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Whenever Dick comes to Gotham, inevitably, he gets fear gassed. It used to be kind of funny, but now it’s just tedious. Come to Gotham. Get stuck in traffic. Get grunted at by Batman. Get fear gassed. The Gotham trifecta, Dick likes to call it.
Crane’s offering up a little variety today, at least. Usually he’s in some fishy smelling warehouse by the docks. And, while Dick’s been living in Blüdhaven for a good number of years now and thus should be immune to all manner of fish scents, Crane’s chemicals always somehow make the fishy smell new and worse. A group of well-fed rats rush ahead of him. Dick pays them no mind. He will take the scampering rats of Gotham City Subway Station over warehouse fishy smells any day.
But otherwise, everything else about this mission feels very typical Scarecrow. That’s the problem with being a gimmick villain. For all his talk of being the Tyrant of Terror, or whatever other lame fear-based moniker he’s using now, Scarecrow loves the spotlight. He might be doing his cooking in an abandoned subway car for now (according to Spoiler), but Dick knows this hideout wasn’t picked by chance. Crane obviously has his sights on the nearby Gotham City Stadium. That’s how the old haysack does it. He needs to have an audience. Gotham University’s convocation. A crowded mall on Christmas Eve. Big public spectacles.
That’s always the worst part of fear gas for Dick. The spectacle of it all. He can handle the toxin pretty well himself. But watching other people tough it out? Unbearable. He’d rather drink the stuff by the gallon before he ever again has to watch Tim break down into quiet tears, or Bruce clench his fists so hard he starts to tremble.
That’s why Dick volunteered to be the one to track Scarecrow down. Well, technically, he was voluntold. Bruce assigned him. Tonight is one of those ‘all hands on deck’ nights in Gotham. It’s not a full-on Arkham Asylum breakout levels of busy yet, but busy. Penguin and The Riddler are teaming up, for some reason that has to do with an artifact recently shipped to Gotham. (Dick’s has had stress dreams of becoming president and banning all shipments into Gotham. People really need to stop sending their cursed shit into that city.) Completely unrelatedly (and yes, Bruce, Tim and Barbara all triple-checked to make sure) Killer Moth and Kite Man have teamed up. They’ve taken everyone in the Mayor’s office hostage.
Honestly, Dick’s shocked something like this hasn’t happened sooner. It’s not like the Gotham rogues have a paid secretary making sure that their nefarious team-ups don’t overlap. Which leaves the Bats dealing with two rogue team-ups in one night, plus Spoiler’s great but extremely time-sensitive intel on Scarecrow’s whereabouts that needed to be followed up on. With all of that going on, Bruce has reverted to full general mode, the Bats his steadfast flock of soldiers. So Dick didn’t actually volunteer for his mission. But it doesn’t bother him. He would have anyway.
Nightwing’s always ready to lend Batman a helping hand.
It’s a simple mission. Follow up on Spoiler’s lead. Apprehend Scarecrow if he’s there, collect all the information he could if he wasn’t. In a few hours, regroup with Batman and Robin (Tim edition) downtown where surely some sort of magical, riddle-based, penguin-themed showdown will be occurring. Easy-peasy.
Dick knows Gotham’s abandoned subway stations better than he’s known the layout of some of his apartments. The texture of its darkness, where the rubble gives way to only more rubble and where it gives way to nearly pristine tunnels, how to detect if the rat colonies have shifted to accommodate a new inhabitant. Spotting Scarecrow’s base is devastatingly easy now that he’s looking for it.
Spoiler’s intel is solid. Her informant arranged a meet-up with Scarecrow at midnight, to assure the Bats that Crane would be at his base when they nabbed him. Dick’s a little early on purpose. He wants to scope out the terrain before he fights in it. Not that Scarecrow is ever much of a physical threat, but still, Dick likes to know the shape of a mess before he jumps into it. It's no trouble for Dick to melt into the shadows, sit back, and observe.
It’s not a bad view. The decrepit subway car’s wide-open windows offer a great visual for Dick to track Scarecrow as he frits about his lab. Honestly, if it weren’t for the costume, this would look more like a makeshift methamphetamine operation than Crane’s usual M.O. Dick almost pities the doctor. Fish smell aside, this is a huge step down from the roomy abandoned warehouses near the docks Crane usually plots in. Dick’s seen Crane stumble over a rat twice already. Guess even the rogues are feeling the hit of the recession.
But that justification doesn’t sit right with Dick. Normally Crane has vats and vats of his fear toxin brewing. He’s fame hungry, attention starved. There’s always a sense of industry with Scarecrow’s plots. But everything in this lab is small. Is he working on increasing his fear gas’s concentration? That could explain the scaled-back operation. The goal of this base is the test run, then, not the opening night. Which would also explain how Spoiler’s source managed to arrange this meet-up in the first place. If Crane is in his formula tweaking stage, it isn’t unheard of for him to offer a sample, for the right price.
Dick needs to take Scarecrow out without taking out the base. Those notes he’s scribbling away at right now could be invaluable at developing new anti-toxins.
Dick fastens his rebreather on. Bruce insisted, even if it’s unnecessary. Dick’s highly resistant to fear gas. His child brain developed alongside exposure to the gas. The exact ramifications of this won’t be known until after Dick’s brain is biopsied, (preferably after his death, one hopes). But for now, Dick treats it like his superpower. It takes massive quantities of fear gas to affect him the same way it affects everyone else. By the time Jason came around, Bruce already had several strains of anti-toxin. The other Bats are still so vulnerable to it. If Scarecrow is preparing an uber-concentrated sample, Dick’s more than happy to buy.
Dick watches Crane work a little longer. He wants a clean arrest. If he can learn where everything in the lab is before he takes Scarecrow down, the whole process will go a lot smoother. So far though, Dick hasn’t seen Crane work with any chemicals. He’s just been writing away in his notebook, starring at a batarang.
It's a classic one, actually. Totally retro. Batman hasn’t used that model since Dick was Robin. They shattered on impact too easily and were quickly made obsolete by sturdier models. A soft wave of nostalgia laps at Dick. He didn’t think he’d ever see one of those again. Bruce had destroyed all the older models. The big guy isn’t one for sentimentality, unless it’s grief. Dick’s sure every batarang Jason ever touched is in the Batcave somewhere, hallowed.
Alright. This stakeout has been going on way too long if Dick’s thoughts are starting to drift there, of all places. A good plan is a good plan, but idle hands are the devil’s playthings. Dick doesn’t have the luxury to wait here all night for Crane to get busy. The old pile of straw is making tea now. There are way too many active threats tonight for Dick to get stuck playing babysitter.
Soundlessly, Dick boards the train.
“Ah, Batman,” says Scarecrow, swirling the teabag in his cup. Alfred would be horrified. “Right on time.”
Dick breaks out in a grin. Oh boy, the good doctor is going to be so disappointed.
“Batman can’t come to the phone right now, can I take a message?”
Scarecrow whips around. His mask is impressively expressive. “You,” he snarls.
Dick winks. His reputation precedes him. While Dick’s immunity to fear gas has only improved as the years go on, those same years haven’t been as kind to Crane. It seems like every time Dick sees old Patchy, the good doctor is more and more afraid of him. He’s already starting to retreat.
“Why is it always you?” he shouts, voice thick with terror.
Dick lets his grin become positively ferocious. It’s totally bad form, but sometimes, you gotta play with your food before you eat it.
Cornered and desperate, Scarecrow reaches for the batarang. As if that could ever work against him. In the second it takes Scarecrow to grab the batarang, Dick is already upon him. Instinctively, Scarecrow raises the batarang to defend himself. Instinctively, Dick knocks it to the ground.
But his muscle memory isn’t in the right decade. He knocks the batarang down too hard. When it falls to the ground, it shatters.
“No!” Scarecrow wails. “You stupid boy, what have you – ” In one fluid motion, Dick rips the stupid potato sack mask off, shoves his rebreather in Crane’s mouth, and tosses him aside. The impact knocks him out cold, but he’ll live.
Alone, Dick takes the full force of the green gas billowing out from the broken batarang.
A face full of fear gas. Like clockwork, Dick thinks to himself.
Dick swallows the gas more than he inhales it. His deductions had been spot-on. This formula is different. More concentrated. The consistency far thicker normal.
He laughs it off. “’Crowy, it’s been years. Can’t you add some perfume to this thing?” He waves his hand in front of his face, as if Crane’s bioweapon is nothing more than a bad smell. “Why does it always have to taste like sewer?”
Crane, predictably, doesn’t answer.
Joking requirement met, Dick gets straight to business.
The formula he got gassed with is obviously something very different; he doesn’t know how long his mental faculties will hold and he has to prioritize. He handcuffs Crane and then buckles him into his motorcycle. The autopilot will send him straight to Arkham, alerting the GCPD and Oracle of its movement. Then it’s programed to book it back to the Batcave.
Which is what Dick needs to do, too. Proper fear toxin protocol is that, once the threat has been subdued, you return to the Batcave as soon as possible.
But the allure of all the research is too strong to resist. Dick still feels good, clear-headed. His throat burns a little from all the coughing, but he’s not having any reaction that could stop him doing some sleuthing. It doesn’t have to be a lot. He’ll just snap some scans and send them to Oracle. Anyone could do it. If tonight weren’t so busy, O could send someone else out here. But tonight is so busy, they’re needed elsewhere. And who knows how much of this place will still be here by the time both the dynamic duos from hell are all sorted out?
Dick’s here. Nightwing is here. And he has a job to do.
He starts with tracking down the other formula samples. There’s no way the batarang was the only experiment. Spoiler has been had. From the start, this has been a trap for Batman.
Meaning, anything of import is going to be hidden away. Dick ignores the many makeshift desks and drawers loaded onto the subway car. He reaches straight up towards the smiling advertisement for Vicki Vale’s new podcast and pulls back the subway paneling.
Bingo.
Dick takes one second to clear his throat and then his greedy blue balms are all over the chemistry set. He’s just about finished collecting the samples when another coughing spell hits him. The vial shatters. It was just a reagent, not a toxin, but still absolutely amateur of him. Inwardly, Dick reprimands himself. Nightwing needs to be better than this sloppiness.
“You broke the evidence! Some-batty isn’t going to be happy.”
The sing-songy voice freezes Dick. He’s lucky he doesn’t drop another centrifuge tube.
That voice…
A memory hits Dick in the face like a mallet. The first time Dick had ever heard himself recorded was at Gotham City's Youth Center. It had been on an old school tape deck, most definitely older than the speech therapist working it. The lady, Ms. Taylor, had been so eager to ‘help’ Dick ‘fix’ his English. She must have been a college student interning for free or something. There’s no way that the same juvie that didn’t even have the right shoe size for Dick had the money for a speech therapist. The taping was a part of their practice sessions. Dick hated it and her. Every time she recorded him, Dick changed his accent, making it as thick and inconsistent as possible, just to spite her.
She’d make him listen to it anyway. It was a strange horror. Like looking into a funhouse mirror, but for his ears.
That voice he just heard…it’s his voice. But discordant – garbled, recorded and played back to him.
Dick feels fear. A hot flash races down his chest, cold chills following in its wake. His hand trembles. All the air vanishes from his lungs. For the first time since the mission started, Dick feels fear.
He forces himself to breathe. He did not just hallucinate his ten-year-old self talking to him. Dick refuses the entire premise. Mind over matter. His will is strong, strong enough just will this all away. The fear gas can pick something else for him to hallucinate.
“Rude!” says the child’s voice, really hamming up the pout in his voice. “I thought you of all people would appreciate my puns!”
The voice’s volume intensifies, filling up the whole room. And not like professional sound system Bruce installed in his private theater, no, this fills the whole room. From every direction, from every decibel. It’s the sonorous echo from deep inside a cave. It’s a whisper right in his ear.
And it’s wrong. Intrinsically, Dick knows it. The more it speaks, the worse it gets. The kid’s voice makes Dick’s soul feel slimy, makes him want to run sharp claws down his arm just to distract himself.
But Dick can’t deny its origins, its name. It’s him. It’s Robin.
Dick swallows. “Alright, Crane,” he says, finishing up his work with the samples. “Kudos for being inventive.”
His priorities haven’t changed; he can’t let this distract him.
So he’s hallucinating his younger self. That’s fine. In the list of weird-shit that’s actually happened to him, this doesn’t even clear the top fifty. Not even top fifty fear gas effects. Once, Catwoman found him after getting gassed, and he hallucinated that she turned him into a mouse and ate him. If he can survive that, he can survive this.
Deeper inside the hidden compartment, lies a notebook, a real notebook, not the fake one Crane was doodling in earlier. It’s written in some kind of shorthand. Dick cracks the code in minutes. (The toxin is really slowing him down.)
It confirms what Dick already suspected – this toxin is new. Scarecrow’s fear gas, for however often the formula is tweaked, fundamentally has always worked in the same way. Prey on the brain’s deepest fears.
So why would it show him Robin? The only thing that scares Dick about Robin is the way he used to grease his hair back. Dick has the passing thought that there might not be enough stimuli in an abandoned subway car for his mind to properly freak out. But that can’t be true. While external stimuli can encourage the fear gas effects, it doesn’t need outside stimulation to create hell on Earth. In the early days, Batman had put a blindfold on him to see if it would help reduce the hallucinations. All that happened was that Dick hallucinated, even more vividly, being inside his own grave.
So lack of stimuli can’t be the answer. Why Robin? What makes this fear gas so different?
Dick turns the page on Crane’s notes and, immediately, he finds the answer. Dick flicks on his comms.
“O.”
Barbara’s voice greets him, smooth and friendly. “How goes it, Boy Wonderful? Can confirm GCPD got the present you sent them. Still got your mind intact?”
A giggle surrounds him. In his peripheral, Dick sees the wisps of a canary yellow cape, fluttering in the wind.
There’s no wind down here. It’s a subway.
“It’s seen better days,” Dick admits with a smile. “I’m sending you some scans.” His body carries him through the motions. Information retrieval is muscle memory by now. The cameras in his mask make quick work of scanning the pages. Soon they’ll both have the same information in front of them, but it always helps Dick to think out loud.
“Scarecrow and Strange are teaming up again,” he says, “and you’re never gonna guess who they wanted to be patient zero.”
“Batman,” says Oracle. Dick can just picture her in his mind’s eyes, devouring the notes and schematics he sent her. Dick, quite suddenly, really wants to be home. The darkness of the subway is encroaching in. He feels like he’s inside a stomach.
