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The day Dick leaves Gotham, it’s warm and almost sunny. It feels like an insult—like it knows he’s going, like it knows he isn’t sure if he’ll ever come back, like it wants to show him just what he’s missing out on.
Well, fuck that, he thinks, slinging his bag over his shoulder. There’s a whole world he’s been missing out on. Gotham can rot.
He leaves on a Tuesday, a slow day, and he goes straight to New York City. He’s been there before, of course, but never like this. Never as a superhero.
His motorcycle growls under him as he goes, no one knowing his plans, not even Babs. No one is going to come after him, not today at least.
It’s freeing in a way he never thought he’d get to feel again.
Years ago, when Dick was still a kid, he heard stories. Amazing, fantastical stories of heroes just like them. He learned their names from the newspapers and files on Bruce’s computer, learned that they called themselves the Justice League.
He remembers the day Superman came to Gotham. It was a normal day, downcast and dreary, the bright lights of ambulances and police cars providing light the sun rarely did. He remembers the way everyone on the streets peered up at the alien, hovering there in all his glory, cape hanging limp around his shoulders. He remembers the suspicion, not only from the civilians and from Dick and from Bruce, but from Superman too.
Still, Superman was there for them. He told the people he wanted to speak to Batman, and did anyone know where he could find him? That was a no. Then was there anywhere he could go where Batman might meet him, anyone who had some way to contact him? That was also a no.
You should stop trying, someone said, and Superman smiled his big performer’s smile, and replied, I’m sorry, but it’s just too important.
Batman, meanwhile, watched from down below. He was Bruce Wayne, and Dick was Dick Grayson, and as far as they both knew, Batman and Robin were nothing more than a myth.
You should join the Justice League, Dick says when he’s ten years old and hopeful.
No, Bruce says.
You should join the Justice League, Dick says when he’s fourteen and realistic.
No, Bruce says.
I’m going to join the Justice League, Dick says when he’s seventeen and furious.
No, Bruce says. No, you are not.
Dick is nineteen now. And he’s not joining the Justice League—he’s joining the Titans.
There were three kid sidekicks other than himself. Their names were Aqualad, Speedy, and Kid Flash, and they appeared as quickly as they went away. Not dead, Superman assured the media, flashing a different smile than the last, but no less fake. We realized kids have no place in this world, that’s all, and we’ve sent them home. They deserve to have their innocence a while longer.
Dick remembers sitting in front of the small TV in the kitchen, a bowl of cereal in front of him. He remembers that Bruce and Alfred were busy talking about Lucius, and hardly noticed the quieted report, though of course Bruce already knew everything about the sidekicks.
It was the first time Dick saw pictures of them in battle—a red blur, a cheeky smile through the curve of a bow, a fierce look of concentration as a wave rose behind him. It was the first time he ever saw other heroes his age, and he remembers thinking that it didn’t matter how long they got to fight—they had. If they were anything like him, they wouldn’t be able to stop. If they were anything like him, their innocence was gone already, and it was pointless to pretend otherwise.
The Titans are his age. There are only four of them: Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Changeling, and Raven. They’re beautiful, and strong, and so comfortable with each other that Dick’s own discomfort seems all the more amplified. When they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, skeptical of him, it’s obvious he doesn’t belong.
But he’s come this far, and being so close to them is electrifying, so he’s not about to back down. Hell no.
“Show us what you’ve got,” Wonder Girl says, and it’s obvious to him she doesn’t believe that he’s really Robin. Which he’s not anymore—Robin is something he left behind in Gotham.
But. Still.
It’s muscle memory to reach for his utility belt while he spars with them, but he holds off. He doesn’t need gadgets to fight, and more than that, he doesn’t need gadgets to outsmart and beat them. All of them.
“I think he’s telling the truth,” Changeling pants, keeled over on the ground as a dog. He’s so comfortable with his powers, and it’s like nothing Dick has ever seen before, and he wants the chance to get used to it.
