escaped. The thought makes his eyes burn. The thought makes the mark on his cheekbone sting again. Dick scrubs his hand over his face.
“Listen, kid,” Dick says. “I have a train to catch. Where are your parents?”
“My parents are in the south of France until July. They’re fine,” the kid says.
Dick’s train of thought stutters, switches tracks: this is not a runaway, this is an unsupervised toddler. “And they left you here alone?”
“What? No, that would be freaking crazy,” the kid says, with a huff. “I go to boarding school.”
“And you’re not there right now because…?” Dick prompts.
The kid gives him a disbelieving look that says dude, you’re old and stupid?, cocks his hip, plants his fist, and gestures toward the street, where heat is shimmering off the asphalt. “It’s summer vacation.”
“Oh, obviously,” Dick deadpans. “Do you have someone I can call to pick you up?”
The kid frowns, selects a photo, and pushes it in Dick’s face. He’s looking down at Batman snarling at a man in a ski mask, bathed in shadow and the dim glow of a streetlight. The picture is fuzzy, like it’s been taken from a distance with the ISO too high.
“He busted half that guy’s teeth out to get him to talk,” the boy says. “Once he talked, he busted out the other half.”
Dick tries not to grimace. He’s Richard Wayne, he doesn’t know anything to do with the Bats. His job is to be rich and spoiled. His biggest concern is a party this weekend. “Yeah, the Batman’s freaky. Why are you showing me this? Where did you get these?”
The kids squints at him. “Did I not — look, you’re, uh—”
He glances around them and leans in. Then, in a conspiratorial whisper, big eyes even huger, plunges Dick into silent panic: “You’re Nightwing. You were Robin. Bruce Wayne is Batman. And Robin—”
Dick seizes him by the shoulders and tugs him away from where his voice could possibly echo into any curious passerby’s ear. He hisses, “What the hell are you playing at?”
“He’s gonna kill himself,” the boy whispers. His little hand snakes up and coils around Dick’s white-knuckled grip on his shoulders. “Or somebody by accident. You know he is. He can’t be on his own. Not after…”
Dick snorts, but nothing’s funny. It’s an ugly noise. His scab’s been scraped off just as it started forming. He’s like eleven, Dick reminds himself. Eleven, eleven, eleven. “Ask him and he’d tell you he goddamn well wants to be.”
A young mom with twin toddlers walks by at that moment and scowls at him. She ushers her ducklings along and ignores Dick’s apologetic smile.
The kid frowns and crushes the paper folder to himself. He still holds the photo aloft between them, for Dick to take. “You have to go back. Batman needs a Robin. Or somebody.”
Dick stuffs his hands in his pockets. He leans back on his feet and breathes out long and slow. He looks back down at the kid, photo of the Bat smashing someone’s face in between them like an olive branch, giant eyes framed by dark hair and still-round cheeks, a small black gap in his mouth where his last adult tooth is finally coming in, a little pink on the cheeks from the summer sun.
“No,” he says.
“Why not?” the boy urges. He flattens the picture to Dick’s chest, his fingers five tiny points of heat through Dick’s t-shirt. “Don’t you owe him something?”
“Don’t talk to me about what I owe that man,” Dick snaps. He snatches the photo away and stuffs it in his back pocket just to get the kid to stop touching him. The kid wilts. Shrugging his backpack on both shoulders, he sighs. “What’s your name?”
“Tim. Tim Drake,” Tim says, straightening up. Dick probably has ten inches on him. Utterly microscopic.
“Okay, Tim Tim Drake. I’m sorry you came all this way. It couldn’t have been easy to follow me from Gotham. In fact, I kind of want to know how you managed it,” Dick capitulates. He scans Tim from his untied sneakers to the alfalfa sprig on the crown of his head. “But I’m leaving Gotham and I’m not going back. Especially not to be Robin. Here, I’ll buy you a train ticket back to Gotham.”
“What?" Tim squawks. Dick turns to walk to the ticket counter, but Tim scrambles in front of him and plants his feet. “Where the heck are you going? You’re just gonna leave?"
“I can go where I want. I’m a grown man,” Dick says.
Tim stammers, “Barely!”
“And how old are you?” Dick asks, and it’s so juvenile he’s a little embarrassed for himself. Tim glances away from Dick’s stare and scuffs his sneaker on the marble.
“I’ll be thirteen on my birthday,” he says.
“So you’re twelve,” Dick says.
“No,” Tim says. “I’ve got my party scheduled and everything.”
“When’s your birthday?” Dick says.
“Soon.” Tim answers.
“How soon?” Dick glances up at the ticket counter, where the clerk that helped him is fiddling with its gate. It rattles as she unlocks and rolls it down the windows.