Focus, Nightwing, focus. “Who else?” he replies breezily, “Turns out Crane was doing more than just tweaking his old formula – he was cooking something extra special for Strange, on commission. This new gas, it’s not just about fear in general. It’s meant to induce a specific kind of…split personality psychosis.”
“They wanted to split Batman’s ego in half,” Oracle summarizes.
“Yup, typical villain stuff. Split Batman down the middle, find out his secret identity, and then let him destroy himself,” Dick flips the pages. “Sounds like the setup to a joke. Batman and Bruce Wayne walk into a bar…”
Barbara isn’t amused. “Only the punchline is that Batman kills himself.”
Well, excuse Dick for trying to bring some levity to the situation.
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like they were hoping to do.”
In fairness, it is a frightening plan. Pump Batman with such a cocktail of pharmaceutical terror that by the end of the night, he’s ready to hang himself just to hang Bruce Wayne. But Dick knows Bruce too well to be scared. That man’s mind is a steel trap, his will indomitable. No matter what Crowey and Strange were cooking, it never would have worked on Batman.
Based on Barbara’s sigh of relief, she’s less certain. “N, thank god you stopped Scarecrow in time. This would have been a disaster, capital-D.”
Batman didn’t get hit, but –
Behind him, Dick hears rustling. As if someone were using the handrails to do flips.
Alright. The harsh reality of the situation is starting to dawn on him.
“Yeah,” says Dick, “about that.”
“Nightwing,” Oracle says, her voice shifting about three octaves lower. She always does that when she’s angry, but it never works. Dick just finds it distractingly sexy.
“So much for Boy Wonderful,” he quips.
“Dick.” And that’s the real warning.
Dick sighs. “I got hit about twenty minutes ago.”
Barbara wastes no time in reprimanding him. Her voice is all business. “Rerouting Red Hood to come pick you up.”
“No!” Fuck, that’s the last thing Dick needs. If this fear gas is designed especially for alter egos, Dick can’t think of person that would give Robin more fuel than Jason Todd. In fact, he willingly has to force himself to stop thinking about it, least he gives the toxin free ideas.
Plus, Jason can just be such an asshole. Dick loves the guy, but he fights dirty. At least all the other Bats follow the bro-code. When they see one of their own cry, they delete it from their minds permanently. Jason’s not like that. He has no qualms with rubbing it in after the fact.
“I’m okay, O,” Dick reassures. “I’ve just had a few auditory hallucinations. Everything else has been good. I feel stable enough to make it back to base myself.”
Dick’s not lying. Getting home won’t be hard. Bless Bruce. After years of getting stranded in the city too injured to make it back to the Batcave, he has set up hidden pod-stations throughout Gotham. If Dick could just make it to one of those, it will shoot him back to the Batcave. Literally. No muss, no fuss.
“You sure,” says Barbara, her tone not even trying to pretend it’s a question. “It’s a thirty-minute walk to the nearest beckon station. I’ve already sent your bike to Spoiler and I’m out of stealth autopilot vehicles to send.”
Oh god, the last thing Dick needs is the Bat-tank plowing Uptown flat in order to come pick him up.
“On the roof-tops, I can make it in twenty,” says Dick, confidently. He is confident. Sure, Robin is behind him giving him hella Samara vibes but he can’t do anything. Dick’s body might be afraid because he’s been poisoned, but his heart is as fearless as ever. “I’m good, O. I promise. You know Scarecrow’s gas barely works on me.”
There’s silence on the other line. Finally, begrudgingly, Oracle speaks, “I can confirm that your vitals are stable. No abnormalities.”
Dick smiles. “See? I’m peachy-keen.”
Oracle continues on, ignoring him. “And based on these scans, it’s clear the toxin was made solely with Batman’s psych profile in mind.” She exhales. “That’s a relief.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Oracle assures, a sweetness in her voice that Dick doesn’t always get to hear. “You’re not like him, Dick. There’s no ego to split. Underneath the mask, you’ve always been you. You’ve always been Dick Grayson.”
Barbara’s belief warms him, hot cocoa for the spirit. Her words ease fears in him he hadn’t even registered having.
Dick’s smile is sincere. “Thanks, O.”
The companionship doesn’t last long.
“I can’t keep the line open,” Oracle confesses. She’s trying to hide her guilt, but Dick can hear it anyway. “There are a lot of other fires that need my attention.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dick says and means it. It’s not her job to take care of him. “I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.”
“I know,” she says. “But please, Dick, don’t dawdle. Penny-one is waiting at base ready to initiate detox.”
“Ay, ay Bossgirl,” he says and clicks the line shut.
Behind him, Robin giggles. The sound echoes across the room like a bouncing ping-pong ball.
Dick squeezes his eyes shut so tight and fast his jaw cracks. Was his laugh always this creepy?
He tries to think of everyone who knew him at that age and instantly realizes there are zero people he trusts to answer that question honestly.
Dick’s getting distracted. He’s collected the most important things from this base. Later on, when he's no longer hallucinating, he can come back for a more thorough check of what’s left. For now, he needs to head to the surface and hightail it home.
“Holy boring librarian, I thought she’d never leave.”
Dick ignores him. Fear feeds fear. Dick’s best bet is to engage with his hallucination as little as possible. His only objective is booking it to the Batcave. And then, once he’s safe in the Batcave’s detox cells, he and lil him can cry it out, or whatever sadistic psychology thing Strange and Crane were after.
The run through the abandoned tunnels is claustrophobic. The shadows chase him. Dick’s been trained to find comfort in them, but right now every dark corner is a threat. The formless dark holds everything that could ever hurt him, ready to form and attack at any time. The adrenaline from the run isn’t helping his fear. Dick knows its his own anxiety pushing him towards panic.
Robin’s playing nice for now. The yellow cape flickers in and out of Dick’s peripheral vision but it never fully materializes. A good sign. Maybe he got hit with a dose too weak to induce full audiovisual hallucinations. Dick doesn’t particularly want to spend the whole night listening to Robin hum the world’s creepiest cover of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”, but it’s better than the alternative.
Dick runs and runs. The darkness feels never ending. The old subway entrances have all been blocked off. In order to get out of the system, you have to go down into sewer and then come back up from there. So things get worse before they get better.
Story of Dick’s life.
It wasn’t that bad coming in. But now Dick can barely keep himself from clawing at the walls, trying to dig his way out.
Finally, Dick’s hands latch onto a service ladder. The blue stripes on his gloves are a welcome respite from the darkness.
The moment Dick pushes up the manhole cover and the cold Gotham wind slaps him in the face, Dick could sing. Nothing brings him more relief than being able to see the sky. Even though, in Gotham, all the stars are on the ground – twinkling skyscrapers – the night sky still welcomes him. A warm cape of black, swirling with grays and silvers. The sight centers him.
“Race you!” Robin says.
Dick feels a whoosh of air fly pass his face. He doesn’t see anything. He can only hear it. In the distance, faraway like a memory. Robin hollering for joy as swings from rooftop to rooftop. The fond nostalgia spooks Dick more severely than anything else has tonight.
He shakes it off. With practiced ease, he pulls his escrima sticks from his back and twists them in just the right way to initiate their grappling function.
And then he’s flying.
Everything makes sense again. When Dick flies, everything comes into focus. The world. His place in it. Up here, fear only fuels him. It burns away into joy. Nightwing doesn’t holler, not like Robin does, but Dick smiles. It’s impossible not to.
It’s the nostalgic mood that must cause Dick to glance to his side, anticipating a partner.
There should be no one besides him. Nightwing flies solo.
But there’s Robin. In the flesh. His flesh.
Dick’s decades of grappling experience save him from splatting into the nearest building. But trust, he was certainly shocked enough to fall to his death.
Instead, Dick lands on a fire escape. A few flips and a summersault cushion his fall. He rights himself up, trying to catch his breath. Behind him, the windows are boarded up with plywood. That’s something at least.
Dick can have some privacy as he loses his shit.
Robin stands in front of him, hands on his hips, posing like the cover of a comic book. The wind around him blows in the wrong direction. It’s coming from the northeast, but around Robin, there’s an industry fan blowing his hair back. There’s a spotlight shining on him that Dick’s ninety-nine percent sure he's hallucinating.
But honestly? That’s not even the weirdest part.
The weirdest thing is just…looking at himself. His kid-self is real and breathing in front of Dick and Dick’s helpless to do anything other than stare. He has photos of himself at this age – Dick’s guessing ten, this kid isn’t missing any front teeth, but he is missing a molar – but they don’t do the lived reality justice.
It’s like looking into a mirror for the first time. Dick can see himself so loudly in this kid. Those are his dimples, his lips pulled into a big smile. But it’s also not him. Baby fat surrounds the face, hiding its true shape. The skin is utterly smooth, not a stress or worry line in sight. He’s tanner. Dick got a lot more sun as a kid. And he’s small. So small. Dick feels like a giant looking down at him, oversized in his own body.
Robin waves. Makes a whole production out of it. God, there’s so much theater in this kid. Dick forgot how much he missed the stage at that age, how eager he was to capture people’s attention for anything other than ‘billionaire’s impulse pity purchase’. Dick’s heart breaks a little. There are so many good memories that came with being Robin, but it wasn’t an easy time in his life. Everything hurt much more acutely back then. No wisdom of lived experiences to dull the pain.
Dick waves back. Just a small flick of his hand.
Robin smiles at him. For a second, Dick dares to hope this won’t be a traumatizing experience. Maybe Babs is right – he is different from Bruce. Maybe Dick and his alter ego don’t have to fight to the death, they can just hang out. Vibe, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
Dick risks a smile back.
Robin’s smile grows. And grows. And grows. Until his mouth is a dark cavern lined with too many teeth. It snaps back into place instantly. A regular old smile reappears on his face. Robin winks.
Dick’s stomach drops. He weighs his options.
He dives off the fire escape.
New plan. Same as the old plan, but faster. Dick throws himself into the air, flipping forward, trying to accrue more momentum. If that body horror-show wants to play games with him, it’ll have to catch him first. Dick’s got like fifteen inches of leg on that kid and he’s going to use them.
Robin appears beside him, not a care in the world. No grapple in hand. He’s actually flying. His arms are open wide, trying to catch the moon.
Envy ruptures in Dick like a pipe bursting.
“Isn’t this the best feeling in the world?” Robin hollers, flipping ahead of Dick.
His words are joyful but the tone is wrong. Sinister, like the shadows cast from a streetlamp. And the resonance is too strong, coming from too many directions.
Robin turns his head back towards Dick. There’s a smugness in his eyes, a challenge, that instantly hardens Dick’s gut.
“Isn’t this the only way we feel alive?” says Robin.
Anger. Instant and all consuming. Dick glowers. Robin makes it sound like flying is the only way Dick can be happy. Which isn’t true at all. How dare he come here and try to ruin this for Dick like he ruined –
Dick shuts the thought away. This is what the toxin wants. It wants to instigate Dick into attacking his own self. He can’t give into it. This isn’t real. Nothing here can hurt him. This anger, this fear, none of it is really his. It’s all just a trick. Not real in the slightest.
Robin laughs beside him.
“Dickie, what are you talking about?” he says, fondly exasperated, like he just saw Bruce try to make macaroni and cheese from the box. “I’m the only real thing you got!”
A profound loneliness sweeps through Dick, cold and harsh, like the first winds of winter. In a sense, Robin’s right. No one else is the swinging across the city with him.
God, what Dick wouldn’t do for a distraction right now.
Damian by his side, to snark some sense into him. Or Tim to regale him with a long rumbling anecdote that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere, but is very, very funny.
Babs reciting, by memory, any encyclopedia entry of his choice.
Bruce, in that even monotone of his, still so passionate as he expounds upon the history of The Gray Ghost’s costuming department.
Dick almost reaches to his ear. Just a quick pop into their comms and he could hear all their voices. But no. He can’t be that selfish. Dick may want the distraction, but for them, a distraction right now could get them killed. He’s only fifteen blocks away from the nearest beckon station. He can hold out.
In tandem, Robin and Nightwing swing upward, perfect mirrors of each other. It makes Dick feel like a shadow. Like a ghost.
“You’re slower than the Bat,” accuses Robin. “I should rip the wing right off of your name!”
Playground insults from a playground-aged foe. Dick just has to ignore him.
“I’m ignoring you,” Dick tells Robin.
Robin just laughs, crueler this time, and does a quadrable summersault. Dick narrows his eyes. Jealously isn’t an emotion he used to feeling, but it’s impossible not to. That move was so much easier to do when he was eighty pounds.
A grapple appears in Robin’s hand. “Try to keep up, old man!”
Robin speeds ahead, fast, but not inhumanely fast, which just makes Dick hate him more.
When this is over with, Dick has a long list of people to send apology cards to. Maybe younger him really was a show-off.
But Dick knows better than to take the bait. He lets Robin race ahead while he lands on a rooftop. It’s non-descript office building skyscraper. Quiet. Good place to think. Alright, he’s at the intersection of Bryan Ave and South Farrow, only ten more blocks to go. He can do it. Dick’s eyes scan the horizon, plotting the best path through the sky.
Robin sails in, all flips and flourishes and joyful laughter. Ever the gymnast, he sticks the landing perfectly. He bows in all directions to his imaginary crowd. Dick certainly isn’t clapping.
“I won!” says Robin. “Didya see, didya see?”
Dick ignores him.
“Ugh,” Robin moans, slapping a green glove to his face. The drama of children. Dick rolls his eyes so hard his mask nearly comes loose.
“Fine,” Robin says. “I’ll just have to do it again.” He aims his grapple.
But already something is wrong. The building he’s aiming at is too similar to their rooftop’s height to give him enough swing for the flips Dick knows he wants to do.
Dick looks down. The alleyways are too narrow here, too cluttered. Flipping as he falls will just knock his teeth out.
Robin swings forward anyway.
He’s falling before he’s all the way off the asphalt. Dick’s own cry breaks through the night.
“Help me, Batman!” calls Robin.
Dick’s already running. “I’m coming, Robin!”
Dick, using the edge of the building, launches him after the falling bird. He scoops Robin into his chest. The kid is so small he fits in one arm. Dick shoots his grapple upward, securing it to the edge of a balcony.