They all look at him with sharp, pointed suspicion. Robin is a myth, Cyborg had said. Even more than Batman. A dark bird that flies in the shadows of the shadows. A secret protected by Gotham’s underbelly.
“Hm,” says Wonder Girl, who shares a look with Raven.
Dick knows a lot about them. He knows their names—Donna, Vic, Gar—and he knows their powers. He knows Wonder Girl is Wonder Woman’s sister, and he knows that Cyborg was in an accident, and he knows that Changeling used to be called Beast Boy.
He doesn’t know Raven.
She sits him down and they talk, and it’s nice, because she’s just as awkward as he is. And when she finally looks to the others and declares he’s telling the truth, he finally decides to let his hopes up.
“So does that mean Bruce Wayne is Batman?” Vic asks.
“No,” Dick says after a moment. “Bruce is…well, you’ve probably seen him. He’s kind of a drunk. He had no idea I was going out so often.”
“So then who is Batman?” Gar doesn’t try and hide his curiosity.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Dick replies seriously, and laughs at the face Gar makes.
Bruce tells the media that he’s taking a gap year in Europe, backpacking with some friends.
Kids these days, the host says with an amused eye roll.
They never know what’s best for them, Bruce agrees. I hope he’ll come home soon. He belongs here with us. Eventually, I think, he’ll realize that.
Dick turns the TV off.
Their eyes track him as he stands high above them. He breathes out, measured, shifts his weight. Jumps.
Does a flip. Does another, and another.
“Do it again!” Gar demands once Dick comes up for air, wiping pool water off his forehead. Even Raven is there, standing out of the splash zone, and all of them have stars in their eyes. Donna said they’re going to shell out for some uneven bars for him.
“He’s gonna get dizzy,” Vic says, but he doesn’t complain when Dick swims back over to the ladder.
He cuts his hair and puts in contacts that make his eyes brown like his dad’s used to be, and he goes and gets a job. Bartending, even though he’s too young. He doesn’t dare use any of the money Bruce has left in his account to buy a fake ID—instead, he follows leads to find the best of the best. It’s New York City, so the card looks as real as any other. He uses the name Richard Alfred Greyson, and when he’s not at the Tower, he’s at this bar.
It’s run down and always sticky and it’s certainly not what he expected for himself. But it’s fun to be there, exciting to learn all the different ways to make a drink. Sometimes Donna and Vic come to visit him, and that’s great too. He’s only ever really had four friends: Zitka the elephant, Bruce, Alfred, and Babs. The Titans are slowly inching their way onto that list.
An alien named Kory comes crashing to earth, and fights alongside them, and it feels like she’s always been there. That’s ridiculous, he knows, but her presence feels right.
She kisses him, and he lets himself melt into it, but then Gar is interrupting because of course he is, and—
Kory gives compliments so easily. She smiles at him and touches him and they talk, they talk for hours.
She meets him outside the bar after work, and walks him home, and they linger in the hall, not wanting to say goodnight.
They fight a man calling himself the Terminator, and he says that Dick’s fighting is familiar, and asks what they call him.
Robin, Dick doesn’t say. Robin isn’t him anymore. Not like that. He mourns the loss of memories, his mother’s voice faded and gone. When he thinks of people calling him Robin, he remembers Jim Gordon asking Batman, Is it true? Is Robin real? Did you seriously bring a kid into this shit?
He doesn’t know what to say, so he just hits harder.
Roy Harper blows into the city one afternoon, and comes by the Tower with a look in his eye that Dick can’t quite understand. He’s hotter in real life than any grainy picture could ever do justice.
“I’m just here for O—Green Arrow,” he tells Donna, crossing his arms. Which are huge, by the way. “Just visiting. I’m not a superhero anymore, you can’t rope me into joining the team.”
Donna touches her lasso thoughtfully, and Roy takes a step back.
