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Dick had known he was no longer Robin.
He’d traded the name for Nightwing, traded the colors for something of his own and built a life beyond Gotham and the man who had raised him. He’d made a home with the Titans. He’d learned how to lead without Batman’s orders in his ear, how to make decisions without looking over his shoulder for approval, how to exist as Dick Grayson when no one needed him to be anything else thanks to Kori’s help.
He’d done everything he was supposed to do.
So why did seeing the name Robin in a newspaper feel like someone had reached into his chest and ripped out a piece of him at that moment?
The article that started all of this laid open on the motel bed, its creases soft beneath his fingers. He’d read it so many times that the words had begun to blur together. Gotham’s dynamic duo finally reunited! Robin has returned to the scene, helping Batman once more!
Dick stared at the headlines until the letters seemed to swim. It was impossible after all. He never returned to Gotham and he certainly wasn’t wearing his Robin suit any time soon.
Yet there was a photograph. Grainy, taken from a distance, but clear enough to show the familiar silhouette beside Batman’s. The cape. The mask. The green and red.
Robin. Truly by Batman’s side once more. In Batman’s shadow once more.
At first he thought it was a mistake. A publicity stunt, perhaps, or some reporter’s assumption based on an old photograph. Gotham’s journalists had always been inventive when it came to the Bat.
But even after thinking of countless excuses, he knew the truth. That kid, whoever they were, wasn’t him. He just knew it wasn’t him.
Dick pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth.
He had been living in Titans Tower for months. He called Gotham often enough, checked the news when he could and occasionally caught snippets of Batman’s activities through the usual channels. He knew Bruce was still working. He knew the city still needed him.
He hadn’t known Bruce had found another sidekick.
He hadn’t known because Bruce hadn’t told him.
That was something Dick just couldn’t seem to get past.
Perhaps it all wouldn’t have been so bad if Bruce had just told him. Told him with an awkwardly, painful confession that he was struggling by himself. That Gotham needed someone beside him, that he was getting older, that the work was dangerous and he couldn’t do it alone.
Dick might even have understood the reasoning—even if he still would’ve been upset that Bruce had taken in yet another kid to train despite telling Dick, not so long ago, that he didn’t need him as a sidekick anymore. That it was too much responsibility, too dangerous, too much for Dick to handle. That Dick needed to grow up and find his own way.
Dick knew Bruce had his reasons. He knew their partnership had become strained, that he’d needed to break away from Batman’s shadow to discover who he was outside of it.
But some small, ugly part of him had always wondered whether Bruce had simply stopped believing he was good enough.
And now Bruce had found another Robin and Bruce hadn’t given him any reasoning or any notice. He hadn’t talked to him. Hadn’t discussed anything with him. Heck, he hasn’t really spoken to Dick at all after these past few years to the point that it honestly feels like Bruce truly doesn’t want anything to do with him anymore.
All he got from Bruce nowadays was calls from Alfred who told him what was happening or the Gotham news. Hence how he knew that Bruce had done something. A newspaper article. No direct message, no visits, not even a call from Alfred. Just a stupidly hurtful news clipping.
Speaking of the article, Dick folded it carefully, following the original creases, and set it on the bedside table, his hands slightly shaking. He shoved them beneath his thighs until they stopped.
He was being ridiculous.
After all, he wasn’t Robin anymore. He’d left that life behind of his own accord. He’d fought with Bruce, left Gotham, chosen his own name and built something that belonged to him and him only. No Batman to influence his name, his legacy, his persona. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life demanding that a title remain empty just because it had once been his.
He knew all of that.
He did, really.
Except, Robin wasn’t just a title. Not to him.
It was his mother’s voice, soft and warm, calling him her little bird for he was born on the first of Spring and was always bobbin’ along. It was the trapeze and the circus lights, his father’s hand cradled his much tinier hand before a performance, his mother’s smile from the opposite platform. It was a childhood that had ended in a single terrible night and the boy who had survived it by learning how to become someone else—a hero born from tragedy just as his mentor was born.
It was Bruce’s hand reaching down to him.
It was the first time he’d felt useful again. The first time he’d felt like he had a purpose after the world had taken everything that mattered. The first time he’d believed that maybe, if he worked hard enough and listened carefully enough and became good enough, he could make sure nobody ever had to feel as helpless as he had. It was about catching people when they fell so no child, no parent, no person ever had to go through what he did. What he and Bruce went through.
Robin was the name his mother had given him, the name he cherished deeply, the name he had heard whispered in sweet dreams and past mornings alike by both his parents and it was one of the few remaining pieces from his parents that he had left now that they were gone.