Robin’s safe in his arms. He lets them both just hang there, catching their breaths. Robin looks up at him, the lens of his domino mask opened wide, two white ghosts. Then, he laughs. Robin rocks them forward, sending Dick into the brick wall, his head taking the brunt of it before his shoulder can catch up. Something feels loose in his ears. Blood? There’s no time to think.
Suddenly getting Robin out of his arms is the priority.
Dick pushes Robin up on to the balcony. Then, he re-aims his grappling hook. It rips up towards the sky, pulling him back up to the highest rooftop.
His comm units fall from his ears. Two swans diving to the ground.
Dick lands on the roof with zero flourish. He looks down in despair. He’s at least twenty stories up, maybe twenty-five. The ground below is chaos. A wasteland of junk, squirming and writhing. Like maggots, Dick thinks, and then they appear down below, giant and hungry.
Dick retreats from the edge. He doesn’t have a thing with bugs but this might just give him one. His fist clenches. The fear gas in his system is getting stronger. He’s hallucinating hardcore now. He felt Robin in his arms back there. There’s no way he has the time or capacity to circle back and search the streets for his comm units. He needs to get back to the Batcave now.
Fear thrums through Dick. Awake, alive. Strong.
He’s alone now.
Almost.
Dick knows he’s there. He can feel him breathing. They’re breathing together.
“You did that on purpose,” Dick says, staring out into the darkness.
Robin emerges from the shadows. He has Dick’s face, his body has Dick’s light-footedness, but the smile is all wrong. Genuine malice playing-acting joviality. The Robin in front of him is just as much Dick Grayson as Ultraman was Clark Kent.
“Well, duh,” says Robin. Something in Dick’s face must delight him, because he grins. “This is a private conversation. Robin to Robin. Don’t you think, Dick?”
Dick’s hands itch for his escrima sticks.
But no, he can’t, he can’t keep making the same mistake. The more he engages with this delusion, the worse it gets.
Dick turns his back to it, but Robin appears in front of him, unperturbed.
“Though I do wish everybody could have seen the look on your face.” He brings the green gloves to his cheeks, a mimicry of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. “Robin, nooooo, don’t splat on the ground like my dead parents!”
Dick’s recoils as if struck. To hear that himself in that uniform disrespect the very people it was made to honor…Dick’s whole body is ready to pounce. This isn’t him. This isn’t Robin. He was never this mean.
Robin laughs at him. “Why would I be nice? Don’t you remember what created me?”
The buildings surrounding them morph. They bubble over, exploding into confetti, reforming as giant bleachers. The night sky above distorts. Gone is that comforting cloak of grays. Everything around Dick is matte black. The absence of light. Pure darkness.
And then a spotlight hits Dick’s face, hot and harsh. Instinctively, Dick’s arm reaches up to shield his face. His Nightwing gauntlets are gone. There’s only his bare hands, dusted in chalk.
Dick’s eyes travel down. At his feet, blood rolls towards him.
His eyes snap shut. He knows where that path leads. He saw it once. He doesn’t need to see it again. That’s not who his parents are. That’s not how he wants to remember them.
Robin’s voice surrounds him. “It’s so easy for you to shut away that pain, isn’t it?” he sneers. “You gave it to me instead. I’m the one who has to carry that weight!”
The supreme anger in his own child-self’s voice forces Dick to open his eyes. He spots Robin in an instant, standing atop the trapeze platform. He’s screaming like a banshee, little face contorted in rage.
All Dick can feel is pity.
“I carry them everywhere with me,” Dick says, voice low and croaked. “Same as you.”
Robin dives off the platform. He lands on his feet like a cat. There is nothing but hatred in his eyes as he steps towards Dick.
Dick shows no fear.
“No, you don’t,” says Robin.
Then, the anger evaporates off of him, as if it had never been there in the first place. He grins.
“You’re not Robin, anymore. And this is what Robin is, Dick. I’m vengeance. Plain and simple. I’m your vengeance.”
So many emotions fly through Dick at once, he can’t grasp them all. There’s truth in what Robin says. Dick will never be as angry as he is now, standing over his parents’ dead bodies. Those first few months after their murder, vengeance was his heart, it was the only thing keeping the blood moving in his chest.
But then he met Bruce, met Batman. And Batman taught him that while his pain would never go away, he could make himself stronger, strong enough to carry the weight of all that hurt. Robin was born from that place. Suddenly, all the truth in Robin’s words vanish.
Robin can’t just be Dick’s anger, Dick’s need for vengeance. If it had been, once they got Zucco, Dick would have turned the cape in.
No. Robin is what happens when vengeance is reborn into justice.
For Dick, Robin was the life preserver that stopped him from drowning in his own grief. What Dick didn’t know at the time is that what saved him would save other people too. Every person who’s worn the cape after Dick needed it, first and foremost. But Robin inspired all of the children across the world to feel like they mattered, like they too could fight back against evil. Roy told him so once. Speedy wouldn’t have existed without you, Rob.
Robin saves Bruce. Stops him from being swallowed up by Batman all together. Batman needs a Robin.
Dick steels himself. Nightwing draws himself to his full height.
“I know my own legacy,” Dick tells the nightmare. “Robin means hope.”
The circus blows away, dislodged, like litter in a storm.
They’re back on the rooftop again. Asphalt and gravel beneath their feet. Robin doesn’t look even a smidge less predatory. He circles around Dick, not the herald of spring, but a bird of prey.
It’s ridiculous. But unfortunately, not the first time Dick’s been sized up by an elementary schooler.
It is the first time, however, he feels properly threatened. Dick’s body naturally shifts into a defensive stance.
Robin grins at Dick, unhinging his jaw just a little too wide. “Robin means hope, huh? That’s what you’re going with?”
“It’s the truth.”
Robin hums, considering it.
“Maybe for them,” He flicks a careless hand towards the streets, which are streets again, thank god. “But what am I to you?”
Suddenly, there’s no distance between him and Robin. Before Dick can blink, Robin is holding his hand.
“I’m this, Dick,” he says, fitting his green gloves over the top of Nightwing’s fists. Dick opens up his hands, so Robin can rest his green gloves in Dick’s blue palms. Dick just stares. They’re both his hands. How had he ever been so small?
Robin squeezes their hands together. Black tar seeps from Robin’s glove, staining Nightwing’s palm. The smile on Robin’s face is almost fond, but the inhuman white eyes of his mask reveal the cruelty.
“I’m all your violence given form,” says Robin. “I just have a sense of humor about it!”
And then his little green boot is striking Dick across the face.
Dick stumbles. God, that hurts. Normally it is him doing the spin-kicking, not getting spin-kicked.
He spits out blood. There goes another tooth.
“You know,” he says, wiping the blood from his mouth. “I’m beginning to understand why so many people wanted to punch me in the face when I was your age.”
Robin laughs. The sound echoes around them, the hungry cheers of a colosseum.
Dick reaches for his escrima sticks; they buzz to life, glowing with electricity. Fine. If this is what the little brat wants. Dick knows himself. There are some things he only ever learns the hard way.
Robin attacks first. Dick remembers that party line. He used to always come in fast and quick, darting away before anyone realized they just got beaten up by a kid who still sleeps with a stuffed elephant.
Robin’s got energy. But Nightwing’s got experience.
Dick avoids the attacks easily. He knows what to anticipate, knows where Robin’s feet will land before the boy wonder himself does. Robin’s not used to fighting an adult as fast as he is. He underestimates Nightwing time and time again, and Dick lets him. It’s a dance. He’s drawing his partner out into center stage.
Time for the dip. A left strike from Nightwing’s escrima stick sends Robin tumbling to the ground.
Dick can’t help a smirk. Yeah, he thinks, not a great feeling, is it?
Robin growls. Literally growls, like a hellbeast, and charges at Dick. He’s all frenzy. Kicks and punches and scratches and teeth with no real purpose, just anger and hatred.
But Dick didn’t raise Damian al Ghul Wayne for a year and not to learn the art of restraining a ten-year-old. He yanks Robin by the cape. One more flaw Nightwing grew out of. With his superior upper arm strength, Dick has the kid in a restraining hold easily.
But Robin plays dirty. He melts, literally melts, from Dick’s grasp like a popsicle. The liquid sludges over to the opposite side of the rooftop and Dick is left reeling in the wake of the cartoony nonsense his life has become.
Robin springs up from the puddle, in attack position. His grin is positively feral.
Dick changes tactics. “Alright. Tie?”
This catches Robin off-guard. “What?” he laughs. It’s the least creepy laugh he’s given all night.
“Hey, we’re both humble people. I can admit we’re evenly matched.” Dick could absolutely not admit that, but he could admit that trying to fight this hallucination to submission was obviously not working. “How about we just call this an impasse and move on?”
This acid trip from hell was designed with Bruce in mind. Dick needs to stop forgetting that. Any gut decision Bruce would make, Dick has to do the opposite. Headstrong, stalwart Bruce would never try to reason with his hallucination. He’d rely 100% on willpower and when that failed, would use his fists to conquer his own mind. Dick can’t operate like that. That’s exactly what Crane and Strange want.
“Why don’t you come over to my side, kid?” says Dick. “We both know that whatever dark chemistry Strange and Crowey whipped up to torture Batman isn’t going to work on me.”
Robin doesn’t say anything, doesn’t so much as breath. As uncanny as that is, Dick takes it as a sign to continue.
“I’m not Bruce and you’re not Batman,” Dick tells Robin, slow and appeasing. “Batman is a chain around Bruce’s neck, he’s the thing that stops Bruce from having a normal life. And Bruce is the one that stops Batman from completely giving himself over to the mission.” Dick exhales, long and low. “They’ll always be enemies. That’s how it works.” Dick’s voice breaks, his heart breaking for Bruce along with it.
He shakes it off. This isn’t about Batman. This is about Robin.
“But you were never like that for me,” says Dick, risking a step forward. “I’m not Batman. There’s no psychic wound here for you to exploit. We’re not enemies. So let’s not pretend to be.” Dick sheathes his escrima sticks on his back. He offers up his hands, palms up. Let’s start over, the motion says.
Robin watches him with keen, almost amused eyes. They laugh in the night like the moon.
“Dickie,” he says, as if he is the one talking to a child. “You hate me.”
What.
“What?” Dick’s reply is immediate and childish. “No, I don’t.”
Robin nods eagerly, stalking closer. The yellow cape fans out behind him like an imperial robe. “Yes, you do. Maybe not now, when I’m like this, when I’m you.”
Robin spreads out his arms, a true showman’s pose. Dick’s – no Robin’s – no, Dick’s flesh melts away. It’s not cartoony like before. This is visceral. Disgusting. Horrifying. But Dick can’t look away. The flesh peels back from Robin’s face, pushing the black waves off his head. The hair lands on the ground in clumps. The skin – Dick’s skin – falls off of Robin’s bones like boiled meat. Dick can smell his own death in the air and gags. The bones shrivel up and wither, right in front of Dick’s eyes. A strong gust of wind blows them away.
And then there’s nothing left of Dick in Robin. There’s just a costume.
A floating domino mask. A red breast torso covering the green leotard. Yellow cape attached at the collar, but there is no throat. Floating green gloves on the side of the hips. The little pixie boots. Nothing but air fills them. All that was Dick Grayson hollowed out of Robin. This thing is Batman’s glass memorial given motion.
“But when I’m this,” Robin says, still stealing Dick’s voice, even though his body is gone, “when I’m a mantle and not your name. Oh yeah, Dickieboy, you hate me. You’ve never forgiven me for that.”
“That is not true.” Dick means to be unwavering. He means to be steady and sure. That’s not how he sounds.
“Yes. It is.”
The power of Robin’s voice shakes the city, shakes the sky itself. The building they stand on turns to jello. Bits of moon plummet towards the Earth. Dick crouches down low to the ground, hands over head, bracing for impact. Where are the screams? How is no one else noticing the apocalypse right now?
Because there is no apocalypse. This isn’t real. It’s a trick, all a trick. He’s high on fear-gas. This anger isn’t his.
“No,” says Dick. “No, Robin, it’s not true. I’m happy you still exist without me. You have to understand – every time I see you out there with Batman, it makes me smile. I feel relieved. I’m relieved. Because of you Batman will always have a partner, and I can be myself.”
“Liar.” Robin’s voice equally a roar and childish taunt. “You never wanted to leave Batman! You wanted to be by his side forever! I won and you lost. Say you hate me! Say it!”
“I can’t say it,” says Dick, struggling to stand. The ground beneath him still quakes, but Nightwing has to be stronger than that. He manages a knee. “It’s not the truth.”
Dick stares up at the empty costume, tries to remember what it felt like to wear it. He’s desperate to find the right words that will reach his child-self.
“I know for you, right now, all you want is to be Batman’s partner,” Dick says. “I understand, Robin. I wanted that for so long too. I wanted to be Robin.” The world starts to feel more solid around him.
Dick stands. “And then I wanted to be someone else.”
The floating mask leans to the right. An invisible child tilting his head.
Dick’s voice is soft, conciliatory. He is talking to a child, after all, he can’t forget that. “I don’t hate you,” he promises. “We all grow up, Robin. That’s not something to mourn.”
The mask crinkles upward; Dick can feel the smile even if can’t see it. His body remembers the teeth from before and he shudders. The wind billows the yellow cape upward, like rising smoke. No, actual smoke. No…bubbling yellow tar?
Spudding bubbling yellow tar.
Robin’s cape is too long. It nearly touches the stars. Inside the yellow, something is trying to burst through. Dick catches imprints of a foot, a hand. A face presses up against the yellow, screaming. Dick flinches back.
The face keeps screaming, hands pushing him through the yellow.
Out tumbles out another Robin. He’s an exact mirror of the first one, just an animate, empty, uniform. It – well, it can’t really swing arms that it doesn’t have – but by the motion of the green glove, Dick knows the second Robin is swinging his arm around the first Robin’s shoulder. They are the creepiest pair of mannequin twins Dick’s ever seen. Perfect duplicates of each other.
Until the second one speaks.
“Now we both know that’s a lie, Dickie,” Robin II says.
Jason’s child voice reverberates through Dick like a right hook to jaw. His lungs collapse in on themselves. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
Focus, Dick, he tells himself. Think about anything other than your little brother’s grave.
Like what a cheat this all is. If Bruce had gotten gassed, as intended, would he have been haunted by the ghost of Dick’s Batman? Dick highly doubts it. Once he gets out of this mess, he’s going to have a long, long talk with Crane and Strange about equality.
