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Dick’s hands clench the steering wheel of his ‘look at me I’m a normal and responsible adult’ car as he pulls into Gotham Academy’s parking lot. He recalls his own early school days, filled with snarled words and scabbed-over knuckles. But Dick fought the other kids.
Damian, according to the phone call Dick received twenty-three minutes ago, stabbed a lunch aide with a plastic spoon.
And, according to the EMTs and his own proud confession, severed one of the tendons in her arm.
I can’t do this, Dick thinks, not for the first time, as he climbs out of the driver’s seat and marches up the security vestibule. He didn’t sleep last night, and only caught two hours the night before that. Tim’s gone off to who knows where, Jason is still missing (not dead, he can’t be dead, Dick can’t have failed that badly), and the Justice League still sees him as the teenager they helped raise. Meanwhile, Dick is putting out fires left and right, the remnants of the war that had engulfed the city only a month ago. I can’t do this, Dick thinks, but I have to try. I owe Bruce that much.
The woman at the front desk—Stacy Parkinson, her little plaque says—makes him fill out a long form, squints at his driver’s license for several minutes, and eventually hands him a nametag. Dick writes his name sloppily, letters slanted from the speed. The sooner he can get to the Principal’s Office and take Damian home, the sooner he can get this over with. Whatever that means. Dick is in no place to punish Damian—the kid will run off back to the League of Assassins if Dick even tries. Any attempt at a conversation will be met with a scoff and a litany of insults. Really, all he can do is make the principal empty promises and hope no one presses any charges.
“You can’t wear that,” Stacy says harshly.
“What?”
“This is an elementary school. You can’t be wearing a word like that.”
“It’s my name,” Dick says. Stacy looks young—younger than he is, even—but surely she’s watched Beauty and the Beast? ‘Ask any Tom, Dick, or Stanley?’
“Well, you can’t wear it.”
Dick holds back a sigh and rips the nametag off, heading for the doors.
Stacy doesn’t unlock them. “You need a nametag to enter the building. It’s procedure.”
“Fine,” Dick says, annoyance seeping into his tone. He crosses out his name and writes ‘Richard Grayson’ in smaller (but still sloppy) letters below the scribbled-out part. Stacy opens the doors. “Have a nice day,” Dick says flatly, and walks into the building.
It’s strange, seeing these halls. He was here for two years, 4th and 5th grade. Dick hated this place. The colors in the classrooms were lying. They were too bright and too faint at the same time, lacking the depth and reality of the circus. It all felt fake to him.
Dick finds his way to administration. The current principal—a short, ruddy man with a perpetual five o’clock shadow—was the dean, when Dick was at Gotham Academy, and Dick never interacted with him. It means that Dick doesn’t know how to shape this conversation in his favor, but it also means that Mr. Moore isn’t carrying the memory of an angry nine-year-old determined to break every single rule. Probably a net positive, then, that Mr. Moore and Dick are complete strangers.
The secretary waves Dick through to the principal’s office, where Damian is sitting straight-backed, glaring across the desk at Mr. Moore. The boy’s sneakers hang a foot off the ground, but he doesn’t swing them, just sits dignified and imperious. Like a little prince.
I can’t do this, Dick thinks again.
“Today,” Mr. Moore begins, once Dick has taken a seat next to Damian, “Damian assaulted a lunch aide.” Damian purses his lips but doesn’t disagree. “At a minimum, that will be three days of out of school suspension.” Damian stays silent, just glares. “Damian’s teacher has expressed concerns as well. Would we be able to talk with Damian’s father?”
Dick wishes with all his heart that Bruce would walk through the door right now. But Bruce is dead, even if the world doesn’t know it. “I’m Damian’s legal guardian,” he says, folding his hands. Dick can feel the sweat on his palms.
“The boy’s father might be a positive influence,” Mr. Moore says, although he looks doubtful about it. Brucie Wayne doesn’t exactly have a good reputation.
“Bruce is unavailable at the moment,” Dick says with a wave of his hand. “You know how it is.”
Mr. Moore clicks a pen and starts writing. Dick cranes his neck, but he can’t see anything while remaining subtle. It sets him on edge. “No, Mr. Grayson, I don’t.” Mr. Moore puts the pen down. “How exactly did Bruce Wayne’s former ward end up as the legal guardian of his son?”
Dick frowns. He doesn’t have a good answer for that. From the outside, it looks pretty bizarre, which is why Wayne Enterprises’ PR department has done their best to keep it under wraps. But Thomas Elliot isn’t going to show up for Damian’s parent-teacher conferences, so Dick had to do something. “Adopted son,” Dick corrects. “Not former ward—Bruce adopted me. And that’s our business.”
“Not when something is very clearly affecting Damian’s ability to interact with his peers and our staff.” Mr. Moore leans forward. “Richard, Gotham Academy has extensive support resources, not just for students, but for parents and legal guardians as well. There’s no shame in asking for help.”
Asking for help? With what? While Dick tries to puzzle that out, Damian leans forward with a sneer across his face. “The lunch aide insulted my father repeatedly, attempted to coerce me into making false accusations, and then began shouting when I refused. Her spit was hitting my face, which is grossly unsanitary, so I defended myself.”
Dick closes his eyes and leans back. That would do it, he supposes. That would push Damian over the edge. Someone talking down to him, insulting his father, questioning his reality…yeah. Dick’s used to it, is the thing. Got used to it real quick and didn’t start school until after he’d already seen the media storm around his adoption. But Damian? He was thrown right into the deep end with none of the preparation.
