#i keep writing

Dick remembers mom, combing nimble fingers through his hair as he dozes under the sinking afternoon sun, humming under her breath as she detangles stubborn locks away from his scalp. Dad was probably somewhere nearby, working the tent with Haley as they settled down for the night. He remembers the way Zitka sounded happy in the distant– Jose the fire breather was probably feeding her peanuts again.

Working in the circus, with the smell of hay bales and tigers and home cooked goulash filling the air, was always nothing less than magical. He’d wake up early in the morning, practice with his parents in high tinkling laughs and squealed giggles, and find himself already up in the air by the time breakfast rolls in. Mom would brush his cheek when he’d do a particularly successful trick. Dad would kiss his elbows and knees when he doesn’t. Aunt Denise would tuck in an extra stuffed pepper on his plate, just for being a growing child, and Uncle Javier would rib him on growing an extra inch in the summer. Zitka loved to toss him around. Her mom would sniff his pockets til he hands over a stray apple.

The circus was not a place where a boy should grow up, but Dick Grayson grew up in a home, surrounded by pets and members who filled in acts and ended up in family pictures in their trailer.

“You are my sunshine, my darling sunshine

…my darling sunshine

You make me happy, when skies are grey

… you’ll never know dear, how much I love you….

He’d hid a smile, pretending he was asleep and basking under his mom’s soft humming before the dinner call came. Mary always catches him in the act with his nickname and a fond tap on the nose.

“There you are my little Robin.”

It’s one of his fondest memories yet.

–

“Get back in your bed.”

“My dad is the Marshal.” she giggles, twirling around the room.

“So?”

“I can do what I want. I have rights.”

“So do I.”

“Is your dad the Marshal?”

Cass laughs at his frown and squeezes his hand with a promise of coming back.

–

Cass and Dick met Tim and Steph when they graduated from the Academy and got their first official jaeger. Their arrival was met with minimal celebration and eventually a Category-One kaiju.

Dick and Cass were with Stephanie as she cried next to Tim’s bed. Coma with possible brain damage, they said, he might never come back from chasing the rabbit.

Tim comes to Cass and Dick after a failed neural handshake. I don’t think we’re going to be compatible ever again, he whispers, as Cass soothes his tears and fly away hairs and Dick stands guard in the alcove created by a wrecked Glitter Dome.

“That could’ve been us.” He tells her as he carries a tired Tim back to his room. Dick makes a conscious effort to not hold Tim too tightly. Smiles pass the grinding of his teeth. “That could’ve been us with the kaiju. It could’ve been you or me in that bed 4 months ago.”

“I’m not gonna let that happen.”

“We could’ve not been co-pilots anymore.”

Cass looks at him. Taps his elbow once, twice, thrice. “We’ll still be brother and sister. Now let’s go find Steph before she does something stupid with those alcoholic kaiju spleens– she knows tequila tastes better than that.”

–

“Drifting is like…” Steph begins, placing a finger under her chin in thought. “...Like peanut butter and jelly. It just have to mix well or it doesn’t, and you have to really know how much you put into it or else it’ll end up too peanut butter-y or too jelly-y.”

“You’re just hungry, Steph.”

“You’re not hungry enough, Duke.”

Laughter all around.

Steph has just gotten Duke to agree on having his room be their base of operations, which meant a few hours chilling together unjudged and a few shots of the Bershka-branded vodka unsupervised.

When asked by non-pilots, everyone deferred it as the shady jaeger-only-and-plus-one businesses dealings.

When asked by Bruce, it was family bonding time.

When asked by Damian, he was told he’s everyone’s plus one so come in here you gremlin and wipe your shoes–

And nobody asks Cass where she got the Vodka. Not that she would say anything but a laugh and a strongly worded pat to the back of the head.

“How ‘bout you Reds? What’s it like?” Duke asks.