“You’re not me,” says Dick. It’s the only thing that feels right to say.
“No. But I got your name, don’t I?” Robin II has no face. But his voice oozes smirk.
Robin I laughs. He pulls Robin II by the hands, spinning them around like two kids playing Ring Around the Rosie.
And then the nightmares happen.
They spin around, faster and faster. Impossibly fast. Until they are both nothing but a blur of red, green, and yellow. So much yellow, swallowing them up, a tornado. They laugh like jackals, the sound rattles in Dick’s head, makes him dizzy. No. It’s not just him that’s dizzy. The world is spinning. Buildings to the left and right of him are flipping upside down. Robin I and Robin II’s childish game tears a hole in the universe.
The universe bleeds. The center of the game is the rip and out pours a quasar, bright and violent, the color of Robin’s cape. It explodes and keeps exploding, turning hotter, green now. Red. The colors of Robin.
More things bleed through. The quasar spits out a giant penny. It hits the moon, cracks it in half. A t-rex emerges, roaring so loudly Dick has to cover his ears. When it lands, it’s the size of Godzilla. It eats Wayne Tower in one gulp.
Bruce is never going to forgive me for that, Dick thinks, unable to look away from the chaos he’s made.
A thousand dancing clowns come next, the size of fairies, they fan out into the city below, giggling mischievously. The quasar spits out a baseball bat. A crowbar.
And then, from Robin I and II’s primordial fire, crawls out the rest of them.
Robin III lands tentatively, softly. No showmanship. His gloves are gauntlets. He’s ready and eager to be a weapon.
Robin IV lands with a cartwheel. The form is sloppy, and Dick feels guilty for noticing that, and then feels guilty for feeling guilty.
Robin V lands in a crouch, one hand touching the ground. The hood darkens his face. Just like his daddy. Just like Batman.
The quasar burns out. Robin I and Robin II let go of each other’s hands. They turn to face Dick. They all turn to face Dick. Robin I takes center stage, with Robins II and V flanking his right, and Robins III and IV flanking his left.
There’s a joke about Robins/ducks in a row if Dick could stop tripping balls long enough to find it.
But right now, to Dick, they just look like a firing squad.
The Robins link hands. Green to green to green. A demented string of paper dolls. Now there’s a joke.
“We all have your name now,” Robins II, III, IV, V say in unison. Their voices are cold, robotic. The masks gleam in the night. So many ghosts.
In the center, Robin I smirks up at Dick, his mask thin and sly. The cat that just had his way with the cream.
Dick doesn’t know what to do. He’s fallen into Robi – Strange and Crane’s trap, hook, line and sinker. He’s been talking too much. Letting the hallucinations keep him from home. He thought he had been playing psychologic offensive with Robin, but he had been on the defensive the whole time, and now he’s lost. Badly. Dick was barely surviving his own brain’s bullshit. But add Jason, Tim, Stephanie and Damian’s bullshit to the mix? Ah-uh. Nope. No way.
Fuck this.
Dick has an A+ record of running away from his problems. Time to lean into his strengths.
Nightwing moves to dive off the rooftop, but he only gets three sprints forward before something catches him by the throat. Coldness penetrates though his entire body, down into his bones. Robin I is touching him. Hanging off of him, like…well like the way Dick used to hang off of Bruce as a kid.
The weight of Robin is an inhibitor collar around his throat. Dick can’t move.
“Dickie, how can you stand it?” bemoans Robin I in his ear. There’s no face. But Dick feels Robin’s mask and collar brush up against him, as if he were nuzzling his small face into the crook of Dick’s neck. “They took everything from you. From us,” Robin I says. “Aren’t you furious?”
Motion from the peanut gallery catches Dick’s eye. Robin II brings his gloves to where the sides of his face should be and blows an exaggerated raspberry. Robin III tilts his head, analyzing him with smug detachment. Robin IV flips her invisible hair, strikes an arrogant pose. Robin V stares like he can see down into Dick’s very soul, arms behind his back, a perfect soldier.
Something in Dick breaks. It’s them. It’s his family. Why are they looking at him like that, so cruelly? Why are they hurting him? Why did they kill him?
“No one will ever call you Robin again,” there’s a malice in Robin I’s voice that wasn’t there before, a threat. Dick’s body tenses. He expects a blade, but none comes. Just more sharp words. “That’s the only thing Mama used to call us. Can you remember her ever calling you ‘Dick’?”
Dick can’t. She must have, she must have. But when Dick closes his eyes and tries to hear his mother’s voice, it only has one song for him. A coo. My little Robin.
“She’s dead,” says Dick, voice rough. “Maybe that name was something just for her, and no one else.”
Robin I flips off Dick’s back and lands on one hand. “Well, if that’s true,” he says, looking at Dick upside-down, using his free hand to point backwards, “what are these clowns doing here?” He laughs at his own bad joke and then he’s off, racing to join the other Robins, hands spread out like he’s an airplane.
When Robin I reaches them, the other Robins return to their mannequin poses. Still as tombstones.
Robin I ducks under Robin II’s cape. He waves it like a matador. “He took our name, Dickie. Our name!” He cartwheels over to Robin IV, plucks her floating headband out of the air. “They all did.” Robin I sends the headband flying towards Dick like a birdarang.
Dick catches it. The headband turns to into a wiggling red bird in his hands. Dick immediately releases it. The bird flies into his face, straight at his eyes, clawing at his mask with its talons.
Dick’s really had e-fucking-nough.
“Stop saying that!” He swats the bird away. It splatters to the ground, a blood stain.
“They didn’t take it,” seethes Dick. If there’s one thing guaranteed to send him off, it’s interlopers running their mouths about his family. “It was given to them. It’s an honor.”
That’s right. That’s true. That’s one real thing Dick can hold on to.
Maybe Robin is too…complicated now to just mean hope. But it’s always meant family. And it always will.
“I love you guys,” Dick tells the Robins. “You know I do. We’re family.”
Robin II awakens to life. His posture loosens. He folds his arms, leans casually to the side. There’s a smugness to his demeanor. Like he’s confident that he’s the person in the room that cares the least, and that makes him the winner.
“I think you’re really stretching the term family there, Dickface,” says Robin II. “How many of you have I tried to kill again?”
Another kick in the face.
How can Robin mean family if Robin II slits Robin III throat, shoots Robin V in the chest?
“No. No,” says Dick. He’s not gonna let Robin worm into his head. He knows Jason. “Even at your worse…you sent me a telegram.” Dear Dickie-bird, it had said, thanks for coming for me, brother. It’s such a stupid thing to cling to, but Dick clutches those words tight to his chest. Through all the bullshit, the universe rewriting itself again and again, several lifetimes of memories with Jason that don’t quite fit together right, one thing always stands true. “You called us brothers,” Dick tells Robin II. “Robin makes us brothers.”
Dick looks at Robin III. He’s in Tim’s first Robin uniform, the same one he wore when Dick took him out train surfing for the first time. The memory brings a smile to Dick’s face. When Tim fell, Dick was there to catch him. Robin made them brothers long before they ever shared Bruce as a father.
Dick turns to Robin V, hood drawn up over his face. As shadowy as both his parents, but Dick knows that deep down, the kid’s a marshmallow. He has more warm memories of Damian than he can count; after all, he’s the only sibling Dick’s ever lived with. Dick treasures their post-patrol cocoas the most. Seeing such a grim Robin try to keep a straight face as he drank Alfred’s heavenly elixir. As soon as Damian comes home, that’s the first thing they’ll do. They’ll make it a toast to Alfred’s memory.
Grief swells up in Dick. But love, too. So much love. The Robins have hurt each other. Of course they have. What family hasn’t?
“Robin made us all brothers,” Dick tells them.
“And me?” asks Robin IV. “Am I anything to you?”
Dick blinks, mortified. He had forgotten about Steph.
“Yeah,” the empty gloves cross themselves, “that’s what I thought.”
That’s not fair, Dick wants to scream. But he stops himself. He has to stop giving in to every taunt. But it’s not fair. Dick spent years with Jason as Robin II. And he trained Tim and Damian himself!
But Stephanie Brown…Dick can’t even remember ever seeing her in the Robin costume. While she was wearing his family colors, they never met once. Dick was in a bad place. The worst place of his life, in all honesty. Time, and a couple of universe do-overs, have dulled the pain. Now that period exists only as a painful, fiery blur in Dick’s head.
But he knows how the story goes. Tim’s dad finds out about Robin and forces him to quit. Stephanie jumps in to play childish games and Bruce meets her punch for immature punch. He fires her. Steph dies trying to prove her worth.
Like all Robins, an insidious voice in Dick’s own head whispers, and he has to shake the thought loose.
Is Steph anything to him? Yes, of course. As Batgirl. As Spoiler. He loves her like a sister. But as Robin? Well. Dick would have never given her the cape. Not without a lot more training. Not without a better raison d'etre.
But what does Dick’s opinion matter, at the end of the day? Stephanie didn’t pick up the cape because she was so eager to be trained by Dick. When has his opinion ever mattered when it comes to deciding who gets to call themselves Dick’s name?
Dick tries to smother the resentment. Not here. Not in front of Stephanie. He can’t let himself be angry. None of his siblings deserve his anger.
But he is angry. He’s so angry it feels like there’s a volcano inside his throat, threatening to erupt at any moment.
Why is Robin never his decision? Dick made the first Robin uniform with his bare hands. He gave that cape his family colors, his name. And Bruce took it from him. Passed it on to the next kid and the next kid, never caring at all what that might do to Dick.
Jason was one thing. He had come to Bruce an orphaned child in need, and how could Bruce refuse him? Robin gave Jason hope, stability, purpose. All the same magic Robin had bestowed on to Dick when he was that age. He couldn’t resent Jason that, not when Jason already had so little, and Dick knew how much Robin gave.
(But he did resent. He did suffer.)
Tim was another thing. Nobody picked Tim, he forced himself into their lives. An old antipathy bubbles to the surface. Tim had been so self-righteous about it, so certain that Batman needed a Robin. He wanted Dick to be that Robin. But Dick couldn’t, he couldn’t go back to that. He failed at that. All his spying, but Tim never saw the parts that mattered. I don’t need a partner, Bruce had told Dick, that awful day when Dick had confronted him about Jason’s death, I never should have had one. And I never will again.
Batman didn’t want to be saved. Dick tried again and again and again as Robin and the only thing it got him was fired. Nightwing tried to save Batman, and the only thing it got him was a hairline fracture in his jaw.
Maybe Robin should have died with Jason, Dick wants to scream at Robin III, Maybe Bruce should have learned how to care for his own grief, instead of snapping up the first replacement crutch that walks through the door. Did you ever think of that?
But no, no. That’s not true. Those aren’t Dick’s real feelings. Tim was an excellent Robin. If it hadn’t been for Robin III, Dick’s not sure he and Bruce would have ever been able to mend their relationship. Robin can’t die, he needs to exist.
For Damian. He, more than any of the others, needed Robin. Being Robin saved him. With Bruce gone, the title of Robin was the only thing keeping him from returning to the League of Assassin. Alfred knew it would keep him in Gotham. That’s why he was the first person to hand Damian the Robin uniform.
(Even Alfred didn’t ask me…)
Dick can make his peace with Robin II, III and V. He has made his peace.
But Stephanie. It’s so much harder to justify Stephanie. Where Dick’s standing, the only thing Robin did was get her killed. Tim told him Bruce took Stephanie on just to goad him into becoming Robin again. Dick loves Bruce with all his heart. But yeah. That sounds like something he’d do it. And Steph paid the consequences. Robin paid the consequences.
But it doesn’t matter. That’s not Robin’s fault. Bruce will do as Bruce always does. Batman, the universe’s most immovable object.
That doesn’t change Dick’s heart. Doesn’t change what Robin means to him.
What Robin means to all of them who wore the ‘R’.
Just like Nightwing could have only hatched from Robin, Stephanie never would have become the stellar Batgirl she was without her time as Robin. Both legacy mantles allowed her to be reborn into a stronger, wiser, and more confident Spoiler. To Dick, the Spoiler he works with now is nearly unrecognizable from the Spoiler she started out as. He’s so thankful to know her, fight beside her.
For that, for giving him Stephanie, he can be thankful to Robin too. She’s part of the fraternity.
Dick’s voice finds him again. A strong bird beating its wings.
“You are a Robin. My sister,” he tells Robin IV, and means it. “Every one of you is wearing the Grayson family colors. That makes you my family.”
Dick lets out a deep breath. There. Rousing speech given, existential angst solved. Dick opens up his arms. It’s group hug time.
None of the Robins move.
Robin II snorts. “The Grayson family colors. What does that even mean?” He says this, looking to all the world that he could be Dick Grayson on the Flying Grayson’s promotional poster.
Dick recoils.
“Yeah, what’s he talking about?” Robin IV turns to Robin III. Dick never told Stephanie, but he loved her Robin headband. It reminded him of the bow his mother used to wear when they’d perform. The Flying Graysons, a family act, clad in green, red, and yellow.
These fucking kids. They don’t know, they don’t appreciate all that Dick has given up for them.
Why are they so determined to make Dick hate them?
Robin III raises a hand to the empty air where a chin should be. The body language is so quintessentially Tim, it makes Dick nauseous. Tim, the real Tim, should be here with him. Not a ghost wearing his clothes.
“But aren’t we all ghosts wearing your clothes?” Robin I chirps.
“He’s right,” says Robin III. “I’ve had my suspicions for years. The original Robin uniform is obviously based off of The Flying Grayson’s performance costumes. But I never thought to ask you about it, Dick. It didn’t seem important.”
Dick swallows. This is a fear gas induced hallucination. Tim wouldn’t say this. He wouldn’t be so cavalier about Dick’s parents. None of them would be. Sure, he’s never explicitly told them about what the colors mean. But he keeps the poster framed in his bedroom. They’ve all seen it. He’s just been waiting for them to ask. He just wants them to ask.
“Some family,” quips Robin I.
“Every one of us are in the Grayson family colors,” repeats back Robin V, each syllable over articulated. It’s far closer to the way Damian spoke when he first landed in Gotham, the arrogance that drips from every al Ghul Dick’s had the misfortunate of meeting. Dick clenches his fist automatically. Guilt forces him to release it.