But what else could Dick do? Hand Damian old tabloids with disgusting insinuations and tell him that some of his classmates and teachers would believe those things? Dick wasn’t going to do that.
“Damian,” Dick says tiredly, “that doesn’t give you an excuse to attack her.”
“You have said that if anyone invades my personal space, I have the right to remove them. Correct?”
“Yes, but—” Dick scrubs a hand across his face and looks to Mr. Moore, who’s just watching the whole exchange with narrowed eyes. He probably believes the accusations. Dick isn’t even sure which rumor this is even about—there are just too many. Did the lunch aide think that Bruce had abused Dick? That Bruce is abusing Damian? That Dick is abusing Damian? That Dick is secretly Damian’s father? Or one of the even crazier ones that float around on conspiracy theory forums—that Damian is Dick Grayson’s clone, that Dick is Damian’s mother, that Bruce Wayne has been replaced by a simulacrum and Damian is the puppeteer? “You say, ‘get out of my face’ first. And then, if they don’t listen, you move away. And only if you can’t move away, then you use the least amount of force necessary to do so.”
Damian sniffs. “That is horribly inefficient. And she deserved it.”
“She’s going to the hospital. She’ll need surgery, Damian.”
“Good.”
Dick doesn’t know what to say to that. You can’t reason with someone when they’re coming from a completely different set of premises. That’s why his conversations with Bruce always broke down into fights, no matter how hard they each tried to make the other ‘see reason.’
God, if Bruce could just come back, Dick wouldn’t even care anymore. He would see whatever fucking reason Bruce wanted him to see. He just wants Bruce to be alive, to pull him into a hug and take this weight off his shoulders.
Dick needs Bruce, but he can’t have that. So, what does Damian need? Not discipline that Dick can’t give him. No, he needs—he needs to stay. He needs to stay and not return to the League of Assassins. And even if he overreacted, it’s good, at least, that Damian is willing to remove people from his personal space.
Mr. Moore looks at Dick like he’s expecting a response. Dick has to do something.
What would Bruce do? Dick asks himself.
He stands up, posture straight, and puts a firm hand on Damian’s shoulder. Not a harsh, painful gesture, but something that’s almost shielding. This is my ward, it says. If you hurt him, you go through me too. “I’ll be having a conversation with Damian about acceptable ways of enforcing boundaries. And I’ll loop Bruce in. But—” and he looks Mr. Moore right in the eyes “—that lunch aide was out of line. I expect her to be fired when Damian returns to school.”
“She—”
“She shouldn’t have been shouting at a student, and she shouldn’t have been that close to his face. And any—baseless—concerns should have been reported to administration, not discussed forcibly with Damian.” Richie Wayne is easy going, but the act isn’t a necessity in the way Brucie is. It gives Dick leeway, to let his voice grow cold and his eyes grow sharp. “We—Bruce and I—will expect to see her fired. Otherwise, I think Bruce will be re-evaluating his confidence in this place. Come on, Damian.”
They walk out of the principal’s office, and Dick is struck by the fact that he will have to spend the next three days watching Damian at home. If the kid is left unsupervised, he could attempt to patrol on his own or—or adopt an entire pet shelter or something. Either way, he’ll need someone around who isn’t entirely focused on chores and errands.
Dick’s not getting a chance to sleep any time soon, is he?
“I had to,” Damian says, crossing his arms in the passenger seat. He’s too young to sit there, but Dick couldn’t fight him on it. He has to pick his battles, these days.
“No,” Dick says, “you didn’t. They did this to me too. You just have to ignore it, Damian.”
“I will not ignore insults to my father’s memory,” Damian insists.
“Look,” Dick says, twisting around to face Damian. “If you keep this up, the courts will get involved. They’ll take you away from me and put you in foster care.”
“Then I shall simply escape.”
Dick shakes his head and looks back at the road. Damian was raised in a world with only one authority: Ra’s al Ghul. He’s not going to understand the fact that just ‘escaping’ from foster care would upend his entire life—and the Mission as well.
New tactic, then.
“That lunch aide? She’s a civilian. We don’t attack civilians. Your father would never do that.”
“She thought Father hurt you,” Damian says, quietly this time. “I didn’t know Father well, but if he was anything like my mother’s stories, he would not have stood for such accusations. He had other means to fight. I did not. That aide will recover, and perhaps she will learn to hold her tongue.”
“This isn’t okay,” Dick insists. “I’m trying to hold things together. When you get in trouble at school, it gets closer to blowing the cover. If people look too closely, everything falls apart. Bruce Wayne. Wayne Enterprises. Batman, too. Your father’s legacy. Please, Damian.”
Damian is quiet for a long moment. Dick can feel the words buzzing on the tip of his tongue, but he forces himself to give Damian time to think. Eventually, Damian turns to face the window, averting his gaze in as close as he comes to a surrender. “I will not ignore such insults. But…I will try not to physically harm staff at this legally-mandated child prison.”
“Thank you,” Dick says sincerely.
Damian scoffs.
Dick’s hands clench around the steering wheel, and they spend the drive home in silence.
I can’t do this, Dick thinks as he drives. If it’s not Damian attacking the school’s staff, it’s something else. Dick is too exhausted to be playing whack-a-mole with a ten-year-old assassin’s murderous, antisocial training. But I have to do this.
And, well, Dick grew up in a world of monsters and magic and multiversal collisions. He’s used to achieving the impossible.