Robin was the name Bruce had breathed life into with his harsh trainings, the name Bruce yelled out to with evident trust, respect and care whenever he needed his help, the name Batman warmly said when he patted him on his head after a job well done and the name his mentor had designed his new chance at life around.
Robin was his mother’s, was his father’s, was Bruce’s.
Most importantly, however, Robin was the name Dick had made his own and it was his.
He had earned every scrape, every bruise, every late night on the wire in those cavernous tents and on the mats in the vast cave. He had earned the right to wear those colors not only on the trapeze beside his parents, but also on the streets beside Bruce. He’d learned how to fall and how to get back up, how to read Bruce’s silences and anticipate his movements, how to understand a city that seemed determined to swallow them both whole.
And now, it wasn’t. Now Robin was gone and it’d never be returned to him.
The thought hit so hard that Dick had to stand.
He crossed the motel room in three strides and stopped at the window, distracting himself by staring out into the world. Outside, cars passed along the wet street, their headlights smearing white across the glass. Somewhere down the hall, a television played loudly enough for him to hear a laugh track. The world went on, ordinary and indifferent. It didn’t care about him.
He was nineteen years old. He was Nightwing—had been for quite a few months now. He had a team who trusted him, friends who loved him and a new relationship with Kori, who made him happier than he’d thought possible. He’d built a life that was his own.
So why did it still feel as though Bruce could take it all away without ever leaving Gotham?
He was not a little boy who had lost his parents.
He was not a little boy who had been taken in by a man who needed him to be Robin.
He was not Robin.
Still, when he had read that paper, he couldn’t help but go back to Gotham. He told himself it was because he needed to know what was happening in his city, because if Batman really had taken on another partner, then Dick had a responsibility to make sure the kid knew what he was doing.
He told himself a lot of things.
But the truth was that he couldn’t bear not knowing.
He needed to see the new Robin with his own eyes. Needed to know whether this was real, whether Bruce had actually done it, whether the boy in the newspaper was a person or just a cruel mistake. Most of all, he needed to see Bruce and hear from the man’s mouth that he didn’t replace Dick. That he didn’t give away Robin, something so valuable, something so intrinsic to who Dick was, to some kid he didn’t know. That there was still a place for him in the life they’d built together over the years.
Until then, some small part of him could still pretend the article was wrong.
By the time he reached Gotham, he’d convinced himself he could handle it. He’d spent the drive rehearsing what he might say, arranging his feelings into neat, reasonable explanations and planned to ask Bruce why he hadn’t told him. He would ask who the kid was. He would make sure the new Robin understood what the work involved.
He would be mature about it.
He would be Nightwing.
Then he met Jason Todd and all of that flew out the window.
Their first meeting was, unfortunately, a disaster.
Dick had been following a drug bust when the kid appeared out of nowhere, all sharp edges and louder confidence than sense. Jason was hostile from the start, treating Dick like an obstacle he had to overcome to prove he deserved the name, Robin. He fought like someone who’d learned to survive by hitting first and asking questions never and Dick had barely managed to keep the situation from spiraling before they were both dragged into the same mess.
Dick hadn’t planned on working with him. He certainly hadn’t planned on liking him. But the night had a way of making plans irrelevant. When Killer Croc entered the picture and Alfred’s life was put in danger, there hadn’t been time to argue about who had the right to wear what. There had only been a problem, a person in danger and two vigilantes who needed to work together if they wanted everyone to make it out alive.
So they did.
Jason was reckless and stubborn and far too willing to throw himself into danger, but he was also quick. Clever. Braver than he knew. When it mattered, he listened. He adapted. He trusted Dick enough to follow his lead, even if he’d probably rather swallow glass than admit it and by the end of the night, Dick had found himself looking at the kid and seeing something painfully familiar.
A little boy who wanted to be chosen. A little boy who wanted to prove he was worth keeping. A little boy who wanted to make a new life for himself.
Dick knew that boy.
He’d been that boy.
So he gave Jason one of his old suits.
Even if it hurt to do so, he knew it was the right thing to do. The kid needed equipment for the future and Dick had plenty of things gathering dust. He told himself that was all it was, that the suit was just a suit, that giving it away didn’t mean anything beyond making sure Jason had something that fit.
Alongside that, he gave Jason his number—he knew better than anyone how lonely and hard living with Bruce could be sometimes, even if the man never intentionally tried to make him feel that way.
After that, he’d smiled, clapped the kid on the shoulder and told him he was going to do fine. He meant it too. Dick could see the potential already lying within the boy, the same potential he’s sure Bruce saw and he figured that Jason deserved a chance. He deserved someone who would teach him how to survive this life without mistaking suffering for proof of worth. He deserved a mentor who understood what it meant to be a child standing beside Batman, trying to become something larger than himself.