“But that’s not true at all, is it?” continues Robin V. “You imagine me in this form because this how you think of me – this is when you loved me the most. But what colors did I choose for myself, Grayson? What do I wear now?”
The green and red and yellow decay off of Robin V, flicking off from his torso like a scab from a sore. His suit is only a lifeless gray, tinged with blood on the outlines, blood on the hands. The yellow is hidden inside the cape, as it has been since Robin III, as if the color was a dirty secret he was trying to hide.
Dick bites his tongue. What Damian wears is his own choice. Dick knows from personal experience how crucial autonomy is at that age. The last time Dick saw Damian face-to-face, he was running away to a death tournament. There were way more important things to discuss than his choice in outfit.
But Dick does want to know why Damian chose those colors. He wants to know, but he knows he’ll never ask, because the answers could unspool him.
It’s a lot of work pretending that the contempt the other Robins have shown for his costume over the years doesn’t hurt. Yeah, he gets that his leotard looked like green scaly panties and that’s hilarious. But they worked like a charm – Dick’s speed, his range of movement, was incredible in that costume. He relented to wearing green pants as a teenager – a fact that everyone else seems to forget – and honestly! He misses the leotard to this day.
But fine. Not every Robin incorporates acrobatics into their fighting style as much as he did. But they could all at least do him the decency of treating the original uniform with some respect. His papa spent a whole season sketching it out, and his mama another season lovingly sewing it together. They had all worn their colors with pride. As a family, they dazzled every audience. That’s not a punchline. That’s the point.
It hurts to see the other Robins mock the very things Dick created Robin to be: bright, cheerful, a good memory to chase away all the bad ones.
He wants to believe that there’s meaning to the colors Damian picked. That it’s more than just the typical disdain for his family’s colors that he’s seen before. But it’s also not his place to ask. Dick can’t interrogate Damian on the meaning of Robin, Robin isn’t his –
Robin I pulls at his arm, wrapping his whole body around it. Dick can feel the pressure, like a boa constrictor, even though the Looney Tunes gremlin is just fabric. Robin looks up at Dick, batting his eyes in mock comfort.
“I don’t belong to you,” says Robin I. “Doesn’t that hurt? You gave me so much of your heart, Dickie. Your family’s clothes, your very name. All that and you don’t own me at all. I can change in a whim.”
Robin I lets go of Dick’s arm. He morphs into Robin V’s new suit. Dick wants to rip the black cape off of him. Robin I does a cartwheel. In the air, he morphs again into Robin III’s suit, the one that had not a speck of green.
Dick knows he’s being goaded. It’s working.
New tactic. This conciliatory approach has been shit. Dick can feel his anger rising, simmering, bubbling in the caverns of his stomach. Call him Mount Vesuvius, because he’s gonna erupt.
“Fine, Robin,” he seethes, his mouth a steam vent. “You’re not my name anymore. You exist without me.” The words harden in his gut. But they need to be said. “Then why don’t you just leave me alone.”
Robin does a handstand, looking up at Dick, amused. Always so fucking amused.
“I’m someone else now,” Dick growls. Each word is slow and deliberate. Dick’s barely hanging on. “You can do whatever you want. Why are you still haunting me?”
Robin I flips forward. He walks toward Dick, a hunter on the prowl.
“I don’t belong to you,” says Robin I. “But you belong to me, Dickie. And I’m sick of you dragging me down.”
Dick’s jaw actually drops. “I’m dragging you down?” The au-fucking-dacity of this kid. “Buddy, if we’re gonna brag, I’ve got my own city. And you still have a bedtime, sidekick.” Dick throws that last word with particular venom. He remembers precisely the sting of its bite.
Robin I isn’t hurt at all. He just laughs that awful laugh of his.
“Lie to yourself all you want, Nightwing. That what’s your good for, right?” Robin I cups his glove around his empty face, pitching his voice into that of a ringmaster on a megaphone. “Introducing NIGHTWING: THE WORLD’S FINEST COPING MECHANISM.”
His words shake the entire world, as if Gotham City itself were a stadium.
The other Robins clap politely.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Robin I’s mask crinkles up. He’s smiling.
“You only became Nightwing because you weren’t good enough to stay Robin.”
“Fuck off.” Nightwing reaches for his escrima sticks without even realizing it. Dick is done being patient. He’s done acting like he’s talking to a kid. All he’s sees right now is an enemy. “I’m never more myself then when I’m Nightwing. Why don’t you come a little closer, hmm? Let me show you why Nightwing is me at my best.”
“Oh, Dickie,” Robin I giggles. “That’s just sad! Your best is just a big failure?” He laughs again. “You know that’s all Nightwing is right? Robin’s failure.”
The world around Dick darkens, as if the open sky were a stage, and the house lights were dimming.
A spotlight shines on Robin. A spotlight always shines on Robin.
“You’re what happens when Batman doesn’t want me anymore.”
Devastation. Pure and simple. The words hurt Dick in a place he didn’t think he could still hurt anymore. It’s an ancient fear. His first. Before his parent’s died, Dick knew love. He knew compassion and frustration and respect and gratitude. But he had never known fear. That came afterwards. That came on the ground, knees wet with their blood, not knowing for the first time in his life who would wipe away his tears. He was rushed off to juvie before he could even say goodbye to Haly’s Circus, goodbye to the life he loved with his parents. To Dick, he had died and gone to hell.
Batman saved him. Bruce saved him.
But Dick knew fear now. He knew he could always be sent back.
Batman didn’t need a partner. Bruce didn’t need a son.
Dick, as Robin, strove every day to be useful to them both. And then he wasn’t.
Without Robin, Dick Grayson was just some nameless nobody, lost in the system.
Just an orphan again.
Dick stumbles to his knees. It’s the only fear that’s ever mattered to him, because it’s the only one that has always been true.
Wait.
No.
Fear. The fear gas.
No. No. No. No way.
“Oh come on,” Dick cries out, shouting at the black sky. “I am way more psychologically complicated than my Bat-daddy issues!”
“Dickie,” Robin I laughs. It’s fond. It’s cruel. “It always comes back to Batman.”
“Batman, Batman, Batman, Batman,” the other four Robins say, the most demented children’s choir Dick has ever heard. He slaps his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound. It only grows. The roar of an identity falling apart.
“No, no, no,” Dick says, shaking his head wildly, screaming over the din. “Robin was mine. It was for me! It was something just for me! It wasn’t about Batman. I would have fought crime with or without him. That’s the point! That’s the whole fucking point!”
Robin I bounces over to him, sits on the ground crisscross applesauce style. Green gloves frame his nonexistent face, as if his palms were holding up his cheeks. His whole demeanor oozes ‘I know something you don’t’.
“So you say that, but whose image were you worshipping in that journal of yours, Bat-lad?”
Dick flinches. The idea for Robin didn’t come to him fully-fledged. In his journal, he had pages of designs for Batman’s partner. Including Bat-lad. But he had scrapped those! He scrapped them because they had been wrong. Dick didn’t want to be Batman. He just wanted…
“Face the facts,” Robin I says, recapturing Dick’s attention, “I wouldn’t exist without Batman. You created me so you could be like him. So you could be worthy enough to stay by his side. Batman’s my creator-god, not you.” Robin I’s voice dips sharply into disdain. “I never belonged to you.”
Why does those words hurt so much? Is Nightwing – is Dick really so pathetic that his own child self could despise him this much? He’s done good in the world. Hasn’t he? Hasn’t he? Dick tries to reach for those memories of pride, of accomplishment, but they spill through his fingers, water in a clenched fist.
He’s crying. The feel of his own tears surprises him. There’s something wrong – fear gas shouldn’t be able to affect him this much. But Dick’s unraveling. His emotions are an old, tattered sock Haley tore up, a shattered batarang. He’s crying. He tries to stop. But he keeps crying.
“Hush hush little Robin,” says Mama. But it’s Robin I’s glove brushing through Dick’s hair.
“You were my favorite host,” Robin I concedes. “No one else has ever embodied me so gloriously.”
Dick turns his gaze to Robin. Like a sunflower, Dick can’t resist turning towards praise, even knowing that nothing but cruelty will follow.
“But you broke, Dick. You weren’t willing to give him everything. You had to have your precious Titans,” Robin I sneers, “had to have your independence.”
Dick flinches. The guilt from his adolescence still haunts him. He left Bruce. He hadn’t been trying to leave – all he wanted was to make his world a little bigger, with Bruce in it. Bruce was supposed to stay in it.
Robin I sighs. “Always so selfish. What did you expect? Use your brain, Dickie, of course you got fired. What use does Batman have for a soldier that’s never around? A disciple that won’t give him everything?”
Robin’s right. It had been selfish of Dick to want more than the role Batman had created for him. After his first world ended, it was Batman who made him another. How narcissistic could Dick be, to think he deserved a third?
“You failed him, Dick. And you still want him to love you after that? Get real.”
Dick opens his mouth, expecting a rebuttal to come out. None comes.
But there is one. A counterargument, a defense. There has to be one.
“Dick, it’s us,” says Robin IV. She crouches down beside him. “Stop trying to lie. We can be honest with each other. From one fired Robin to another, I know how much it hurts. You never forget it.” In the distance, Dick hears the faint beeping of a heart monitor. “It destroys you.”
“I’m not destroyed,” says Dick weakly. It’s a lie. It feels like a lie. The guilt of that eats through him, corrosive, acidic. It only makes him weaker.
“Aren’t you?” Robin I snickers. “Isn’t that why Clark’s stupid little fairytale appealed to you? Nightwing, the great rebuilder. What a joke. What have you rebuilt, Nightwing?”
Nightwing’s greatest hits are on projected onto the sky, like a film at a movie theatre. Dick watches himself, watches Nightwing run towards a fiery explosion. He remembers those flames. In his nightmares, they never leave him. Nightwing rushes towards the smoldering wreckage where his apartment used to be. Gone. They’re all gone…Yoska, all of his friends…they’re just ashes now. The fires around Nightwing turn green. It’s the chemo now. It’s the whole city. Nightwing’s running through the ravaged streets of Blüdhaven, desperate to find survivors. But the city’s an empty husk. Just ashes. Ashes all around him. He sinks to his knees, digging through the rubble of Haly’s Circus, desperate to find someone to save. But they’re all gone. He's doomed them all. His city. His tenants. His best friend. The weight of Donna’s corpse is heavy in his hands. Ashes fall, all around him.
The Robins point up to the sky and laugh.
“You’re a failure, Dick,” says Robin.
“A washed up, has-been,” adds Robin II.
“It’s not your time anymore,” states Robin III.
“You’re useless without Batman,” explains Robin IV.
“And he does not want you anymore,” finishes Robin V.
Robin I starts to hum a little ditty. It turns into a song.
“He doesn’t want you anymore, so what are you good for?” Robin I sings. He thrusts his arms forward, a conductor summoning his musicians. A bird, calling for his flock.
They join him. Hand in green hand. Their voices meld together, a harmony so perfect it hurts Dick’s ears. Dick’s crying again.
“He doesn’t want you anymore, so what are you good for?” they sing. “He doesn’t want you anymore, so what are you good for?”
They dance around him. Birds of prey circling him, ready to descend at any moment rip the flesh clear from his bones.
And Dick deserves it. It’s a fitting punishment.
Batman doesn’t want him anymore, so what’s he good for?
He almost wishes the Robins would devour him. Why does someone as worthless as Dick get to exist in this world, when people like his parents –
Anger. Righteous and pure and familiar. It burns through him, wakes him up. It’s all he has left. The only anchor to the world that he can trust. The only thing that has ever saved him from his grief.
“Shut up!” roars Dick. “Shut up!” His escrima sticks buzz to life. Each is a thunderbolt in his hands.
“I know who I am,” he seethes, putting all his menace into the words, “I’m Nightwing! No one – not Batman, not Robin – can take that from me.”
Dick strikes, quick as lightning. His movements prove he deserves the name of a god. He launches at the Robins, breaking their circle around him. Disarming hit after disarming hit, the Robins fall into a pile of clothes, red, green, and yellow all scattered around him. But it isn’t enough. The clothes inflate themselves again. The circle always reforms. The birds never stop singing.
“He doesn’t want you anymore, so what are you good for?”
“I don’t care what he wants!” Dick shouts, hits becoming sloppier and sloppier. “I’m Nightwing! I want to be Nightwing. I don’t want to be Batman’s Robin!”
“Yes, you do,” says Robin I.
“We all do,” says Robin II, III, IV, V.
The Robins circling him start to grow. They stretch out like taffy until they tower over Dick, larger than any skyscraper.
In Robin’s shadow, a tiny speck of blue, is Nightwing.
Dick’s lungs seize. He knows this chokehold. He’s been here before.
Panic consumes him. “No! I’m done,” Dick cries. “I’m done being in Batman’s shadow! I’m my own man!”
The very ground beneath his feet ignores Dick. He sinks into the tar pit that is Robin’s shadow. Struggling only sinks him deeper, but Dick can’t help it, he can’t go back to this place, he can’t do this again –
The Robins above him laugh and laugh.
Dick’s up to his waist in tar, gauntlets desperately clawing into the pavement in front him. The blue stripes mock him. They do nothing to save him.
A duplicate of Robin I appears before him. Tiny and elfin, the innocent reflection of the demons that surround Dick.
Robin I crouches down low, smiles. No face, but he has teeth again. He’s nothing but teeth.
“In his shadow, by his side, that’s where you always want to be, Dick.”
The mouth closes, the teeth disappear. A strong wind comes through, fluttering the canary yellow cape up like curtains. Robin’s posture changes.
“That’s why you hated me, right?” says Robin II. “I got to be Robin and his son. Poor, poor Dickie-bird. You didn’t get either.”
“I never hated you!” Dick shouts. The injustice he feels makes him desperate. How can Jason remember it that way? Dick spent so much of his exceedingly little teenage brain capacity trying his damnedest to be a safe haven for Jason. He never wanted Jason to feel like Dick did – like Bruce was his only ally in the world. And if he didn’t have Bruce, he didn’t have anyone. Despite all the bullshit Dick was going through at the time with Bruce, he tried so hard not to take that out on Jason. Why is it never remembered that way? Why is he the villain in every other Robin’s story? It’s like his siblings can never remember that he was a kid once, too. Even as Nightwing. When Dick was nineteen, he’d been juggling leading a team of superheroes (and all the drama that entailed), with attempting to mend his relationship with the foster father who fired him and adopted his replacement. Meanwhile, Jason at nineteen slit Tim’s throat, just to make a point.
