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"You should have brought shoes with you."
Dick flinched at the unexpected voice behind him. With one eye bandaged, his peripheral vision was at an all time low. He'd spent the last few days staying hyper-vigilant to make up for it, but perched on the roof of the youth center long after midnight, this was the last place he would expect to hear a low alpha rumble. Instinctively, he tried to scramble back towards the chimney he'd just climbed out of, but his bare toes were quickly losing sensation in the cold night air; he nearly slipped, saved only by a large hand wrapping around his arm and keeping his upright.
His heart flew to his throat. Part of him would have preferred to fall.
The alpha was a dark shadow against the dark night, his face inscrutable behind a mask with frightening white eyes. He seemed to be examining Dick, and even though he couldn't see the man's eyes, he could feel them linger on the defensive bruising peppering his arms, the scratches on his face, the white bandage where one of the other kids had almost taken his eye.
"Are you—"
"I am the Batman," the shadow said, and set Dick back on his feet with a gentleness that Dick was not expecting. "How far do you expect to get with bare feet?"
"I don't care. Anywhere is better than here," Dick snapped back, wrapping his arms around himself. It was cold, on this roof, and he didn't have a jacket either.
He didn't feel like explaining that he didn't have shoes, that he didn't have other clothes either. His center uniform, white sneakers and a standard issue jumpsuit, had been taken when the center had realized his status and moved him to the omega ward, replacing them with a cheap t-shirt and thin sweats and nothing else.
There was no need for an omega to go outside, after all.
"You need to go back," the Batman said, shaking his head. "Just for now, I promise. You can't help me solve your parents' murder if you're a fugitive."
A new chill stole through Dick, one that had nothing to do with the cold air.
"I saw—that man, talking to Mr. Haly," he said shakily. "But the police-they said-"
"The police don't know what I know." The Batman took another step back. "So just go back. You won't be there for long, I promise."
Despair crashed over Dick again.
"You don't understand," he said hopelessly. "That's why I need to go. Before I get sent away."
The Batman paused. Clearly, Dick had managed to surprise him for the first time that evening.
"You're not trying to escape the center?" he asked carefully. "Where would they be sending you?"
Dick chewed his bottom lip. He'd been reminded so often in his childhood to never mention his designation that it still seemed wrong to say it, even though the secret had already been leaked to the worst people. It was in his record now. What did it matter if some shadowy figure knew.
"I'm an omega," he said, closing his eyes as the Batman went completely still. "They're-they're arranging a pack auction for me right now."
It was his worst nightmare. Omegas needed packs, so the logic went, meaning that they couldn't be left in places like the juvenile center. But small, packless omegas had no one to protect them, and that made them the easiest target for a pack's abuse. Pack auctions, originally designed for packs to argue why they could best protect a young omega, had devolved into pure cash transactions to the so called "judges," allowing the wealthiest packs access to an almost unlimited stream of defenseless omegas that could be trained up for all kinds of uses.
His parents had never been particularly clear on what that meant, besides that it was a bad thing. But the kids at the center had not been so secretive. Dick had heard more speculation on his fate than he'd have thought possible, each story darker and crueler than the last.
The world was hard for an omega. But he was a boy omega, which meant that he was even more of an oddity, a rarity even among rarities. He'd heard the administrators talking about how high the bidding was already climbing, and the bidders didn't even know who he was yet.
He'd seen the reaction of the kids at the center to his story, to the public nature of his tragedy. He didn't want to know who would decide to pay extra for that flavor in their pack omega.
"That's-that's why I need to go," he said, his voice wobbling like he was a little kid. "Anything is better than- than a pack that hates you."
He could barely imagine it. Haly's had been huge and sprawling, interconnected weave of adjacent and adjoining packs, all with their own tensions and politics. But there had always been love too. He couldn't imagine hurting a pack member like that. He couldn't bare to think about being...alone, even in his pack.
The Batman was staring at him. Dick shifted on his toes, trying to keep the panic down. He'd thought he had nothing to lose but- he was on a rooftop alone with this alpha. No one knew where he was. He was so stupid.
What was to keep the Batman from taking him right now, and locking a little omega up in his-his Batcave or wherever he lived.
Dick was contemplating another dive towards the next chimney when the Batman finally spoke.
"Can you trust me?" he asked. "I promise, the winner of the auction will not-they will not hate you. And they won't hurt you either."
And then he peeled off a glove, and extended one huge, pale hand. Dick wondered for a wild moment if the alpha was going to hit him, when a new scent reached him.
He stared, his eyes huge as saucers.
"You're an omega?" he whispered. "A- a boy omega?"
The like me? seemed to echo between them without being said.
"Go back to the center," the Batman said again. "I promise, you have nothing to fear. I will get you out of there."
____________
The next day, Dick was lead, not into a public auction hall, but into a small, private room. In there, he was told, was a very wealthy man who wanted to meet him.
When Bruce Wayne walked in, offering a naked hand for Dick to shake, the man's pheromones on full display, Dick had smiled for the first time since his parents had died.