“It’s like how they write stories about being in the eye of the storm. It’s chaotic all around, and words are jumbling everywhere– except for being in the drift. Then it’s silent, like everything’s gone through a filter–”

“–well mine is the opposite, like a black and white picture of the empty house and suddenly someone’s turned on the color and the lights and you can see you’re thinking more clearly.”

A beat. Jason and Tim look at each other with matching eyebrows raised. Two beats.

“You’re fucking painting me a picture again.”

“And you’re thinking with way too much drama.”

“Jesus Christ idiots one and two are at it. Again.” Damian mutters.

“OKAY!” Steph looks at Cass’ bemused grin and alcohol shot. “Take a shot and tell us about yours, Cass.”

Cass obliges, throws her head back and gulps the strong alcohol down with a wince. Passes the shotglass to Dick without looking and finds him doing the exact same thing. Cass watches his hands relax in the empty air.

Belting Robins-Cass-Dick-us-jeager-family

They share a conversation at a glance when he passes the shot glass to a fumbling Tim.

“Well, I don’t know about you Cass, but to me it feels like when I accepted that Bruce really doesn’t want to kick me out of California.”

Cass smiles. “True. It feels like coming home.”

Bab’s charts didn’t need to reinforce the deep and stable drift between the two of them. They already knew.

–

“So…what’s up with you and the Marshal?”

“Bruce?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’re bed-bound til next week, I don’t think you can really get out of this, birdie.”

Dick groans, although there’s a soft twitch on his face. Duke sits on the edge of his bed and Steph sits on his left– Cass’ was already out and about despite stern warnings of the medics. It was only him that was Ghost Drifting, not her, and she teases him with this with a wave of her fingers

In her eyes was something fragile. He doesn’t bite back at her in case it cracks.

“Bruce took me in when I was alone and hurting and didn’t have anything left.” Dick says to the ceiling.

“Like a ward?”

Dick sighs, a long breath he doesn’t know he’s holding. It doesn’t make his lips twitch in a grin.

“Like a son.”

–

Cass never thought of her past like it was something final. She was always thinking it’s always happening around her, in the interaction between breaths and the moments between people.

When Dick asks her after their initial handshake, she merely shrugs noncommittally. He knows better than anyone what it's like to be in her head.

Memories of circus-jeager-hate-hate-hate scream through her mind.

“It doesn’t bother me, why should it bother you?”

Because it doesn’t. Living in Hong Kong with David Cain for a father was nothing more but a distant memory in her head along with the blue that stuck under her fingernails from yesterday’s kaiju mess.

“But it defines you.” Dick insists, head tilted to the side like the Robin that he is.

“It does not. I define myself.” She replies easily.

If she concentrates hard enough, she remembers the training she’s gotten when she was young, the sticks in her hand grainy, hard, heavy knocking off an opponent twice her size. If she wants to, she could see the screens pulled up showing kaiju battles that were brutal, dangerous, painful to watch as it is to recreate and learn from. If she means to, she can remember the sound of electricity fizzing, buzzing, everywhere and smell the burning flesh rancid, overpowering, everywhere, everywhere, EVERYWHERE.

But she won’t, because she doesn’t want to.

She wants to remember Bruce’s hand reaching out as he climbs out of the wreckage that was the Hong Kong Shatterdome, clad in his nylon and armored drift suit. She wants to relieve the thrum of the copter that transferred her from one land and another. She wants to revel in three new brothers in California as the mechs they operate whirl to life around her. She remembers sleeping in Dick’s bed as she sobs through a nightmare. Jason’s soft voice and softer fingers in her hair as he reads to her. Damian’s careful fingers intertwined in hers during mess hall.

She remembers sending here-now-California-with me-here-love-love-love to him.

“I live in the present, brother. I think you should too.”

–

Jason was a storm of a teen with too long limbs and ears that were too big for his head. When he gets reassigned– sent back actually– after years in service and away from them, his arms were as thick as the cable wires of Belting Robin and he looked like he finally grew into the man that he used to pretend he was.

A thing about Jason is that he also likes to goad him into a fight, not because he’s looking for one, but because he’s taken the conversation aspect of sparring like the word of God.