Robin II chuckles. “Hey, man. I get it now. He left me too.” Robin II’s voice morphs into something more dissonant. Darker, deeper, a man’s voice distorted by a voice modifier. “And look how I turned out.”
Dick feels flames on his face, the heat of an explosion, though there is no fire in sigh. (He wasn’t there, he wasn’t there.)
Robin II blows away. He’s ashes now, too.
Dick struggles after him, but he only sinks himself deep into the tar pit.
Robin III appears where Robin II used to be.
“I didn’t understand before either,” says Robin III, eyes flicking up at the giant Robin V. “But I do now. You always hate the one that comes after you.”
Dick blinks away his stupid, useless tears. “That’s not true. That’s not how you feel now,” he says. “You’re brothers. We’re family. We’re a family.” Tim and Damian may never like each other, but they don’t hate each other. They’re long past the ugly rivalry of the early days. Tim’s just filling in as Robin until Damian gets back. Damian’s going to come back and they’ll all be a family again.
Robin III shakes his head.
“Robin’s an only child,” says Robin III, “and none of us ever want to stop being Robin.”
The words leave Dick’s ears ringing. The tar pulls him in deeper. Dick doesn’t know how to save himself – how to save Tim. He fumbles through his mind, frantically searching for the right words, the right spell that will finally release Tim from Robin. Dick’s been trying his hardest to convince Tim that it’s okay to move on from the yellow cape. He’s grown past it. Tim has the right to create an identity just for himself; he doesn’t have to define himself solely as Batman’s support. But Dick can only say ‘as someone who wasted my life being an emotional crutch for Bruce Wayne, don’t waste your life being an emotional crutch for Bruce Wayne’ so many times. Nothing seems to convince Tim.
…And it’s not like Dick can lead by example.
Dick looks at the predicament he’s in. He’s about to drown in tar with five Robinzillas staring down at him. All because Batman told him to jump, and the Robin within Dick said, Got it. How high?
Defeat weighs heavy in Dick’s body. He’s trying so hard to hold on. But all he can do is press his face to the asphalt and weep.
Robin wasn’t supposed to hurt people. Robin was supposed to make them better.
Why isn’t Dick better?
Robin I yanks Dick up by the hair. He holds Dick’s head up the way a fisherman holds a trout, debating whether or not to toss it back into the ocean.
“See how pathetic you are without me?” Robin I says. “No power at all. It’s sad, Dickie. We used to always be together all the time. We used to be one. And now you’re not even second in line. You don’t even get to pick my next host.”
Dick tries to shake off the ghost, but he can’t. He just sinks deeper into the tar.
“Without me,” says Robin I, “you’re worthless, Dick Grayson. You’re nobody.”
It’s all of his worst fears, spoken aloud.
It’s all of his worst fears, spoken aloud.
“No,” says Dick. His claws grip into the concrete of the roof. Robin’s playing games with him, trying to distort Dick’s mind with his own fear and insecurities. He’s not worthless without Robin, because Robin never left him. No matter how many people wear the cape, Dick will always have been the first. “I made you.”
The tar melts off of him, like snow in spring.
“Batman, he – he makes mistakes. But he can’t take you from me. He doesn’t have that power,” Dick tells Robin I. “You’re not something I can lose. Everywhere I go, the things I learned as Robin are a part of me. The things I taught Robin to be are a part of you. Robin will always be my legacy.”
Dick can feel the words becoming more true as he speaks them. He rises to his feet.
“I had a Robin!” Dick says. “And we were the best.”
The Robinzillas splatter into fireworks. The falling lights transform into flocks of the songbird, Dick’s namesake, Robin. They fly out of sight, presumably to warmer horizons.
Robin V appears at Dick’s side.
“We were,” Robin V affirms, voice smooth and aristocratic, even though he is so young. He’s back to his first costume, the one Dick and Damian made together. “You taught me everything I needed to know, Batman.”
The old address startles Dick. He looks down at his hands. The familiar blue of his palms is gone. There is only black. So much black, all over him. The tar never came off. There’s a weight on his head that wasn’t there before.
Robin V is no longer standing next to Dick. He’s moved to confront Dick head on.
“You gave me violence,” says Robin V. “Sharpened me into an even more efficient weapon. I thought Grandfather had taught me everything there was to know, but I was wrong. Thank you, Grayson. For allowing me to inherit another legacy of blood. You were an excellent teacher.”
“Robin.” Dick’s voice has never sounded so cracked. It’s a crack that keeps breaking around him, shattering something deep and loadbearing in his heart. “I never – that’s not what I – please tell me I didn’t –”
Just under his cowl, Robin V’s gauntlet touches Dick’s cheek.
It is wet with blood. Fresh. As if he had just been cradling an open wound.
“It’s alright, Grayson.” Robin V caresses Dick’s face with something akin to reverence. It’s a gesture Dick’s only seen Damian use to soothe his pets. “This is what I wanted. What we all want.”
The wind blows. Behind Robin V, at the other end of the roof, four Robins appear like a desert mirage.
“Robin is just a temporary position,” Robin V explains. “A training ground.”
“A training ground!” The other four Robins echo around them, children’s cries in a cave.
“We all grow up to be you, Batman.” The tenderness beguiles a darkness in Robin V’s voice, a curse. “That’s our purpose.”
Dick tears himself away from Robin.
No.
That’s nowhere near close to the truth. These hallucinations, they’re going in circles, a carousel from hell that Dick wants off of now.
It’s not the first time Dick has heard this lie. From the beginning, that’s what people said about Robin. He remembers overhearing the Justice League whispering that Batman had stolen away a child to train as his successor, his replacement. But Dick and Bruce never thought of it that way. When Dick was Robin, he wanted to be Robin. His dream was to fight by Batman’s side, to be Bruce’s partner. When Dick was a kid, he thought he and Bruce would be Batman and Robin forever…it’s a shameful thought now. Humiliating. That’s why Robin I was using it against him earlier.
But that only proves his point more. Robin has nothing to do with being Batman. Dick never wanted the cowl.
He takes the stupid thing off his head and throws it to the ground.
“I never wanted this!” he says. “I took it because I had to – because no one else could do it.”
Dick took on the role of Batman out of his duty to Bruce as a son, not a Robin. Jason was too angry at the time, too unhinged. Tim and Damian were too young. Dick stepped up to keep Bruce’s family together, to fight for Bruce’s city, to save Bruce’s legacy. Dick became Batman out of love.
He didn’t do it because he was a Robin. That’s not part of Robin’s legacy. Stephanie would rather turn into an ogre before she turns into anything close to Batman. Jason is too secure in his own way of doing things to ever follow in Bruce’s path again. Tim…Timmy always swore he’d get out someday. That he’d have a normal life.
The cowl rolls towards Robin V. He picks it up, examines it like an archeologist, like an actor playing Hamlet. Alas, poor Bruce.
“I know you want to be Batman, someday,” Dick says to Robin V. “I know that’s why you stayed. But that’s not why you’re Robin now. That’s not why any of us were Robin.”
“Isn’t it?” The cowl burst into flames, into fireflies. They fill the space between the Robins and Dick with light. One stays on Robin V’s palm. With a finger, he crushes it. Flicks it off like it means nothing. “Then what was all this violence for?”
All the fireflies fall to the ground, dead. The sky is black again. In the distance, the white eyes of the other Robins shine at them, headlights in oncoming traffic.
Robin V turns his attention back to Dick. His hands clutch his red tunic. Blood seeps through the green gauntlets. The green domino mask’s gaze penetrates through Dick. It is completely lifeless.
When his nightmares come, this image is never far behind.
Dick’s dead Robin.
Robin II appears next to Dick. He barely comes up to Dick’s hip.
“Well, what did you think would happen? One dead Robin was never going to be enough for the old man,” Robin II tsks, deeply sarcastic. He smells of smoke and burning flesh. Robin II gestures shrugs his shoulders, an exaggerated ‘what can you do?’ pose. “He’s always gonna want more.”
“Batman needs a Robin.” Robin III appears on Dick’s other side. “They’ll always be a replacement.” He looks up at Dick, his mask lens wide with hope. “Just like you’ll always be here to train us for it, right, Dick?”
“Train you to do what?” Dick snaps, voice rough with grief. “Die?”
“Hey, it’s not so bad.” Robin IV sneaks up behind Dick. “Us failures are starting a club,” she says perkily. She reeks of hospital bleach. “The Dead Robin’s Club!” She swings her left hand out, gesturing. But at what? It was only them on the roof. The world stopped existing a long time ago.
“Want to join, Dick?”
Dick follows her sight-line. A fog rolled in when Dick wasn’t looking. The hilltops overhead are completely obscured by it. Hills…he’s not on the rooftop anymore. Dick looks down at his feet. There is grass and mud. There’s a tombstone.
HERE LIES MARY AND JOHN GRAYSON, BELOVED BY ALL, BETRAYED BY THEIR ONLY SON WHO COULDN’T SAVE THEM –
Dick forces his gaze away before he finishes the rest of it. This isn’t real. He’s hallucinating from the fear gas. This feels like torture because it is. He can’t let Strange and Crane win. He has to remember, he can’t keep forgetting –
A loud sound breaks his concentration. Bang, bang, bang. The earth around him rumbles, as if the ground were beating itself, punishing itself for its own existence.
And then Dick sees it. A green glove bursting through the Earth. It clings to the well-trimmed grass greedily, dragging itself out of its grave. A heaving, bloated corpse wears the suit Dick’s mama made for him. Another burst. And then another. All around Dick. As far as the eye can see. Dead Robin after dead Robin, crawling out of their graves.
Dick’s seen this movie. He runs.
This isn’t real, he tells himself. This isn’t real. That doesn’t stop him from hyperventilating.
“It’s the realest thing there is, old chum!” Robin I appears, flying beside him. He doesn’t need legs to catch up to Dick. The costume floats beside Dick effortlessly, no matter how hard he tries to outrun it.
No, no, no. It’s not true. It’s just the gas. He has to get home. Home will stop this. He just has to –
“This is what you do, Dickie,” says Robin I. Unstoppable. A force of nature. The wind itself. “Everywhere you go, you bring death.”
Behind him, all the Robins cry out. They beg Dick to save him. They moan and scream and those cries duplicate. It’s not just the Robins anymore. It’s all the kid heroes. All the children who looked at Robin and thought, that could be me, and died.
All of them dead, because of Dick.
Because of Batman.
Batman will never stop.
Gotham will always need a Batman, and Batman will always need a Robin.
“It’s not my fault!” The defense rips out him, choked and desperate. “I didn’t want this! I didn’t make you Robin!”
“You did this!” The Robins yell at him. “You made this role! You sent us to die!”
Dick’s running as fast as he can, but it’s like running on a treadmill. No matter how fast he runs, the graveyard just stretches out, longer and longer. There’s no escaping these ghosts. Dick shakes maggots out of his hair. So much death, all over.
Dick’s sobbing. He can’t stop running. Robin. He created Robin so no one would ever die again.
“It’s not my fault,” Dick’s cry is barely a whisper compared to the din of the dead.
Robin I laughs. The horrid sound rises above all the rest.
“It’s all your fault, Dick!” Robin I taunts. “If you had just been good enough for Batman to keep – if you had just stayed Robin – all these people would have lived!”
“Shut up!” The rage erupts from Dick, burning him from the inside out, like a starbolt. His hand launches out at Robin I like a missile. He yanks the cape with enough force to rip off a limb. He sends Robin sprawling into the dirt.
There’s no body to pin. Dick straddles over the red tunic anyway. The ‘R’ emblem shines brightly in the moonlight, mocking him. A wingding releases into his hand. It’s cool and solid in Dick’s grip, grounding. Dick takes it and stabs it through the yellow cape, right where Robin’s left leg would be, pinning the fabric to earth. The wound bleeds black tar.
Looking down at Robin, Dick has never felt more hatred in his life.
“This is not my fault,” he growls. “It’s yours.”
There’s no neck to squeeze. Dick can only wrap his hands around the collar. He lowers his face close enough to Robin’s that he could spit in it, if Robin had one.
“You were right the first time.” Dick doesn’t recognize his own voice, but he recognizes the fury. It feels good. It feels true. “I have been holding this in. But I do, Robin. I do hate you.”
The admission frees him. Something long caged in Dick’s heart takes flight. It fills his stomach with a giddiness, an intoxication.
There’s one surefire way to end this hallucination. Strange and Crane wanted Bruce to kill Batman, or Batman to kill Bruce. Either path would have meant self-immolation. An unacceptable outcome.
But Dick’s not like Batman. Nightwing doesn’t need a Robin.
His psyche won’t break if Robin dies tonight.
Robin I’s mask crinkles up. He smiles. His gaze flicks to Dick’s left.
Besides Dick, a baseball bat appears.
Dick knows what it’s for.
He picks it up, draws it from the earth just as King Arthur pulled his sword from the stone. It’s destiny. In his own hands, it feels right. It feels like justice.
Dick lifts up the bat.
“You’re poison,” he tells Robin I.
He swings the bat down.
“Everything bad thing that’s ever happened to me…” He winds the bat up. “It’s because of you.” The bat comes crashing down.
“You stole my name.” The hits come faster now. A relentless barrage of beatings. “You killed my brothers!”
Dick beats Robin until his own body gives out. His right leg falters, sending Dick stumbling to his knees, leaning on his left side. He heaves. His breathing so chaotic, he could be sobbing or laughing. He could be dying.
Dick looks down at the mess he’s made of himself. Tar leaks around Robin’s body. But no blood. No death.
Just the black and white domino mask staring up at Dick, happy as a clam.
Robin I giggles. “Would it be too cliché if I said, ‘that tickles’?”
Dick slams the baseball down on the ‘R’ emblem so hard the baseball bat snaps in two.
“Why won’t you just die!?”
Robin I’s giggle turn into full-bellied laughter.
“I can’t be killed, Dickie! When will that get through your thick skull? I’m the only thing eternal about you.”
“No,” says Dick, full of rage. “No,” he repeats, full of grief.
Every time Dick thinks he’s finished breaking, he finds a new way to shatter.
“Yup!” Robin I says brightly. “I’m the only reason you’ve ever mattered. Do you think B gives two shits about Dick Grayson? Please. If he loves you at all, it’s because he loved me.”
