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His eyes were brighter than they had ever seen. His cheeks pudgy in youth. His hair was curled by his ears and frizzy from play.
For the first time, Dick Grayson was a child in Wayne Manor.
His younger, now much older, siblings didn't know how to handle him. They didn't know what to do with a Dick Grayson who was this open in his expressions, this giving with his emotions. They didn't know how to talk to a Dick Grayson who didn't know how best to talk to them, who didn't feel responsible for them all.
This Dick Grayson, Dickie, had no responsibility at all. His shoulders were free from the weight of the world; the weight of Gotham and Blüdhaven, the weight of being the eldest child, the weight of having to teach his parent how to parent, the weight of leadership and the lives that depend on him.
Dickie flew higher and faster than anyone had ever seen.
Dick was Icarus with metal wings and glued feathers. Always one step away from the scorching sun or the bottomless sea.
Dickie was a bird. He flew with wings of bone and sinew and feathers natural and his own. The bright sun and the glittering sea were nothing to fear.
He was Robin. Born as spring bloomed, flying before he could walk.
There was talk, at first, when Zatanna told them all that Dick was now Dickie for a few weeks, about telling the boy the truth. The truth that his parents’ wings had been clipped and that he had moved into Wayne Manor. Dickie was old enough, they first thought. Dick had been de-aged to a day before that fatal fall. If he was mature enough to run through Gotham chasing Tony Zucco, he was mature enough to know the truth.
And then they went upstairs.
Dickie, swamped in an oversized t-shirt — one that was definitely Dicks, it was an old Haly's Circus design — was playing with plastic toy dinosaurs in the family room. He smiled at them, bottom front teeth missing, gleefully happy to see them all despite knowing none of them, despite only having been there one day, despite not remembering his parents ‘dropping him off’ but accepting their story anyway.
Dickie picked up the tyrannosaurus toy and shoved it in their direction, roaring at them, the ferociousness tempered by his giggles, and suddenly they all remembered that this boy, this child, was eight.
This child had known nothing in life but love and kindness and hope and dreams and traveling and community and family and flying and performing. He was not raised wanting; whether it be food, attention, or safety. He was not raised to hurt. He was not born with a sword in his hand.
He was born with wings and a heart that longed for the sky above.
He was Robin.
And so they decided. They would not tell him.
They would let Dick experience a childhood he never got to finish, a childhood that wasn't cut short by a pair of cut wires, a childhood that wasn't darkened by death.
They would let Dickie be a child.
They only had him for a few weeks. Soon, the time would arrive for the cruel and the mean, the moment when Dick would wake up and learn all over again that his family died falling, and yes, he would be devastated all over again, but he would be old enough and mature enough to bounce back again like a trampoline, to process his grief again, to enjoy the experience of a childhood not tainted by blood.
But Dickie…not him. They wouldn't let him know. Couldn't. They vowed to keep it from him, to stop the pain and the tragedy they knew would come, that sweet boy deserved better.
There was no room in his dreams, his dreams of flight and laughter and love, for regrets and pain and loss.
In sweetness, in kindness, in love, they would keep the secret buried down and out of his reach.
Keeping the secret was much more difficult than they all had anticipated. They knew that Dick was curious, a detective, but they'd miscalculated how early those tendencies came about, had forgotten that it was Dick who had discovered Batman and not him telling the boy.
They had to curtail his curiosity with showmanship and shiny objects. They bought him new toys and let him pick out decorations for his room; he was enthralled by his new dinosaurs and the glow-in-the-dark dragonfly stickers he got to stick above his bed like stars. Dickie enjoyed being a proud animal, a just king of the dinosaurs, and would reign over his siblings and the pets he had wrangled with a bloodthirsty roar and tackled hugs.
Dickie had to be convinced to stop swinging on the chandeliers, just as Dick had been, and would swing extra hard and fast on the bars in the gymnasium to scare them all in retaliation. Dickie gathered them all into the room and performed the Flying Grayson routine, beaming wider than any of them had ever seen, glowing and practically vibrating in pride and excitement at their applause at the end; their encouragements to go ‘higher and higher’ and ‘wilder and lighter' and ‘way to go, tiger!’ feeding him. He was a performer in his heart, in his blood, and that would never truly leave him.
Dickie hadn't ever stayed in one place for this long, and he was already a flight risk, so trips outside became a must. Dickie explored the jungle gym they had long ago built for Dick with a critical eye before deciding on a favorite spot on the swing set — it would go much higher than the others — and a favorite set of monkey bars. He would swing and climb and leap and soar and he would giggle and laugh and scream and live. Dicke took great pride in doing something they all warned him would be dangerous; the tallest tree was scaled, the swings were flipped off of, the bars performed atop. Danger and risk called his name and sung their siren song in his blood and his soul called right back to them.
They watched him play and wondered when was the last time a child in this family was truly a child. Had it ended with two gunshots in an alleyway? Was the Wayne family doomed to have their children grow up too early?
Maybe this was a blessing, they agreed, when Dickie decided after it rained to completely cover himself in mud, looking ridiculous, and chase them around trying to get them all dirty. Maybe this light was needed. There was too much darkness in their lives.
Dickie was so open, so free with his emotions, so unbridledly honest and happy. He had no idea. He had no idea the work they put in to keep the secret that was hidden behind the clock. Pulling curtain strings like you pulled trapeze strings.
They loved Dickie. They loved him so much. But they missed Dick. Dick was in the echo of everything Dickie did. They saw Dick in the way Dickie climbed out of windows and just hung there, and like he trying to recreate the sounds of his circus community, would hang around talking in mashups of dozens of languages and dialects, combined as utter nonsense. Dick always hated the quiet, Dickie hated the silence. They saw Dick in the way that Dickie gave so much love to them, people who from his perspective were total strangers, and was always so kind, even when he was a being a mischievous asshole. They saw Dick in every part of Dickie, and they saw where Dickie died in Dick.
They knew that when Dick would return, they would see the empty spaces in him where Dickie once lived. They would see the shadow of Dickie, his corpse. They would see Dick and the scar tissue over his heart; from when cut wires and broken necks had torn Dickie out and shredded him.
But he wasn't dead now. He was alive and grinning and showing off his loose tooth. He was alive and brightening the whole room just by being in it. He was alive and young and full of laughter and love.
He was alive and he flew. Higher and higher.