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Robin was an enigma on the best of days.
It wasn’t only the sunglasses and the fact that they didn’t know his real name, even if that didn’t help. Especially not since he knew all of their names, as well as about fifteen different ways to maim and kill them.
It was also the fact that Robin could break a bone and walk it off with a roll of his eyes and a smile. Sure, he always got it bandaged eventually, but that didn’t make it any less concerning when he refused to address it even when the limb in question was twisted in the wrong direction. There was only so much ‘My arm looks completely normal to me, maybe you need to be checked for a concussion,’ gaslighting that any of them could take.
Then there was the fact that he had plans in plans in plans. And sure, he got upset with them when they didn’t follow his first or second plan, but usually he simply pulled out a third plan with a glare. It was reassuring and concerning at the same time, as if he was simply resigned to being disobeyed. They didn’t mean to do it either. In fact, in the past month, Cissie kept trying to get them on track to try and not fail Robin’s first plan.
With every mission that went without a hitch, some of the tension in Robin’s shoulders eased.
There was also the thing that Robin could run and run and run his mouth. Facts and plans and analytics, numbers and logistics that made their head spin. Animal facts, plant facts, chemistry facts, Ancient Greek facts. Facts about anything one could think of, really.
Kon had seriously doubted that Robin had no superpowers in the beginning, because how could one person keep all of those facts stuffed in their head?
Robin talked about butterflies and recipes and the newest super villain and the components of a glitter bomb and how to assemble a nuclear weapon made only from organic materials.
He talked to villains too, a smirk on his lips as he taunted them and ran verbal circles around them and his team mates. None of them would ever admit it, but Robin’s laugh haunted them in their dreams, asking them about the specific vegetable that most Martians were allergic to and then laughing when they didn’t know. Well, the specific scenarios changed, but they’ve all had a I’m-too-stupid-for-this-team dream and it had taken a very serious intervention when Robin had been in Gotham for them to realise that it was, in fact, more so a I’m-too-stupid-for-Robin dream.
Which was much more acceptable. Most people were too stupid for their Robin.
He was the smartest of the Robins too. Both Robin #1 and Robin #2 claimed so and they had to know. Not that they went by those names anymore, of course, but Bart had hunted down Nightwing to ask him if he understood what Robin meant when he talked about the Raum-Zeit-Kontinuum and oh, also if he per chance knew what language that was. And Cassie had had a very awkward conversation with Red Hood’s gun levelled at her face to ask if he was aware that Robin was actively plotting his alternate self’s from dimension 767’s demise and if yes, if he could help them stop him.
Both had said no, for the record.
It wasn’t necessarily even what Robin talked about that made him an enigma. After all, did it make him mysterious just because they didn’t understand half of his rants?
No, it was what Robin didn’t talk about.
Questions about his well-being were waved off. When asked if he’d had a rough patrol with Batman that time he had come back covered in bruises from head to toe, he had said that he wished that was it and had walked off without elaborating. When pushing about his name, he stiffened. When asked about his family, he went silent, white lenses unblinking until he randomly changed topic to something completely different like the cheese trade between Switzerland and the Netherlands.
And then there was this.
Them in the kitchen, in a small half-circle with Robin across from them and Batman next to him. There wasn’t much space between the man and his bird. Robin was still tapping his foot, a tell-tale sign they’d all come to recognise as residue adrenaline that wouldn’t go away until he had gone to the training room. Not technically something allowed right after a mission, but nobody ever thought it wise to stop him.
The mission had gone to shit pretty quickly. Robin had saved it at the last minute, pulling a spontaneous plan F out of who knew where.
“What happened out there?” Batman asked, voice hard.
Robin opened his mouth, but it had apparently been a rhetorical question, because Batman simply continued.
“You were arrogant,” he started, staring down Kon-El who straightened slightly but otherwise met his eyes squarely. It wasn’t exactly an unfair assessment, but Kon hadn’t had all the information, their comms disturbed by a villain who played with signal strengths.
“Impulsive.” Cassie bit her lips but likewise didn’t back down from the glare levelled at her. It was also not exactly unfair, but her impulsiveness had likely been the only thing that had saved Kon’s life after his so-called arrogance, taking the Kryptonite in his stead, but abandoning her post.
“Foolish.” Bart lowered his eyes, but this one was undeserved. There wasn’t much he could have done other than push forward and hope for the best when his partner had left his side to save a different teammate. But Bart had been called enough variations of the words ‘unserious’ and ‘stupid’ for them to stick.
“Hesitant.” Cissie was looking at Robin instead of Batman. She hadn’t hesitated because she’d been unsure, she’d hesitated because if she had taken the shot, she would have killed the enemy and they were not supposed to do that.
Robin opened his mouth again, but before he could say anything, Batman turned to him. “And a bad leader.”
They expected Robin to list all of the reasons why Batman was wrong like he would have done with any of the other adult heroes at a debrief, especially one as devastating as this one, most of all defend his ability to lead, but Robin didn’t speak. He flinched slightly, closed his mouth and swallowed.
Then, very deliberately, he opened his mouth again. “I disagree with that assessment,” he said, voice barely audible to his team. Robin was only ever quiet when he was distractedly muttering or when there was a stealth mission. This was neither. It felt wrong.
“Then I can trust your judgement even less than I thought,” was Batman’s crushing verdict.
Robin took a tiny step back.
“What I witnessed today,” Batman continued as if he hadn’t just forced their unwavering leader to retreat. “was a childish, unorganised effort that wouldn’t even be fitting for a training exercise and even less for a life or death situation. Frankly, I’m not sure if we can continue to trust you if you insist on acting like children.” He met each of their eyes.
Kon didn’t drop his eyes, but his stare went very distant, the carefully crafted kind of stare that usually came with him sliding into a soldier’s mindset.