Dick wanted to give him that. He wanted to protect him. He wanted the kid to succeed.
He just hadn’t expected to feel as though he’d been buried alive while doing it.
Because Jason was Robin.
Jason was wearing the colors. His colors. Jason was standing where Dick had once stood. His place beside Batman. Jason was the one who would follow Batman into the night, the one who would learn his movements and memorize his silences, the one who would be waiting in the Cave when Bruce came home.
Jason was the one Bruce had chosen.
And Dick… well. Dick was the one who had handed him the suit because it was the right thing to do.
He’d done it with his own two hands, smiling while he did it as he told Jason that he would do fine. It was the right thing to do, even if Dick had to fight back tears that were thankfully hidden behind his mask and even if he had to hide the way his hands shook as he passed over the box that carried something so precious to him.
Then he’d gone to the Cave and screamed at Bruce.
He didn’t remember everything he’d said. He remembered the sound of his own voice echoing against the stone, too loud and too raw to belong to the person he’d spent years trying to become. Nightwing was supposed to be better. More mature and adult-like than Robin ever was. Yet he remembered asking, begging Bruce like an immature child, to tell Dick how he could do this to him. How he could give his name away without even telling him. How he could take something so personal, something so bound up in Dick’s life and act as though it were just another position to fill. How he could say that it was irresponsible to have Dick out on the field as Robin with him yet took in another kid so quickly after.
Bruce had tried to explain.
He’d talked about Gotham. About the work. About Jason’s potential. About how Dick had chosen to leave Robin behind which—wasn’t exactly wrong, but certainly wasn’t fair either.
Dick had chosen, agreed, to leave.
He’d chosen to leave Gotham behind and start anew (even if his fight with Bruce had certainly influenced this decision). He’d chosen to become Nightwing, donning a new symbol, a new title other than Robin. He’d chosen to lead the Titans, to not talk to Bruce if Bruce wasn’t going to contact him. He’d chosen a life where he didn’t have to be the boy Bruce had made him into.
But he hadn’t chosen for Robin to stop being his.
He hadn’t chosen to become replaceable. He hadn’t chosen to discover that the name he’d carried through the worst and best years of his life could be passed to another child without so much as a warning. He hadn’t chosen to let anyone take his family’s name, his family’s colors, his family’s uniform away from him.
He’d wanted to grow up. He hadn’t wanted to be erased.
But Bruce wasn’t listening to him. He hadn’t been listening to him for a long while now. It was part of the reason Dick decided to leave. Despite all he yelled about, Bruce had just looked at him with that stupidly familiar, blank expression as though Dick’s anger was a problem to be solved rather than a deep wound he couldn’t seem to stop poking and prodding at. He’d said that Jason needed this, that Robin could help curb his misguided anger and frustrations—which sounded so similar to how it helped Dick himself after he lost his parents that Dick just knew there was more to it.
He called bullshit and Bruce just kept lying. Saying that Batman needed Robin, that taking on a city of crime was too much for a man—which, sure. But Bruce was far too stubborn to just… get help for such a thing. The man would run ragged and kill himself than ever not be enough for Gotham. No, instead, at the end of it, Bruce finally told him the truth.
Bruce missed him.
Bruce told him that he missed him, that he was lonely, and then he kicked him out. Again.
Dick didn’t have a chance to tell him that he wasn’t upset about Jason, but rather the loss of his name. He knew that Jason hadn’t done anything wrong—the boy was just a kid who’d been given an opportunity that Dick himself had once been desperate for.
He didn’t get the chance to explain that he was happy for Jason and devastated for himself. He didn’t get the chance to tell Bruce how he wanted the kid to succeed while he also wanted, with a shameful intensity, for the name to remain untouched. He didn’t get the chance to clarify that he could be proud of Jason and still feel as though Bruce had reached backward through the years and stolen one of the most essential parts of Dick and gave it away like it was nothing.
How could he explain in such a short time how painful it was that he had spent his entire life trying to become someone Bruce couldn’t bear to lose, only to discover that the role he’d filled could be given to someone else? How could he describe the feeling of betrayal to learn that he apparently had a successor, one he hadn’t chosen but would accept? How could he apologize for hurting Bruce so badly that the man had to find another boy to fill his place—a spot Dick once thought no one could take from him?
He hadn’t known and Bruce wanted him gone again.
So he’d left. Easily.
And now, here he was in a motel room on the outskirts of Gotham, sitting on the edge of a bed that smelled faintly of detergent and cigarette smoke, staring at his own hands.
