I have this idea of Bruce walking through the park or the city, out for a day with newly warded Dick and he’s in that usual celebrity disguise of sunglasses and a baseball cap and Dick is being his usually energetic self, bobbing up and around and they’re going to get some ice cream at some little stand. Bruce is paying when he realises that Dick is nowhere to be seen and at first, he thinks he’s scrambled up into a tree or something but then-
The weird guy talking to Dick suddenly grabs his arm, trying to pull him away and in that second Dick is just a scared eight year old, not Robin and he’s so scared that he doesn’t even cry or scream. He’s so small, he’s so scared and-
Bruce forgets he’s Batman for a second, forgets his code and then he’s pummelling that guy more out of desperation than skill and Bruce, of course, is built like that so the guy goes down pretty easy. The ice cream vendor calls the cops while Bruce slings Dick into his arms, holding him while he trembles with fear, saying sorry over and over gain like it is somehow his fault.
The cops show up, along with the Commisioner because the guy turns out to be this real piece of shit they’ve been tracking for a month or so and that it is Wayne-Involved. Gordon barks out orders to secure the scene and wrangle the witnesses together while the piece of shit gets wheeled to Gotham General. Gordon then turns to Mr Wayne who is sat with Dick in the back of an ambulance while the paramedics check the little guy over. Gordon is none too surprised to see Mr Wayne shaken but still has enough wits about him to give Gordon a statement, Gordon is surprised when Mr Wayne asks him to wait to arrest him after the boy is collected by his butler and well away. “Do you think we would arrest a father for protecting his son?”
And Bruce just bluescreens because it is the first time he’s heard Dick referred to as his son, that’s he’s been labelled his father. He’s not, he knows that, John Grayson was Dick’s father but why does it sound so right. “I still assaulted that man.”
Gordon just eyes him before chuckling. The young billionaire looks so confused and even a little insulted, so Gordon just said that he’s glad he wasn’t on the beat when Bruce was a little kid.
It’s in the papers the following morning. Bruce is dreading it, because he spent a sleepless night with Dick who was too scared to sleep on his own and he tossed and turned because he knew he should be out on patrol but the thought of leaving Dick alone even in the Manor, even with Alfred patrolling the grounds with a shotgun (a measure he allowed because it make Dick comfortable enough to try to sleep). There is a spread about the incident but not only a short account which painted Bruce in the role of a hero but also compared him to his mother, under the headline “Wayne Foils Abduction of Young Son: Mother like Son”. Turns out that Martha Wayne, formerly Kane, always ready to bring the pain, had a reputation of being protective of her little boy. From pulling a glock on Carmine Falcone at Bruce’s seventh birthday party at the zoo when he dared show up with gifts to sucker punching some guy who tried to abduct her from the mommy and me yoga class when Bruce was a toddler to the night that some guy broke into the Manor and found himself in what he would later describe as a house of horrors because sweet charitable Martha Wayne, socialite and philanthropist, chased him around the house with a revolver or maybe a baseball bat, the guy can’t remember because she fucked him up so badly. Martha was arrested for pulling the gun and her mugshot is hilariously iconic because there’s no mistaking that look in her eye, she would so fucking do it again.
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turnnoffyourmind
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