Chapter Text
Bruce is the one who invents the Ghost.
"It's Robin!" Dick insists, which is true. The ghost's name is Robin, but all villains and rogues of Gotham generally call the shadow the Ghost. Much to the frustration of the eight-year-old.
It begins with this eight-year-old, of course. Like this: the child keeps sneaking out into Gotham night with that tricolor leotard.
"Dick." Bruce parks the Batmobile (new name) into the Bat-garage (new name too) in the Batcave (you know who named it). "You need to stop sneaking out. Zucco has been arrested."
Dick follows him out with flips and cartwheels. How can the kid still have energy after chasing the thief, and being chased by Batman later.
"Nope! I want to help. I'm helping."
"It's dangerous." He growls. It is ineffective.
"I'm unharmed. And admit it, I did help!" He crosses his arms and puffs up, and is so mischievously adorable that you can't help but relent a bit.
Dick did help. The child sneaked up behind the thief and went "Boo!", startling the thief enough that he stumbled and Batman caught him.
But one day the rogue is going to stop flinching at the childish "boo", and the red, green, and yellow will become a moving target. He knows Dick is extraordinarily agile. He has seen the boy duck bullets before (while Bruce internally died from a heart attack). It does not mean Bruce can bear seeing his son ward get hurt.
However, Bruce has begged and scolded and ordered Dick to stop. It fails. Every method. The kid is a Houdini at avoiding any Bat-security. It even makes him better at the vigilante life, which is good, but not.
The most reliable way now is to catch him after he sneaks out, which is tiring. Also, Dick will certainly get better and better, and one day Bruce may not be able to catch him, or protect him anymore.
It's so frightening, being a parent. Sorry, Alfred of the decade ago.
"And you see the thief today? His face! BOO!" Dick laughs and starts doing the Michael Jackson Thriller dance. "He thought I'm a ghost, ha!"
Hmm?
Bruce's brain catches the word.
If he can't contain Dick, what if the goons stay away from him?
The little gremlin is dancing around, jumping and flipping everywhere, while laughing a laugh that is admittedly eerie in the night.
"Dick." Bruce says to the boy. "I know last Halloween you watched all the clips of horror movies that I barred you from seeing."
Dick stops his dance, ready to get scolded. It's so weird that for things in their civilian life, Dick is so easy to correct or guide, but he's so stubborn when being Robin. "Um, yeah?"
"Can you do the Shining twins?" Bruce asks.
Dick looks at him with big round blue eyes, then grins, and suddenly blurts, "Uh-oh, Alfred! I'm sorry for sneaking out!"
Bruce looks back and sees nothing. He will be secretly embarrassed about this simple trick later. When he turns back, Dick is not there anymore.
"Hello, Bruce..."
Bruce turns to his left, and in the dark of the cave is one boy in tricolor, standing still with a face devoid of emotion.
"Come and play with us."
"Good, Dick," he says. "I have an idea about your night activity."
But Dick does not move.
"Come and play with us," he says, eyes vacant.
"Dick."
"Forever and ever."
It's starting to get really unnerving. At least he does not bud into two.
The cave lights flicker, and Dick disappears again.
"...and ever."
On his right, Dick reappears, in two.
And it takes herculean effort from someone who has wandered the globe to find himself to not flinch. He internally calms his heart rate down, before he observes that the twins are Dick's reflection in the standing mirror.
"Tee-hee! Are you scared? Did I do good?"
"I'm not, but a very good impression, Robin." Bruce ruffles the boy's hair, and secretly confirms that his hand's reflection appears in the mirror.
"What idea do you have? What, Bruce? I'm excited."
Bruce walks to the Bat-storage (sigh), looking for the correct container and pulling it out.
"Recently I had a chance to meet Wonder Woman."
"And you didn't bring ME!?" Dick interrupts.
"Calm down, and not yet. But chum, she has an invisible plane." He lifts a piece of metal sheet up. "And I happen to scrap that technology to study."
Waynetech (or Lucius Fox) cannot completely replicate the invisible technology, which is actually total camouflage, but he can reverse engineer it and make a semi-camouflage cape.
When standing still, it is an intense black cape with a light absorption coefficient of 0.9998, which makes you feel like you are staring into an absolute void. But the real ability is when you quickly swish the cape at a specific speed; it makes the user suddenly hard to focus on even when staring directly, like they are hiding in smoke or a thick mirror.
Or the veil of the afterlife.
Due to the fragility of the coating, it is not compatible with the thick, bulletproof Batman cape, or folding it into his gadget belt, so Bruce shelves the project previously. But he finds use for it now.
"But it will hide my Flying Graysons' color," Dick moans while testing the cloak. He wraps it around himself like an actual bat, with that, he can even blend into the dim light.
"Think of it like this, chum. It makes you more terrifying. You will be a ghost that haunts them, and when it is time, you reveal your (very bright) color and release your true power on them."