He’d told the Titans he was heading back. He’d said he had something to take care of first, which wasn’t a lie, exactly. He’d simply neglected to explain that the thing he needed to take care of was himself.
He couldn’t go to the Manor.
He couldn’t stand the thought of walking through those halls and seeing all the familiar pieces of his life while knowing that something fundamental had changed. He couldn’t bear to see the Cave, to see the place where Jason would train, where Bruce would correct his stance and teach him the rules, where the two of them would build the same kind of silent understanding Dick had once believed belonged to them alone.
He couldn’t bear the possibility that Bruce would look at him and see an adult who should know better.
He couldn’t bear the possibility that Bruce wouldn’t look at him at all.
The room was quiet.
Dick had always hated the quiet.
At the Manor, silence had meant Bruce was gone and it was only Alfred and Dick alone. At the Cave, it meant something was wrong. On missions, it meant someone was hurt or missing or dead. Even at Titans Tower, where silence could mean nothing more than everyone else had gone to bed, Dick sometimes found himself listening for footsteps that weren’t coming, feeling utterly alone.
He’d never been very good at being alone.
He could spend hours by himself. He could patrol for an entire night without speaking to another person. He could sit in a room with a book and a cup of coffee and pretend he was perfectly content while watching others happily chat away with loved ones.
But there was a difference between being alone and feeling abandoned.
Dick bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He pressed his hands together until his knuckles hurt.
He’d left Bruce once before.
He’d told himself it was what he needed. He’d told himself that Bruce was right, that he couldn’t keep being Robin forever. He’d told himself that he couldn’t live his life in the shadow of Batman and expect to become his own person. He’d needed distance. He’d needed to stop measuring every decision by whether Bruce would approve. He’d needed to learn how to be Dick Grayson.
And he had.
Mostly.
But some part of him had never stopped waiting for Bruce to call. To need him. To tell him that things weren’t the same without him.
He hated that part of himself. He hated how easily it could be brought to the surface, how quickly all the years between them could collapse until he was a boy again, desperate for a scrap of attention from a man who loved him but had never quite known how to make him feel secure in that love.
Bruce had never explicitly told Dick that he had to earn his place in the family. He’d never said that Dick needed to be Robin to deserve his love.
But he hadn’t needed to.
Dick had learned that lesson on his own.
Be useful. Be brave. Be good. Be the best partner Bruce-Batman could ask for. Don’t complain when you’re hurt. Don’t ask for more than he can give. Don’t make things harder. Don’t be another problem he has to solve.
If Dick could be good enough, perhaps Bruce would never regret taking him in. If he could be good enough, perhaps Bruce would never send him away. If he could be good enough, perhaps the world wouldn’t be able to take anything else from him.
But it did. His World, Bruce, took it away from him. Took himself away. Took Robin away.
And if he couldn’t be Robin, Bruce’s partner, his friend, his confidant, his everything anymore, then what was he supposed to be?
Nightwing, he reminded himself. He was Nightwing.
The name he’d chosen. The identity he’d built. The person he’d fought to become.
But Nightwing hadn’t existed before Robin. The two weren’t separate lives, neat and cleanly divided, with one ending before the other began. Nightwing was built from the pieces Robin had left behind. The grief, the anger, the lessons, the stubborn refusal to let Batman decide who Dick Grayson was allowed to be.
He’d thought he could leave the title behind without losing any part of himself. He’d thought the name would always be there if he needed to remember where he’d come from. He hadn’t realized that someone else wearing it could make the past feel as though it belonged to someone new.
Dick covered his face.
It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. Jason hadn’t stolen anything. Jason was a kid who’d been offered a chance and he’d taken it. There was nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with Bruce wanting a partner. Nothing wrong with the city needing a Robin. Nothing wrong with any of it.
Except Dick hadn’t been ready and nobody had asked if he would ever be ready.
The first tear slipped between his fingers.
He drew in a breath, held it and counted the seconds the way he’d been taught to do when his body was trying to betray him. He’d endured worse. He’d been hurt worse. He’d lost people he loved and watched the world burn and gotten back up because there had been no other choice.
He could survive this.
He could.
Still, his chest hitched.
The second tear came before he could stop it.
Then the third.
Dick bent farther forward, his hands pressed hard against his face, and tried to swallow the sound rising in his throat. It came out anyway, a broken, humiliating noise that made him feel like a boy who was eight years old again and had just lost his everything.
Perhaps it was good he was alone for now.
That meant nobody was watching him right now. That nobody needed him to be strong.
That should have made it easier.
Instead, it made everything worse.