“Soon enough.” Tim mutters.
“Tim,” Dick groans. “Please just tell me.”
“July 19th,” Tim says, to the floor. His arms are crossed. His backpack is still unzipped.
“Okay. You’re twelve. You seem like a…” Dick says. He hesitates on “nice kid,” because while not strictly untrue, Dick has the impression that the kid’s more of the too smart for his own good variety, and has likely been told so at length throughout his entire childhood. The ticket counter gate clangs and locks. “You’re not old enough to be following strangers around and you’re not old enough to play hooky from school. I’m gonna get you a ticket and then we’re gonna go on our own separate trains and you’re not gonna worry about what the Batman is doing. Worry about, I don’t know, pre-algebra.”
“No,” Tim says. He meets Dick’s eyes with a set jaw.
“Okay, whatever it is you worry about when you’re twelve, then,” Dick says. He pushes past Tim toward the ticket kiosks. Overhead, the boarding call for the 1:00 to D.C. sounds. A wave of people spills toward the train platforms.
Tim grabs him by the wrist. “Listen, you know what Batman means to Gotham. What he does for us. What it’s like when he’s not around.”
“Let go of me,” Dick says. He’s got a hundred ways to break a wrist bind, but Tim’s grip feels bird-boned. He could hurt him.
“You’ve got to help him,” Tim says. “You can’t make me stop following you around. It’s a free country. If something happens to me that’s my own fault. But it’s worse for the whole world if Batman dies because he was too worked up about Robin dying.”
Dick pauses and really looks at Tim. His brows are furrowed, his jaw clenched, his face tilted up, his feet planted; he’s the picture of determination. Tim means it. Dick’s trip to wherever, USA will get a hundred times more annoying.
“What about your parents?”
“My school thinks I’m with them. My parents think I’m at school,” Tim says. “I’ve got two months. That’s plenty of time to convince you.”
Dick opens his mouth to protest, and Tim interrupts with, “And if you tell somebody where I’m at I’ll tell them you kidnapped me. So there.”
Dick tugs his hand back and Tim finally lets go. Dick buries his face in his hands and muffles a colorful combination of swears into his palms. He cards his fingers through his hair. He paces back and forth. Tim doesn’t move.
“You’re really not gonna leave me alone?” Dick says.
“Nope,” Tim says.
The big clock in the atrium shows 12:52. Dick doesn’t really have the right or the time to be surprised. At the very least, Tim should have some kind of adult supervision, even if that supervision is Dick, who’s barely a passable adult at all.
He groans, long and loud. Tim watches him. The clock ticks forward to 12:53.
“Pick up your socks,” Dick says, finally.
“What?” Tim says, then searches around and rescues his Goku socks from the train station floor. “Thanks. These are my favorite.”
Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. “This would happen to me. Come on.”
Dick and Tim stand in chilly silence at a kiosk for however long it takes to get a second ticket. Tim stares up at Dick with shining eyes when Dick hands him his ticket, and his face splits into a grin as he tucks it in the front pocket of his jeans for safekeeping.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Dick says when they’re standing on the platform, damp with sweat, the air thick with humidity, boxed in on all sides by the peculiar sample of humanity that populates travel hubs; including but not limited to businesspeople, Amish, children of divorce, and European tourists. Tim plucks his shirt and flaps it for air flow. His dark strands slick to his neck.
The train sweeps by. Tracks rattle as it slows. A cool rush of air blows past them, scattering loose papers and a woman’s chiffon scarf. The breeze ruffles the both of them.
“I’ll be out of your hair before you know it,” Tim says.
“You’re in my hair right now and I’m pretty well aware,” Dick says. The other passengers surge toward the open doors.
“You won’t regret it,” Tim says.
“Regretting it already,” Dick says, and he steps into the blissfully air-conditioned cabin. Tim sniffs and wipes the sweat off his lip with the sleeve of his shirt, but he doesn’t grace that statement with a response.
When the train takes off, Tim presses his hands to the glass and watches the trees whir past. He readies his camera to capture the scenery, but pauses, brow bone pressed to the viewfinder. He glances at Dick sidelong.
“I’ve been following him for a month. That’s how I got them,” he says. The camera clicks. Dick, who had been slouching in his seat, sits up straight. Tim, eighty pounds soaking wet, following Batman through the dregs of Gotham’s underworld. He barely knows the kid and the mental image makes him want to puke.
“What — how—” Dick splutters. Tim shrugs. He swings the camera’s shining black eye over to point at Dick.
“You guys should keep a better eye on r/batsightings. All of Reddit, actually. Those people are weirdos,” Tim says. He readies his camera, framing Dick’s incredulous expression. “Me not included.”
Tim snaps his picture.