Dick knows this because Dick always bites back.

Jason was pure power up front, like the force of an erupting volcano channeled into his fist as he hits, hits, hits you over, over, over again. He fights like a wounded animal, all danger in front of the hurt that dares you to take advantage over it. Scowling. Ready. Wild.

Dick’s force is that of a riptide, motions fluid as he takes you down, down, and drown mother fucker, fucking DROWN! His arms are extensions of himself and tools to know what he wants and get there. Smiling. Poised. Feral.

Power to power fuelled by angry men with teeth snapping at the neck and thrashing bodies dying under their mechanical hands.

Fighting with his younger brother sometimes ends up with Jason’s arm on his throat and face unnaturally blue. It sometimes ends up with Dick’s weight on his back and his opponent’s arm strained by the angle. Sometimes it’s loose teeth. Sometimes it’s bruised bones.

Most often Jason frowns at him and Dick grins back.

Because no one questions the curled up fist when he smiles.

Behind the easy beams lurked vengeful promises complete with destroyed furniture and fistfights and years long grudges to drag you under.

–

Cass likes physical touches more than anything and with them coming up to 36-months in being co-pilots, it wasn’t unusual for it to bleed into Dick’s own movements. She can see the way he flicks Damian’s ear where he usually would just call out their name. It’s the way Jason reacts less and less the more Dick takes him by the arm for a meal or a spar. The way he taps his knuckles over thresholds of rooms, or over technician panels, or Bruce’s shoulder as he leaves for a mission.

And she knows he’s done the same with her and the way he expresses herself.. It’s the way she catches herself smiling and confronting Tim. The way she laughs as Duke picks himself up again. It’s the way she holds Stephs hand with a tug of her lips and the tilt of her head and as the woman cries in joy.

The kaiju pushes and roars in their face and they twist and twirl in the air, flinging shots and dragging knives down the beast’s hide. They smile, and they laugh; they wipe their faces off the sweat that’s Dick-Cass-Dick and slams a fist into the open palm of Cass-Dick-Cass’ other hand.

It almost bleeds them dry.

An arm around the shoulders. A knowing wink. It’s intimate.

A clap behind the neck. A fond wrinkle of the nose. It’s innate.

A squeezing hug that says I’m sorry-I should’ve done better-I shouldn’t have left and a smile when they part of It’s okay-You didn’t mean to-We’re both okay. It’s Belting Robin.

–

The first kaiju was rampaging in and out for 14 months, going across Mexico’s surprised borders, continuing through Florida’s shocked shores and straight into New York City’s unprepared everything.

The first successful jaeger only took the streets on the 14th month in a battle across Toronto, Canada.

It died on it’s second resurfacing after an inland brawl and countless several military jets, armed tanks and inequipped soldiers.

It leaves 8 million dead and 34 million people displaced.

Dick’s parents fell on the it’s 11th month, during the grand finale at Long Island. He barely upgrades from juvie to an orphanage by the 12th. Has stopped coming back to sister Clara’s withering glare and stinging hands on the 13.5th. Transferred to Wayne’s Shatterdome on the 15th.

Sister Clara smiles at Bruce when he picks Dick up. “He’s a sweet child, smiles all the time and lovely to be around” she says.

He’s your problem now, was what she implies.

Bruce, a billionaire who’s been funding the program, was the one that left him with the CPS in the wake of his tears and shock. A teen boy orphaned in the blink of an eye. A child who’s hand still reached out for his mother to latch on to as people around him fled.

Bruce, current father of two, finds him again at the wake of his anger and grief. A man who buried his inner child in the rough halls of an orphanage and back alleys. A young adult who’s fist reaches out for a strike first.

“Let me help you.”

He’s helped enough.

“Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable.”

The ruined circus tent was more comfortable.

“This is my family– this is Jason and this is Damian.”

I’m a fucking orphan you motherfucker.