"Hmmmmmmm. Let me try," the kid says, and with dramatic flair only a born performer can manage, he spins himself and swishes his cloak. The effect makes Bruce unable to focus on Dick even though he is staring directly at him. The effect only lasts for three seconds, so it is nothing of use for a normal human.
Dick is a baseline human, but no, the kid is not in any way normal. In the span of three seconds, he steps out of eyesight and is gone.
The child laughs. A footstep near Bruce’s left ear, but when Bruce turns, there is nothing, and something touches his right hand, but nobody is there.
And Bruce lifts his two hands up to catch the boy’s feet that land on his shoulders.
"Hey!" Dick shouts, and opens the cloak to reveal a (eye-watering-bright) Robin uniform. "You still see where I am!"
"No, I didn't see you at all. But I'm your partner, and I know where you will go next."
Dick is filled with happiness at that word. "So, this is awesome. Will you let me go at night with you properly now?" He squeezes Bruce’s cheek, showing no respect for his dad guardian.
"Let me prepare a few... lores."
"Batman is haunted," Goon A whispers to Goon B.
"Of course the dude is," Goon B replies back, and rests the bag of illegal guns down on the floor, waiting for the buyer.
"No! I really mean it. He is haunted. He is possessed by the ghost! My cousin saw it."
"Your cousin eats cannabis as salad, and uses meth like sprinkles on the buns." Goon B lights his smoke.
"Shaddap, it's true. The story is this." His voice tapers down into a whisper again. "The Batman is a father whose son was taken by one of Gotham's rogues. The child was slowly starved in a dark room while waiting for his father. And when the rogue got fed up, they buried him alive." He pauses. "The child doesn't know that he is dead."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Alexei," Goon B says. He looks up at the sky. The sun has already set, and it's dark now. The buyer still does not appear.
Goon A continues his tale. "You don't understand, Bryan! The most vengeful spirit is the one that doesn't know they are dead. You see, with grief, the father becomes the Bat and captures the perpetrator, but he couldn't find his son's body. Only the boy's ghost finds his father. And now Batman roams Gotham all night with the son's ghost, forever or until all injustice is relinquished from Gotham, or the boy's body is found. You have heard before that there is a child shadow following Batman!"
"Come on, don't believe in that shit rumor." Goon B crushes his cigarette on the brick wall, then he looks into the dark alley nearby.
A small shadow?
"What, man?" Goon A calls his distracted friend.
"No. Nothing." He blinks. The alley is empty. Yes, it is.
A child's laugh echoes from far away.
"Where's the buyer anyway?" Goon B mutters. "It's getting dark now."
"Yes, it's cold."
Goon B turns again. "Didcha say that?"
"Say what?" Goon A asks.
Goon B slowly moves his hand to his gun. He feels a small hand on his.
"I don't like that," a small voice whispers. He looks down. There's nothing, but his gun is gone.
Then Batman jumps down on them.
"Shit! The Bat—" Goon A shouts half a sentence before he is quickly incapacitated by Batman's punch.
Goon B quickly runs away into the empty alley.
On the other side of the dark alley with flickering light, there, standing, is a small figure, alone.
"Mister, I am lost," a small voice says, while the word lost seems to echo all around.
The light flickers again, and the figure is gone.
"I cannot find..." Find. Find. Find.
The child of green, red, and yellow color sits on his shoulder and whispers, "...my body."
And Goon B screams with all the air his lungs have, thrashing around with a child laugh of joy in his ears, then he feels a pain in his neck. The next time he wakes up, he is apprehended by one exhausted Lieutenant Jim Gordon, and vows to never do anything illegal again.
It is satisfactory.
After five haunting performances to various Gotham criminals, there is no intended gunfire on Robin, very few panic shots that are easily evaded, and no one thinks of catching the ghost boy.
Dick got splashed with holy water a few times though. He even feigned a shriek every time he got splashed, and now if someone wants to hurt Dick, they use (holy) water guns, which are ineffective. Dick has a lot of fun pretending to be hurt by the water, then reappearing more vengeful than before.
Batman even got splashed himself. He grunted but did not falter, and lifted the shirt of the firer up. "You think your puny piece of holiness will hurt me? I AM VENGEANCE!"
Dick is now replaying that scene on the Batcomputer. "Absolute cinema!" he claps.
"The donation to the local church has gone up significantly," Bruce says, sitting beside Dick.
"And my idea of these lamp light disruptors and echo speakers sync with the cloak and my performance well!" He lifts his arm that has the said device as a wristband up, looking really proud and adorable.
"...Hey, chum," Bruce asks. "Are you okay with this backstory I created?"
"Hmmmm?" Dick tilts his head.
"To imply that I am your father, I hope you don't think I'm trying to replace John Grayson."
Dick looks back at him in the eyes. It takes time before he replies back. "I don't mind anymore, B."
And the little ghost hugs him, holding those small hands around his neck.