There’s no rage holding Dick up anymore. No way to argue with him. Robin’s right, he’ll always be a failure to Batman. And that…that had meant everything when Dick was Robin. When his world was only as big as him and Bruce, that had been life destroying. Apocalyptic.
But his world is bigger now. He has to remember. He has to remember.
“I’m Nightwing now,” Dick says. His voice is gruff, used up. Each word a struggle. But struggle has never stopped Dick before. “There are other people who love me.”
“Who?” Robin I squeals. “The Titans? Clark? Barbara? They were all mine first. And please don’t say the other Robins, because then I really will have to laugh!”
The other four Robins laugh for him. They’re here again. Standing over Dick like willow trees. Dick doesn’t think they ever left.
Dick bows his head, prays for names. There are people who love him that would never think to press a kiss to his forehead and call him Robin. They exist. He can taste their names on the tip of his tongue. But none come forward.
Dick’s silence feeds Robin I.
“Face it,” he says, “I’m the only reason why people have ever put up with you. Nightwing’s a failure. Tell me, Dickie, how many times has your apartment building exploded?” He laughs at his own joke. The other Robins snicker with him.
Dick closes his eyes. He takes the pain. What else can he do? What else is there?
“You can’t kill me,” Robin I says. “And you don’t want me to die. I’m the only legacy you’ll ever have.”
There’s no point in agreeing or arguing. Every tactic Dick’s tried tonight has only made things worse. He can’t keep playing this game. He’s failed. He’s lost.
“What do you want from me?” Dick asks, his voice an open wound, aching.
To his right, Robin III crouches down besides him. He rests a comforting hand on Dick’s shoulder.
“We just want you to be honest,” he says, pacifyingly.
“Yeah, Dick,” says Robin IV, crouching down on his left side. “We’re only here to help you let go.”
“Let go?” Dick’s head is buzzing. Heavy. He doesn’t understand. But he tries. He pulls the wingding out of Robin I’s cape. With an almost audible ‘boing’, Robin I spring backs to life.
Dick sinks lower. He hunches over, an exploded apartment complex.
In tandem, Robin II and V wedge themselves under Dick’s arms. They pull him to his feet. Dick immediately sinks back down. There’s pain everywhere. He’s weak. He’s so weak. He can’t do anything on his own. Robin III and IV rush to his aid.
Robin I leads the whole flock forward until they reach a freshly dug grave. HERE LIES DICK GRAYSON, A FAILURE TO –
The Robins stop Dick at the edge of grass and death. A six-foot hole that never ends.
No, this is the edge of the roof. The cars race below him, unfathomable creatures of light.
No, this is a trapeze platform. The lights are dimmed. Dick looks down into pure darkness.
“Time to let go, Dick,” says Robin I, floating in front of him. He intertwines their hands together, his glove so small and slight in Dick’s own. The image is almost angelic, divine. Robin is the only light in the darkness. “Give it up.”
Dick’s so lost. “But I already gave you up,” he tells Robin I. Saying goodbye to his family colors, saying goodbye to being a part of the dynamic duo, saying goodbye to Bruce – it had been the hardest thing he ever had to do. Dick had thought he was going to be Robin forever. Growing up is the first apocalypse. Was that not death enough?
“Geez, Dickie, do we have to spell it out for you?” Robin II says. “No! You have to give it all. You have to give us everything.”
“Don’t you understand, Grayson?” says Robin V, still so kind, still so gentle. “There’s only two options for Robins: become Batman or die.”
“And you didn’t want to be Batman,” Robin IV chimes in. “So…”
“This can’t be the only way.” Dick closes his eyes. “This can’t be my only ending.”
“It is,” Robin III explains. “We can’t both exist. Dick Grayson must die so Robin can live.”
“You’re already dead without me,” says Robin I cheerfully. “Why not just make it official?”
But Dick isn’t dead. He opens his mouth. Air rushes in. He expels it out. He’s alive. Isn’t he?
Robin I squeezes his hands, his grip is a bear-trap, shackles Dick has no hope of escaping.
“What good is a body without its soul?” explains Robin I, pulling Dick towards the edge. “You’re always clinging so hard to every scrap of life. And what for, Dickie? Nobody needs you. Every person you’ve ever loved, you’ve just made things worse for them. That’s what you do, Dick. You poison them.”
It’s true. Every life he’s touched, he’s destroyed.
He got his brothers killed; he made Bruce lose two sons. Stephanie wore his colors and then she died too. They all die. His protégés, his friends. Joey. Garth. Wally. Roy. Donna died for him. The list never stops. It sprawls so long.
He should have noticed the ropes sooner. He should have saved his parents.
But even if he had…he would have corrupted them. Those that survive…Dick only makes them worst. Bruce is the harden husk of the man Dick once knew, the man who raised him. Jason a poltergeist. He couldn’t save Catalina.
Decades of grief collapse on Dick, an avalanche that threatens to tip him over. Endure. He always endures. All this suffering has to mean something. Dick keeps moving forward because he has to, because there’s still good work to do in this world. Because Dick can still do good in the world.
And he had, as Robin.
…But he’s not Robin anymore.
Bright white lenses fill Dick’s vision.
“It would be beautiful, don’t you think?” urges Robin I. If he had a face, they’d be touching noses. “You could die just like your parents.”
It’s not like this is the first time he’s thought about it.
Dick steps a foot off the platform. He dangles it over the darkness, the way you touch a toe to the pool’s water before you jump in.
One last flight through the air. And then home.
Dick closes his eyes.
Batman lands on the roof, the sound a cataclysm.
The trapeze disappears. He’s back on the roof again. Dick stares down at the bustling street.
If he had any strength left, he’d cry. Dick wants the circus back. He wants to be where his Mama calls him Robin. He wants to go home.
“Nightwing.”
That voice. No Robin has ever been able to deny its call. They all turn to face him, Dick no different than the rest of them. All of them, the Robins, they’re just ghosts, waiting for Batman to give them a name and breathe life into them.
“Well,” Dick says, voice hoarse. It feels like he’s aged a hundred years since he last spoke. Feels like he’s dust. “It’s your turn. Why do you think I should kill myself?”
“Nightwing.” The name escapes Batman’s mouth like the hiss of a grappling gun. Almost…reflexive? So unlike Batman, to be startled. Whatever the disturbance, it quickly vanishes. Batman’s jaw locks, a grim line of determination. He settles back down into general mode. “Come towards me,” Batman orders. “Now.”
“I can jump faster than you can catch me.” It’s Robin I’s words, but they come out of Dick’s mouth.
No response.
Then, a tight voice. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Yes, he does!” says Robin I.
“Yes, you do,” the other Robins tell him.
“Yes, I do,” Dick tells Batman.
Dick’s head pounds like a screaming alarm clock. The world around him is blurry, too bright, too monstrous. The cityscape around him keeps flicking in and out. Batman stands across from Dick, the distance a black ocean, teeming with serpents. The Dark Knight, his savior. The Grim Reaper, come to collect. That’s what Bruce does – saves and damns Dick in equal measure. Dick can’t keep up. He can’t be useful. He broke. No way out, no way out.
He just wants this to end. Why won’t Batman let it end?
“Why are you here?” Dick’s voice is a bleeding gash. He’s so confused. He’s so tired. “I’m leaving, just like you wanted me to. I’m trying to do what you want me to!”
“Then obey me,” Batman snarls back, “and come to my side now.”
Anger seizes Dick, a fishhook in his guts. His body reacts immediately, fists clenching, lips twisting into a sneer. Whenever Dick feels like he’s truly become numb, Batman always knows the right words to awaken rage within him once more.
“Liar!” all the Robins say together.
Robin I dangles himself off of Dick’s shoulders. His green gloves are a noose around Dick’s neck.
“You’ve never wanted me by your side! You’ve never wanted me to stay!” The force of his yell leaves Dick panting.
Batman bears all that rage in silence. He is stone. Unreadable, unmovable, untouchable. Nothing Dick does to him will ever mean anything. No matter how much he bleeds. He’ll never leave a mark on Batman.
Is it too much to ask, Dick thinks, to be mourned by my murderer?
“Nightwing,” Batman says, calm and cold. “You are reacting to –”
“I know I’m fear-gassed, Batman!” Dick shouts. Obviously! Batman doesn’t actually have pulsing shadow tentacles. But that’s not the point. Dick’s eyes may be playing tricks on him, but his heart is true. “But all it’s done is show me the truth! You don’t care about me. You don’t want me anymore. I am trying to leave.” Dick’s voice breaks. “Let me leave!”
“Nightwing!” The name is a curse, but Batman clamps his mouth shut hard before he finishes the rest of it. His entire body recoils, tenses. When he speaks again, the pitch has changed. Smooth, controlled, distant. “You know what I feel for you. You know I have never wanted you to leave. Come. Here.”
Dick leans back on his foot, head shaking. His face completely contorted with disgust, confusion. Are there no depths to which Batman won’t sink?
“You fucking liar,” he says. “If you wanted me here, then why did you steal Robin from me?”
“I didn’t steal Robin,” Batman’s words are sharp, precise. His tone even-handed. They might as well be discussing finances. “He’s not a thing, Nightwing, he’s my son. My responsibility to raise, not yours.”
Dick looks on, utterly baffled. Batman might as well be speaking Kryptonese. When Batman’s meaning finally processes, Dick laughs. An insane, broken noise.
Robin I nuzzles into Dick’s cheek, smirking.
Of course. How could Dick forget. Robin I was right. Dick’s so far away from his own name now. He can call it out four times before his own reflection ever greets him again.
The words rush out of him. “I’m not talking about Damian,” –though, honestly that could be another psychotic break in the making– “I’m talking about Robin! Why did you steal my name from me?”
Batman flinches. It would be imperceptible to anyone else. Just the most subtle movement of his jaw.
But Dick notices. And it gives him power. A night of playing defense and losing, Dick finally has the opportunity to get on the offensive.
“Jason could have been anything, anybody.” It all spills out of him easily. He’s been holding it in for so long. “You could have given him his own mantle. You could have given them all that! Why did they have to be Robin?”
Dick throws it all out. He has a right to know why. Before he goes.
Batman is silent.
“Answer me, dammit!”
“You know he can’t,” Robin II says. “There’s nothing to say.”
“You already have the answer, Dick.” With his bo-staff, Robin III gestures off the ledge. The night sky is endless and beautiful. Robin IV nods encouragingly.
Dick waits anyway. Batman remains silent, the city’s most ancient gargoyle, its lone God. He’ll never have any answers for Dick.
Dick turns back toward the ledge.
“I’m sorry.” Batman’s words break through the sky like the first snowfall, soft and delicate and terrifying. “I was selfish. Lonely. I needed a partner, and I knew that Jason could only benefit from the guide you left. I told myself that’s why. It was a strategic decision.
“But that’s not the full truth. It was…easier to need Robin than admit to missing you. Because I did. Miss you.” Batman breaks off, ashamed. “I’ve told you this.”
“Yeah.” Dick remembers the fight they had in the Batcave when Dick first confronted Bruce about Jason. He pushed and pushed Bruce for an answer, until Bruce exploded, smashing a fist into a nearby evidence case. Glass shattered everywhere. It hadn’t frightened him, but it had left Dick feeling dirty. How could Bruce take an emotion like longing, like regret – two things so rooted in love – and turn them to rage? “And then you kicked me out again.”
Batman’s lips press together into a harsh line. Dick knows the expression as guilt. But he doesn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” Dick says, “how you can say you miss me in one breath and then force me to leave in another. And when I try to leave…you stop me. Why are you stopping me?”
“I never want you to leave!” It’s almost a cry. Batman swallows it back. Dick can see how hard his throat has to work to do it. “I just…never know how to ask you to stay. Nightwing,” says Batman. The name isn’t a curse. It’s spoken with reverence, tenderness. “How do I ask for forgiveness I don’t deserve?”
The words sing out to Dick’s heart. They call him towards Batman’s side.
Robin I’s hands around his throat stop him.
Robin V wraps a gauntlet over Dick’s wrist, tightly. “Merely lies,” he whispers in Dick’s ear, “Pretty lies.”
“None of this matters anyway!” shouts Robin I into his ear. His annoyance hums through Dick’s body like a jet engine. “What he did can’t be undone!”
The costume takes off, flying towards the center of the rooftop. Robin I thrusts his gloves up and down falls a circus tent, blanketing them all under its darkness.
Robin I turns his cruel gaze towards Dick. The mask’s white lens glare down at him like a spotlight.
“There’s no going forward for you, Dick! This is the finale!”
The circus reappears around him, cluttering the rooftop in chaos. There’s skeletons eating fire, tigers and lions fighting over a blood-soaked baseball bat, elephants trampling buildings. The bleachers are filled with corpses. Batman is still there, but he’s distant, at the very back of the audience. Nothing more than a shadow of the life Dick once had.
Dick’s on the trapeze platform, looking down at them all.
The finale, Robin I had said. Dick remembers how it goes. If he jumps, surely his papa’s hands will reach out to catch him. He’ll toss Dick flying upwards, until he flips into mama’s arms. Dick just needs to swing hard enough, catch enough momentum. He just needs one good jump.
But there’s a pain stopping him. He can’t put pressure on his right leg. There’s no way he can jump like this.
That’s how it always goes. Dick’s past failures damn him. The finale is on and he’s missing his cue. Dick’s trapped, stuck in this limbo of being dead and not dead. Robin and not Robin. He just wants this performance to be over.
He’ll never get back home. No one will ever touch a hand to his shoulder and say, Impressive Robin. No one will ever scoop him up and press kisses all over his face, crooning my little Robin ever again.
“I want to go home, B,” Dick confesses. “I just want to go home. But I can’t make the jump,” He looks down at his right leg again. There’s a wingding sticking out of it. “I stabbed my leg. I can’t make the jump.”
Dick eyes find Batman. He’s the only one standing in the crowd.
Batman’s eyes narrow, two punishing crescent moons. Every Robin knows that look; they lie in wait for the rebuke. The Robin in Dick’s chest cries. Here’s the part where Bruce tells him Dick’s worthless to Batman if he can’t do better, be better. He doesn’t need a partner who only slows him down. Doesn’t need a Robin.
Doesn’t need Dick.
He waits for the rebuke, his sentence. He can almost smell his own death in the air.
“I can carry you.”