Dick drowns inside but his face is nothing but a polite grin of someone who’s been told to smile and someone that wants nothing more from the roof that gave him reddened cheeks and a blanket on the floor.

–

Cass finds Duke in the Medbay after Jason gave him a concussion with, and she quotes, Dick’s knockout sticks.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sucky.” He says, ice pack to the head, but at least his pupils aren't dilated. “Jason didn’t have to go that hard, didn’t he?”

“No.” She tells him, sitting next to him on the cots as medical personnel rush around them. “He’s trying to prove a point.”

“What point? That new recruits are easy shots?”

“Not to you.” She flicks his forehead gently. “To Bruce. He’s already hard to find a partner with, but more especially after Roy.”

Duke is their newest recruit having only graduated from the Academy 2 months ago. It took the same amount of time for Jason to come back into the Californian Shatterdome as his unofficial pairing and replace the destroyed Speed Force in the ranks while Glitter Chrome gets repaired and her co-pilots back into full health.

Wally and Barry were good people– but kaiju stops for no man.

Tim and Steph are good people– but kaiju waits for no relationships.

“Well, he didn’t need to beat me senseless. We were supposed to use the bo staff! If I knew he was going to drop it I could’ve easily blocked.”

She missed Jason, but he is sometimes-mostly-always a prick. A prick with a mean right hook apparently.

“Don’t worry, it only means you’re not compatible.”

“Sparring is a conversation, yeah, I know. That’s one of the lessons in the Academy.”

“Then you know he would have kicked your ribs in if he really wanted it to hurt. He’s really good in Muay Thai. His legs are strongly worded suggestions if you will.”

“That’s good to know I could’ve had it worse then.” Duke sighs. “Why are you here Cass?” Duke asks, headstrong and wary. It reminded her of all of the Waynes and most of the unofficial ones before they all became jaeger pilots.

She smiles at him. “Can’t I visit my little brother?”

Welcome to the Wayne Shatterdome, get ready for more, Duke.

–

Drifting with Dick feels like a soft touch to the small of her back. Safe-safe-safe

I got you.

Drifting with Cass is a warm tap on the nose. Safe-safe-safe

I know, like I do you.

I hope the day you cease to do never comes.

–

“Jason’s your brother.” Tim tells him, when Striking Onyx already has left the room for patrol, and when Jason wrangles Damian out to find them all oral rehydration salts and bottles of water.

Cass is asleep on his lap, soft breaths puffing on the stray lock of hair on her face. Tim has his legs tangled where hers reaching out to the opposite wall.

“He is.” Dick says as he cards his fingers through his sister’s hair. “And so are Damian and Cass and now you and Steph and Duke as well.”

“That’s a very outsourced family tree.”

“What can I say, it’s the only way I know how.”

Tim fiddles with the discarded deck of cards, shuffling it in one hand while he eyes Dick continues to trace waves with his fingers. He could feel Tim’s eyes boring into his skull– the younger man is apparently as calculating as Stephanie mentioned.

Dick tries not to laugh at this. Stephanie was right in comparing him to watching wandering glaciers. All stony eyed on the surface but Dick knew the words too much to take them at face value. Tim’s accommodating his fears and worries. Overthinking. A sun flare away from melting and drowning.

“Why didn’t you drift with him?”

Hums. Lifts a dimple. “Bruce doesn’t like us being in a jaeger together.”

“So you mean you didn’t try?” Tim raises an eyebrow, impassive, hands stilling except for that small tremble on his right hand.

“Oh no, it means Bruce doesn’t want to lecture us again. My little brother ran away the first time because we blew a hole in the Shatterdome’s roof.” Dick laughs and flicks Cass’ nose. “And this little sister needs to stop pretending she’s not listening.”

Cass, the little shit, just smiles. “Well, I’m gonna hear about it when Belting Robin comes out either way.”

–

You never know dear, how much I love you

“…so please don’t take my sunshine away.”

Dick opens his eyes to find Cass smiling softly down at him.

“There you are, brother.”