She doesn’t, but she does convince him to go out to eat with them. Dick finds himself squished between Raven and Vic at a pizza place, wondering why they had to paired together—Donna is more than aware of how awkward they all are. Raven is totally unused to this world, Vic so self conscious of his hardware, and Dick the son of a reclusive, mentally ill man.
Across the table, Gar sticks his tongue out at them.
Roy is hot. It’s pure, simple fact. He’s also fucking annoying.
He steals Dick’s honey buns and feels no remorse at all, eats them right in front of him and shares the last one with Kory, and laughs when Dick threatens him with bodily harm.
“I don’t get it,” Kory says over breakfast. “Why doesn’t Batman join the Justice League? Why hold off so long?”
“Because he’s a stubborn prick,” Donna says frankly, slurping her coffee.
Raven is laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, and somehow it isn’t weird at all.
He lays down beside her, exhausted from work, and they don’t talk.
He falls asleep listening to her breathe, and when he wakes up, blissfully rested, she’s still there, passed out in her school clothes, and someone has draped a blanket over them which is definitely weird.
Later, Kory asks them about their nap, and his chest fills with warmth. He says, “It was good. Really good.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Vic says, crouched down behind a car beside Dick, who still hasn’t picked a name. The news has picked up on his presence, and have been asking for something to call him.
Dick smiles at him, a showman’s smile, and runs off to save a family before Mammoth can crush them.
You’re going to get yourself killed, Dick said once.
I’ll be fine, chum, Bruce replied. He came home with bullet wounds, and Dick had to press against them while Alfred stitched him up to make sure his stupid dad didn’t fucking die.
The Titans have an infirmary bay, and Dick spends all together way too much time there. But it’s something he can’t help, something the others learn soon enough—Dick will go to any length to save people, to win fights.
“You learn that shit from Batman?” Vic asks. He’s sitting in the chair, much more comfortable than anything a hospital would have, with a clunky laptop in his lap. His feet are up on the bed, crossed at the ankle.
“What shit,” Dick mumbles. The light hurts his eyes, and he knows Vic can tell, and he’s not surprised that Vic doesn’t turn them off.
“The martyr shit. We’re a team, you know. We help each other out. You have to communicate with us.”
You have to communicate with me sometime, Bruce.
“I know. I know I do.” Dick is thankful for the lights, suddenly. He doesn’t want to open his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’ll work on it.”
“You had better. I don’t like seeing you in this place. None of us do.”
“I know,” Dick whispers.
Wally West can talk a mile a minute, and his brain works absolute wonders, helping them figure out how to reverse some bullshit Brother Blood concocts. He flirts with Raven, and tells stories about Donna, and offers to bring some of his aunt’s cookies next time they see him.
He also hates having powers, and doesn’t bother to hide it.
Best of all, he thinks Batman is a tool, and isn’t afraid to say it right to Dick’s face.
Dick is sitting on the couch when he gets a call from Alfred. Guilt pools inside him as he lets it go to voicemail. It’s a conversation he’s been avoiding—Dick ran away from Gotham, from Bruce and Babs and the feeling of being totally controlled and ignored. He didn’t think when he did it, wanting freedom, knowing that he could find it in New York.
An unintended consequence. He didn’t mean to run away from Alfred, but he did it anyway.
He doesn’t want Bruce to know what he’s done—though he’s sure Bruce does know, and has known the whole time—and if Bruce can’t know, neither can Alfred. So he doesn’t answer when his grandpa calls, and often doesn’t listen to the voicemails, because he doesn’t hate himself that much.
Something tells him to listen, this time.
He doesn’t get up, just flips his phone open there on the couch and then Alfred’s voice is in his ear.
Master Dick…I don’t know where you are, or if you will care, but I thought I ought to tell you before you found out some other way. Master Bruce has taken in a new child.
What.
A boy. He’s twelve. His name is Jason. He even kind of looks like Dick, just a hell of a lot paler and somehow more suspicious and contagiously happy in a way that’s always eluded Dick. It eluded Bruce, too, but he thinks maybe now it’s found its way to him.