Cassie’s eyes dropped and then lifted and then dropped again, twin spots of prideful anger burning on her cheeks at being scolded like a wayward child, her hands in fists.
Bart had not looked up since he’d been called foolish and steadfastly refused to even now.
Cissie was still looking at Robin.
Robin who was somewhat helplessly looking around, trying to catch their eyes, trying to catch Batman’s eyes. A shudder went through his thin frame and then the third boy wonder inserted himself between Batman and his team.
“What I saw were improvisation skills and the right calls to decide between life and death,” he said, voice clear.
His team shuffled, all of them looking at him now. His back anyway, but they could all imagine what his face looked like. They had seen it often enough, the determined look when he was beaten down in battle and came back. The small smirk of knowing he was right. Surely that was how he looked like. Robin was an Enigma, sure, but he was still predictable with all his little mysterious tics.
“The plan failed, sure, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. You know that better than anyone else, B.” At the familiar way Robin addressed him, Batman took a step forward. Robin’s breath hitched, but he didn’t back down.
Robin never backed down. It was a part of why he was Robin. None of them had ever backed down, not even when it would have been better for them.
To keep down a Robin, one had to knock them out. It was common knowledge. Everyone knew it.
“But they adapted,” Robin continued. “If anything, you should blame me-”
“I do blame you,” Batman said coolly, interrupting Robin. “This is a clear lapse of leadership and frankly, the amount of those you have shown in the past few months is disappointing and dangerous. But this isn’t about you, Robin, this is about your team. We’ll speak about your failures in depth later.”
A wave of outrage swept over the team at the way Batman had just unjustly taken Robin down a peg, but Robin moved his hand behind his back, a side by side motion with his thumb curled and they all knew that meant that they needed to stand down and let him handle it.
So they did. Robin was their leader, their anchor, their good luck charm, their life saver.
“Batman,” Robin said, more quietly again, as if to give them some semblance of privacy. “They are tired from the mission. Let them shower, eat and sleep and tomorrow we can go over your feedback and incorporate some new training exercises.”
He wasn’t quite pleading, but then again, none of them had ever heard him quite this close to it.
“No,” Batman said.
“B-” Robin started, but he didn’t manage more than that.
“Robin. Stand down.” The Dark Knight’s voice was hard and cold enough that they all felt the order until it cut into their bones.
Robin shuddered slightly, they all saw the brief, miniscule motion and from her angle, Cissie saw his hands shake too. The boy opened his mouth.
“Now,” Batman snapped and Robin…
Robin backed down.
Robin folded himself out of the way, suddenly small enough that if they hadn’t known he was still right there, they would have had a hard time noticing him.
Robin stood, eyes on the floor, refusing to meet any of theirs as they were each subjected to a brutal lecture from Batman.
They were shaking with tiredness and hunger by the time he was done, all adrenaline having long stopped giving them energy.
Kon hadn’t blinked in over ten minutes.
Bart was in tears and Cissie was near them, trying to blink the liquid in her eyes away.
Cassie had bloody crescents in the palm of her hands.
And Robin just stood there, still the same way, eyes on the ground, shoulders curled inward as if that would keep him hidden.
“Alright, team. Get some rest. I’ll send you a detailed report tomorrow and Robin will integrate some of my criticism in the training he devises.”
They all nodded, some of the tension ebbing away. It wasn’t that Batman was soft at the best of times, but after having been in a room with an immovable, angry mammoth for over an hour, this felt like a teddy bear.
“Robin, with me,” Batman ordered.
At this, the team tensed again. They had traditions for after hard missions. They showered and then ate together to talk about what had happened so they could afterwards cuddle on the sofa and wind down to some mindless movie or another. More often than not, they all fell asleep right there.
The thought that this was taken from Robin, that Robin was taken from them, after a mission as hard and emotional like this one was too much to bear. The fact that it was likely so Robin could stand alone in front of Batman in an undoubtedly miserable place like the ‘Batcave’, the only location Robin had ever let slip, and listen to his mistakes and faults for an hour, hungry and tired and cold and alone…it was not alright.
A wave of protests moved over them, but a glare from under the cowl had them all silent again.
Every single one of them felt like a coward in that moment, especially when Robin, sensing their distress, once again tried to argue. “But-” was the only thing he actually got out.
“Robin,” Batman said, quietly enough that it was clear that it was only meant for Robin, but they weren’t exactly in a very private space so they all heard.
They all saw how Robin’s spine snapped into place at the tone, the way he stood nearly as straight as Kon did when he slipped into his old mindset.
“Do not make me give you another order twice today or you will regret it.”
“Yes sir,” Robin replied in a whisper so faded that Kon had to tell them after what the boy had said.
Batman turned and Robin followed.
“Bye guys,” he called out and there was an actual smile on his face, an easy one. It didn’t look fake at all, but they all knew the smile, the one Robin gave civilians to reassure them. “Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to eat enough, you need calories after all that, remember.”
“Robin,” Batman snapped.
Robin’s smile didn’t falter, but he turned and hurried away from them.
Robin was an enigma.
Robin could care and care and care about civilians and villains, making theories as to why they could be evil and how to help them. He cared about Nightwing so incessantly sometimes that they all had the hero on speed-dial in case Robin worried himself into an anxiety attack again. He cared about Red Hood, even with his throat slit open, he cared for the other, fretting and making plans to redeem him.
He cared most about his teammates, enough to smile when there was clearly nothing he wanted to do less.
Enough to stand between them and the man he admired most, the man who scared him so badly sometimes that he came to the tower to get away from him a little bit, pale and shaky and smiling still, reassuring them still.
Robin was an enigma.
The only person Robin could never seem to talk about, could never seem to care about was Robin.