He cried for the boy who’d lost his parents and found a home in a man who was as broken as he was. He cried for the child who’d learned to be useful before he’d learned how to grieve, who’d mistaken being needed for being loved because the difference had never seemed worth examining.
He cried for the pre-teen who’d believed that becoming Robin meant he could finally belong somewhere, who’d poured every ounce of himself into the role until he couldn’t tell where the boy ended and the mask began.
He cried for the man he’d become, who had fought so hard to build a life of his own and still felt as though one decision made in Gotham could unravel him.
And he cried because Bruce hadn’t told him. Because Bruce had looked at Jason and seen someone worth choosing. Because, somewhere deep inside himself, Dick had always believed that if he walked away, if he stopped being what Bruce needed, then Bruce would eventually stop needing him and it came true.
He’d known it wasn’t fair. He’d known Bruce loved him. He’d known their relationship was more than a partnership, more than a title, more than a mask and a cape.
But knowing something and believing it were two different things.
And right now, Dick didn’t know what he believed.
He didn’t know who he was supposed to be when Robin belonged to someone else. He didn’t know whether Bruce still saw him when he looked at Nightwing or whether he saw a beloved partner who’d left and made himself impossible to reach. He didn’t know how to go back to the Titans and explain that he was fine when he didn’t feel fine at all. He didn’t know how to look at Jason again without seeing the boy he’d once been. He didn’t know how to be happy for him without mourning himself. He didn’t know how to stop wanting Bruce to tell him that none of this changed anything.
That he was still his son. That he was still wanted. That he hadn’t been replaced.
Dick dragged in a ragged breath and wiped his face with the heel of his hand. His cheeks were wet, his nose was running, and his throat hurt. He felt foolish. He felt young. He felt as though he ought to be able to put himself back together by now.
He’d been doing it for years.
He’d become very good at it.
But there was no one here to see him pull himself together. No one to reassure. No one to protect from the sight of his own grief.
So he sat in the motel room and let himself be miserable.
The newspaper was still on the bedside table. He could see the edge of it from where he sat, the headline folded out of sight but not out of mind.
He wondered if Jason knew what the name meant to him.
Probably not.
Jason had no reason to know. He’d been given a name and a suit and an opportunity. He’d been told he could be Robin and he’d believed it.
Dick couldn’t blame him for that.
He only wished someone had warned him before the world changed.
He wished Bruce had thought of him—not as Nightwing, not as an adult who’d moved on, not as a former partner who had no claim to the title anymore, but as the child who’d once been given that name by a mother he could barely remember.
He wished Bruce had understood that Robin wasn’t something Dick had simply stopped being.
That Robin was something he’d carried with him. Something he’d loved. Something he’d thought would always be his, even after he’d outgrown it.
Dick pressed his palms against his eyes until sparks of light bloomed behind his lids.
“I don’t know who I am without you,” he whispered, the words barely audible.
He wasn’t sure whether he meant Robin or Bruce.
He’d spent so many years with the two of them tangled together that he couldn’t always tell where one ended and the other began. Robin was the name his mother had given him, but it was also the boy Bruce had trained. It was the role that had given Dick purpose and the partnership that had taught him how to survive. It was the first thing he’d been allowed to become after the world had taken away the person he’d been before.
And Bruce had been there for all of it.
Bruce had given him a home. A family. A reason to keep going.
Dick loved him for that.
He hated him for this.
He hated that both things could be true. He hated that he could stand in the Cave and tell Bruce he was wrong, tell him he had no right to make decisions about Dick’s life and then come to a motel room and cry like a child because Bruce had made a decision without him. He hated that some part of him still wanted to run back to the Manor, climb into the familiar bed and wait for Bruce to come find him. He hated that, even now, he wanted to be chosen.
The room blurred again and Dick lowered his head, cradling himself the way he wished someone else would hold him.
He would go back to the Titans in the morning. He would put on his Nightwing suit, possibly tell a joke or find a new mission to start and tell everyone he was tired as he would carry case files with him into his room to obsess over. He would check in with Jason eventually because the kid deserved someone in his corner and Dick wasn’t going to punish him for a decision Bruce had made. He would keep being Nightwing. He would keep doing the work. He would keep building a life that belonged to him.
He could do all of that.
He knew he could.
But tonight, he couldn’t make himself believe that it was enough.
Tonight, he was just Dick Grayson, sitting alone in a cheap motel room, grieving a name he’d thought he’d left behind and a place in his father’s life he’d never realized he was still afraid of losing.
He’d chosen to grow up. He’d chosen to leave. He’d chosen to become someone else.
Yet somehow, he still hadn’t learned how to stop being the little boy who was afraid that if he wasn’t Robin anymore, he might not be anyone at all.