Dick goes to the gym and he doesn’t think about some kid he’s never met before taking on his family’s colors, his family’s name, his place in the Manor, in Gotham. He especially doesn’t think about how it won’t be long at all before Jason is feeling as stifled as Dick was, because Bruce is a terrible control freak who thinks he owns people.
“Want to spar?” Kory asks later, when his knuckles are raw from the punching bag.
He jerks his chin up, nodding, and they go at it for hours, until his legs are jelly and there’s actually a stitch in his side. She sits with him in the hot tub, after, and they talk about her home and her other training and about Jason.
Joey Wilson joins the team and flirts outrageously with Dick. They all play games, trying to get used to having a new member around, and he fits in perfectly.
He tells them about his dad, his mom, his brother. His accident. They learn sign language and give each other sign names, and Dick finds it hilarious that everyone calls him Lion.
They meet Aqualad, too, and it’s shocking how shark-like his smile is. He shakes Dick’s hand and gets Donna in a headlock and swims with Gar. They throw Wally a birthday party, and Roy attends too, and Dick remembers the first time he saw them.
They’re adults now, all of them a year or two or three older than him, and Roy is a CIA agent, and Wally works in a lab with his uncle, and Aqualad—Garth—says he helps rescue animals from plastic and oil.
Donna takes photos of everyone, including Gar pushing Wally’s face into his cake, and his utter rage is caught perfectly. They laugh about it for ages, and Dick gets a lot of the pictures printed out. He frames them on his walls, and when he wakes up in the late mornings, they’re there to greet him.
Donna and Kory and Gar and Raven can fly, and they do, all the time. Dick burns with jealousy until he realizes he can just ask if they’ll take him. And when he does, they say of course they will, and Gar calls him a dummy, but it doesn’t even matter. He gets to fly again.
He makes sure Vic and Joey get to come, too, and even though he’s with Donna, Raven and Joey, and they’re a few yards away from Kory, Vic, and Gar, Vic’s delighted laugh fills the air.
Dick closes his eyes and breathes in, and finds that he fucking loves these people.
Kory falls asleep with her head in his lap one afternoon. They’re outside in her garden, which she’s been thinking about expanding, and the sun is shining down on them and it’s the most relaxed he’s felt in ages.
When she wakes up, she blinks at him, smiling. “You make a good pillow.”
“I’m in love with you,” Dick blurts.
Kory sits up, a pleased flush to her cheeks, and says, “I love you too, you silly man,” and then she leans forward and kisses him.
They end up making out in her garden, and have to stop because a bee won’t stop buzzing by their faces, which turns out to be Gar, who immediately goes and tells absolutely everyone they know, even Dick’s boss which is so embarrassing.
Roy sends him a text that says, “Congrats on finally getting your head out of your ass!!!” and Wally calls to complain that he lost a bet because Dick couldn’t wait three freaking days.
When Garth hears about it, he laughs and laughs, and wrestles with Dick in the pool until Donna comes and pretends to save him.
They fight Trigon, and it’s the worst fight he’s ever lived through, every inch of him aching with pain. Donna sees how Raven is shaking, and says, “We’re having a sleepover tonight,” and no one complains even though Gar snores like a foghorn.
He ends up being spooned by Kory, his face in Vic’s back, and they sleep all night long.
In the morning, he manages to make everyone omelets, curling himself around Kory while they debrief.
For a while, they sit together and don’t talk.
Then Joey puts an orange slice in his mouth, smiles real big and widens his eyes as much as he can, and pretends to tickle Gar, and the tension breaks. Somehow, they manage a laugh.
When Dick turns 20, he spends it with family.
Gar tries to push his face into the cake, and Kory presents him with a handmade gift, and Wally makes gagging noises when their kiss goes on for too long. Vic gives him new tech, and Roy gives him a honey bun, and Donna threatens to punch him if he says “You didn’t have to” one more time. Garth and Raven both actually sing happy birthday for him, and it’s one of the best days of his entire life.