The words shock Dick, restart his heart like a defibrillator. And then they crush him. Shame, so much shame. Dick could drown under it.
Dick shakes his head. “You can’t. I’m dead weight.”
“Worse,” Robin I corrects.
“Worse,” Dick agrees. “I’m poison. I don’t know why I was so mad before. You were right to fire me, Batman.”
Dick pours every earnest part of him into his next works. He means them so sincerely. “The others…they’re so much better for you than I ever was. You don’t need me. You’ve never needed me. You can leave me here. It’s alright.”
Batman’s reply is harsh. “The toxin is affecting your head, Nightwing.”
It is. Dick’s shakes his head. Below him, the rooftop returns to being a rooftop. But he is still on the trapeze.
“Be logical,” Batman continues on, urgent. “What would I have to gain by leaving you here?”
(Neither of them say die.)
Robin I speaks with Dick’s voice. “Well, you don’t have anything to lose. You already have a Robin,” Dick chuckles darkly. Robin I titters above him. “Hell, right now, you have two!”
“You’re not Robin,” Batman flings the words so casually. Like they don’t open a gaping chasm in Dick, like Batman didn’t rip the ‘R’ off of Dick’s chest and take his heart with it.
“You’re Nightwing,” Batman continues on, oblivious to his carnage. “I have that to lose.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” screams Robin I. His whine is a roar.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Dick repeats, dead-faced. He’s poured everything out of himself now. There’s nothing left to give. His voice has already given up. It’s just the rest of him that needs to catch up.
Dick sways over the edge.
“Dammit, Dick, it means everything!” Batman gives into the fury he’s been choking down their whole conversation. The flash of honesty lights up Dick’s sky, a single bolt of lightning.
Dick still has one foot over the edge, but Batman has his attention now.
“Dick,” Batman repeats slow, deliberate. Batman never approves of names in the field. To use Dick’s real name twice now, it must be a tactical decision. It’s the right one. The Robins squirm around Dick, dissatisfied with being unaddressed.
“He’s lying!” spits Robin IV. “He just doesn’t want more blood on his hands.”
“You’re ruining everything, Dickhead!” hisses Robin II. “You’re supposed die in a place he can’t see!”
“Dick,” says Batman. “You save me.”
Something in Dick’s memory turns. His head clears, ever so slightly.
“You’ve said that to me before,” Dick says, eyes scanning for the memory. It makes him feel more real. “After our first big run in with the Court, remember? You said that you didn’t save me from some dark fate, that I saved you. ‘And you still are saving me, every day’.” Dick can quote it verbatim. Bruce’s praise is so rare, his verbosity even more so. It’s one of Dick’s most fiercely guarded memories. Because when Bruce told him that, Dick believed him.
He’s not sure he still does.
“But which me did you mean?” Dick’s words are desperate, a child pleading for answers. “Did I save you,” Dick asks Bruce, “or did Robin?”
“Dick,” says Bruce, breathless in the way only confusion can make him. “There’s never been of version of you that hasn’t saved me.”
Tears well up in Dick’s eyes. They run through his mask.
Bruce’s words lend Dick some courage. Enough for him to ask the question he’s been afraid of for the last decade.
“Then why do you only want Robin and not me? Why am I not good enough?”
Bruce’s reply is immediate. “You can’t think that,” he says, recoiling as if Dick hit him. “Dick. By now – after everything – you must know what Nightwing means to me.”
Dick shakes his head. He didn’t think it meant anything to Bruce. A soldier for the flock, but not the nest. No one of importance.
Bruce opens his mouth. The words leave. His fists clench, trembling as if he were the one dosed with fear gas. Dick can’t save him. He doesn’t need to. Bruce opens his mouth once more.
“Dick, you more than anyone know my many failures when it comes to being a guardian,” Bruce swallows, “being a father. So many mistakes. So many things I can’t undo.” Bruce squeezes his fists tighter together. This is where Bruce’s feelings for Dick always lead – rage, pain.
Bruce breathes. The black cape billows to the side, as if it were an extension of his long exhale. He takes off his cowl.
There’s no rage on his face. No anger. Only awe.
Only love.
“But when I look at you – when I look at what you’ve become – I feel the way a father should when he looks at his son. I feel pride.” Bruce smiles. It’s a thin, damaged thing. Would barely count as a smile on anyone else. But on Bruce, on Bruce it is beautiful.
“Nightwing…he’s the only thing I’ve ever done right. Don’t you understand, Dick?” Bruce’s plea breaks into a growl. “Nightwing is my hope. The only one I have.”
Bruce walks forward. His face is determined, resolute.
“I know you know this. You must know this. Fight back, Dick! You’re stronger than these delusions.” Bruce’s eyes shine bright, alight with a sincerity Dick’s never seen before. “You’re the strongest man I know.”
Dick’s face is wet with tears. He looks down at his bleeding leg.
He’s not on a trapeze. There’s no great distance between him and Bruce. They’re just on a rooftop.
How did he get here?
Dick looks up at Robin I. A floating albatross that’s been stunned to silence.
And in that moment, the lie reveals itself.
When Dick was Robin, a part of him deep inside – the part of him that breaks and then never heals right – was afraid Bruce only loved Dick for Robin. Bruce Wayne had been a ghost to Dick when he first got to Wayne Manor. As glittering as a crystal dish and just as shallow. It was Batman that bonded with Dick. Batman that shared his grief, his skills, his attention. And Dick only got to stay close to Batman if he was useful to the mission, if he was Robin.
Even after Dick got to know the real Bruce and loved him too, that first fear never left. It wiped its grubby little hands over everything in Dick’s life, but Dick ignored it as best he could. He was never one to pay close attention to his fears.
The problems came when Bruce started to have fears too. The more he relied on Dick, the more he loved him, the worse those fears got. That Bruce would lose him. That Bruce would get him killed. So he started to push Dick away. He shut Dick out of his kind smiles, his dry sense of humor. There were no jokes anymore. Only training and obedience. Bruce picked a fight over every display of autonomy Dick expressed. Batman came down on Robin harder and harder.
Classic orphan trauma. Dick should have been able to spot it for what it was as a teen. But he missed it. Bruce was still so untouchable in his eyes. He didn’t understand how fucked up the guy really was. You don’t really figure that out about your parents until you’re ten years older, high as fuck on fear toxin, about to jump off a roof.
But for Dick, at that time, Bruce’s behavior only encouraged Dick’s worst coping mechanisms. He threw himself fully into proving to Batman that he was a worthy partner, that Robin could stand on his own two feet. He broke further and further away from Batman’s shadow, not realizing that Bruce didn’t want him to leave.
Bruce didn’t know how to ask him to stay. He could only tighten his grip around Dick, until Robin itself started to feel like a chain around Dick’s throat, a cage. Dick may have been the one to build it, but Bruce had the key. This was the first time Dick hated Robin.
Dick had outgrown the role – at least, how Batman was defining it – but Dick wasn’t ready to let go of Bruce. He didn’t know how to be family to Bruce without being Robin.
So when Batman fired Dick from Robin, ostensibly to protect Dick from mortal harm, it hadn’t felt like protection. It hadn’t felt like worry or fear or love. It had felt like exile. Batman had fired Dick from Bruce’s life.
So Dick left. Why would he stay? He wasn’t Bruce Wayne’s son.
But he is, though. That’s the thing. It snuck up on both of them when they weren’t looking.
And sons…they never stop seeking their father’s approval.
Nightwing was gonna prove to Bruce that he didn’t need him, in the same breath he was going to make Bruce so proud of him. God, what a train of logic. Dick never wants to be a teenager again. Dick may not have been Robin anymore, but he still hadn’t let go of Robin’s mentality.
Robin…this whole night, Robin I has been trying to convince Dick that his connection to Batman is both what solely defines him and what makes him worthless. He had some good talking points, Dick’s not gonna pretend otherwise. Enough truth to be distracting. But all that stuff was just decoration, the frosting on top of Robin I’s main point: Dick is only useful if he’s Batman’s Robin, and if he’s not that, if he’s someone else now, that person is so worthless he should just go die.
Those are the fears of a child.
Love doesn’t work like that.
Bruce’s love is not the cornerstone of Dick’s identity. He doesn’t exist just to be a thing that Bruce loves and he won’t stop existing if one day Bruce stops loving him. Dick’s already proved that to himself by becoming Nightwing. There’s nothing to fear there anymore.
Bruce’s love isn’t a finite resource. That’s harder to admit. When Bruce gave Robin to Jason, it sure had felt like that. Like Dick was being evicted from his place in Bruce’s heart, so Jason could take over the lease. Dick buried those feelings deep down because he knew they weren’t fair; he was ashamed of having them. But they didn’t disappear. He dug a grave. Each new Robin fed that insecurity in Dick, in one way or another. Dick carved a hole in himself and filled it with all the feelings he knew he could never look at closely, too afraid of who they would hurt.
It doesn’t help that Bruce is an asshole. Often, and loudly. Like Dick’s already said, Robin I made some good points.
But his premise is fundamentally unsound.
Dick can see that clearly now. He can see the truth in Bruce’s face, shining at him with so much conviction.
Love hurts. Of course it hurts. But that’s not all it does.
Bruce’s love, it’s Dick’s strength. And vice versa. They’re stronger together.
Only a child would believe that means Dick isn’t strong on his own.
All it means is that he’s loved.
It’s all so clear now. There’s nothing to fear.
“I can’t make the jump, Bruce.”
Batman tenses, a spring ready to pounce.
Dick hobbles away from the edge, careful not to put too much pressure on his bad leg.
“Not alone. Carry me?”
Dick offers up his open arms. He smiles, just a bit of tease behind his lips. It can’t hide the overwhelming sincerity in Dick’s eyes. The love there. The trust.
Batman rushes in. It’s a hug and a restraining hold all at once. The action is so achingly Bruce it makes Dick laugh. He keeps laughing as he buries himself in the embrace. Dick soaks in his dad’s warmth, relishes the feeling of complete safety that Bruce’s arms always bring.
“You’re really here,” says Dick. He doesn’t mean to sound so awed.
“Of course,” replies Bruce, sounding honestly so disgruntled at the idea that Dick could have ever thought otherwise. It knocks another soft giggle out of him.
“Hey, cut me some slack,” says Dick. His smile stretches wide across his face. The pure fondness he has for this man makes him feel light enough to float. To fly. “I’ve been hallucinating five different Robins all night. Who’s to say I can’t hallucinate a Batman coming to my rescue?”
Bruce pulls back from the hug, just enough to stare down at him. Bruce’s eyes are piercing, pure sky.
“You’re the only one I see,” he says. “It’s just you here, Dick.”
Dick has to hug him again. Bruce lets him stay in the embrace for a long time.
Eventually, he breaks away, focused on inspecting Dick’s stab wound. While he works, Dick spots the cowl on the ground. He picks it up and places it back on Bruce’s head. There. Now they are both patching each other up.
When Dick looks up, he sees the Robins. I-V all lined up, watching them. Ten white eyes, wide and unblinking, like owls. They have no faces. A row of empty suits in a memorial case.
They’re just ghosts. Just orphans.
Sympathy swells in Dick.
“I don’t hate you,” he tells them. “I don’t want you dead.”
Bruce tenses, assuming the words are directed at him, but there’s no time to console him, not now.
Dick has to say this out loud, while he can still see them. Because yes, it’s true. The Robin mantle provokes more complicated feelings in Dick than he’s cared to admit. He’s been afraid to admit. It’s so much harder to face the fears that don’t have easy resolutions.
But it’s not in Dick’s nature to stay a coward for long.
“I love every single one of you.” It’s true. Every person who has ever worn the ‘R’ on their chest, every person who ever passed that ‘R’ along. Dick’s loved them. Even himself. It’s easy to forget that. But that little boy in those scaly green panties, Dick loves him so much.
That love makes him strong.
“But you’re not my whole world,” Dick says. “You’re a piece of me. I’m a piece of you. But we’re not the same anymore.” There’s grief. Dick lets himself feel it. He doesn’t have to be afraid of grief.
The Robins watch him, silent.
“I forgive you for that,” he’s speaking to the Robins, but he’s speaking to Bruce too. And based on the grip on Dick’s wound, Bruce knows it. “I’m giving you your freedom, okay? This is my permission. We can both exist.”
His eyes linger on Robin II, III, IV, and V. It’s impossible not to smile.
“Look at you,” Dick says. “Look at who you are. You’ve done so much good without me.”
His eyes fall onto to Robin I.
“And I do good without you,” Dick says. “I exist without you. I have my own mission now. My own life.”
Dick leans over. It’s awkward, with Bruce so focused on patching his leg up, but Dick hugs him anyway. He has a point to make.
“This is my dad,” Dick says. “He loves me. You’re not a part of this.”
One by one, the Robins disappear, smoke on the horizon.
Even the sky is calm now, a warm charcoal.
Finally, Dick breathes.
It’s just him now.
Bruce looks up at him, jaw locked into a firm line of worry. He searches Dick’s face for signs of lucidity.
“Dick?”
“I’m here,” Dick affirms. I’m Dick Grayson. He looks down at his hands. Admires the blue palms. Flexes his fists to see the stripes. And right now I’m Nightwing.
Joy fills him up. It doesn’t leave any room for fear.
“I’m okay,” Dick assures him. “I think the hardest part has passed.”
The wind blows past them. Gentle, this time. Friendly. Gotham’s beautiful when you know where to look. And Dick knows of no better place to find that beauty that on top of some skyscraper.
Bruce finishes tying the bandage with a small, if exhausted, sigh of relief.
Dick can’t resist.
“But I meant what I said earlier,” he says, cocking a grin. “You’re going to have to carry me.”
Bruce grunts. He wraps an arm around Dick’s waist, pulling him to his feet.
Dick leans against him.
It’s like being caught by a safety-net. It’s coming home.
Beside him, Bruce aims his grapple into the sky. Dick follows the line of sight to the horizon, sees the shimmering skyline, still intact. Things must have gone okay for everyone else, too.
“No magic battle with giant, riddling, penguins?” Dick asks, just to be sure.
Bruce grunt-chuckles. “Not tonight.”
It’s second nature for Bruce to shoot the grapple and swing them forward. They’ve done this a million times before and will do it a million times again. Flying through the night, they are too alive to be a memory. Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Batman and Nightwing. Not the shadow of Batman and Robin, but the promise.