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"Hey Danny!" Dick greeted the kid when he got home. At almost 17, Danny was shooting up like a weed, and he couldn't help but find joy in that.
His family growing, hale and healthy, was always a blessing. No matter the circumstances he'd found them in.
Danny gave him a watery look and reached out for a hug.
"Hey, kiddo," Dick embraced him immediately. He still felt a little sweaty from the gymnasium, despite his shower, but Danny didn't seem to mind, leaning in with a sniffle. "What's wrong?"
"I got a call. From Tucker, and Sam," Danny replied. "And I think Time is calling again."
Indignant fury flooded Dick, immediate and useless.
Danny had told him about this, about a month after they'd first met. Before Dick secured Guardianship. Before they'd truly felt like family. Dick had loved him even then, almost at first sight.
Danny kept slipping through Time. Dick, and the other Bats, were familiar with both time travel and dimentional reset, but Danny? Danny had experienced it, several times.
And almost no one would ever know.
This time, the Bat's had rescued him from Amity Park. This time, the Justice League had fixed the issues with the GIW, with the DEO. Had stood in front of Fright Knight and Skulker and Vlad Plasmius for Danny. Had met some of his friends. Not all.
Not nearly all.
And not his mysterious mentor, Clockwork, who Dick hated with an impotent passion.
Because fuck this.
Dick took a minute to breathe, and hold his son. Danny let him, sniffling into his shirt.
"Okay, kiddo. Remember what we talked about? The code words? What you tell us? We want you to come meet us again, I promise."
Danny sniffed again, nodding.
"I hate that this keeps happening," he mumbled. So far from the calm, collected kid Dick often knew. So far from the frazzled but comptentent Prince of an entire other dimension of ghosts and ghoules and other creatures.
"I know kiddo. But I promise: We want you. We want to meet you. No matter what."
"You won't remember, though," Danny sniffed. "It won't be the same."
"I know, Danny. If I've learned something in this life, it's that the deep joy doesn't last. The sorrow comes again. But we can rebuild joy. We can, kid, I promise."
A soft baritone cough came from the direction of the kitchen. Dick immediately put himself in between it and Danny, snarling.
The purple ghost, shifting to an old man, matched the descriptions Danny had given him, and was somehow even More.
"Daniel. It's Time."
"Already, you fucker?" Dick's mouth ran before his brain can stop it. "Do you only have to take?"
"Not at all. I have given you both a great gift, but it is still all that I can give."
It still took some time before Dick and Danny pried apart and Danny disappeared.
"All is as it should be, Dick Grayson. I'm sorry."
Dick woke up alone in his apartment as usual the next day. He couldn't tell why it felt so lonely.