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[cohero]

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[batsymbol]

( dick's saving grace is the fact that he's like bruce. from a different gotham in a different world that, while similar enough, is still not the same as the one so many of the others are from.

it's for that reason he eyes him through the smeared greasepaint there on his face and, ultimately, moves away from the door. steps inside. lets him in, basically. he doesn't look back to him as he starts down the hall but he's expecting him to follow. )

I've changed my mind. ( he says, stopping at an elevator to which he presses a button to open it. ) I'm putting it back as it was.

( because he's a solo act, regardless of how things are in other gothams. )

[cohero]

[This is something that Dick has figured out very clearly and accepted plainly after his last discussion with Barbara. It's why he's been more open to other people, and less enthusiastic about the people who claim to be 'his' people. They're not. No one is a part of his group of people except those from home. None of them are here now.

While Dick will never claim to be a solo act, and he really doesn't like being alone he's been alone for a little while now. He's left batman's service and has been keeping to himself while in Gotham these last six months. Keeping in touch is hardly the same thing. That's how he feels life is easier here for the moment at least.

It feels that way is simpler with Bruce as well. He'd tried other avenues and while he will never be anything but friendly, he's not going to force relationships for the hell of it. There's no need for forced alliances with nothing looming over their heads.

Dick does follow, but says nothing about the change. Doesn't even make the sound that rolls through his head as he quickly figures out the mood. It was about Damian last time as well. Bruce may not think he cares about much, but he does, and deeply apparently. If all fights end like this.]

I won't have problems no matter what you decide.

[Following him to the garage, Dick begins to think about what it will take when he has to eventually undo his work later and put in that seat. It's inevitable. ]

[batsymbol]

( the ride down is a quiet one on bruce’s part. staring to the gated door as he listens to the rumbling of the elevator around them. it’s secure. always has been. tucked away from view from others within the tower and used as a means to slip down beneath the tower itself into what used to be an operational wayne terminus. now it serves as his own batcave that only he and alfred know about. damian here knows. now dick does, too.

opening the gate, he steps out. makes his way for the vehicle that serves as his batmobile. the terminus itself is littered with parts and things and bruce’s own setup he has. it’s nothing like what he’ll come to eventually have later on in his career, but. before any robins made their way into his life, this is what he had to work with and build upon.

grabbing one of the nitro tanks that had been removed from the passenger side of the car, he brings it over. sets it down. starts the process of installing it back in after damian had taken it out. )

[cohero]

[The knowledge of a batcave is a sacred thing, and it's obviously something that Dick would never share with another being, be it here or anywhere. No one needs to know where this is. He's always been good at keeping this part of the secret. The silence is comfortable for what it is. Dick doesn't worry about speaking. He knows he doesn't need to.

Following Bruce, he smiles at the batmobile. It's different from the one he knows, obviously it would be. It's still gorgeous. He can't help but admire the fine details of the vehicle. He runs his fingers over the framework, and the highgloss finish, bending down to admire how sleek she is. Dick takes notes on a few of the features that he recognizes from the outside, where weaponry might come from-- both the front and the back. He takes mental measures for now. ]

Gorgeous piece of work. Did you put her together yourself? The one back home, that is.

[Dick moves into the driver's side to inspect the damage, given that Bruce is currently working through the other side. There was certainly enough damage. Damian was no mechanic when he attempted this. Annoying. Dick whistled through his teeth, and went over to grab some tools and a few parts he saw scattered around. If Bruce was taking lead, Dick would make himself handy and work from this side on what needed to be fastened and the like. ]

[batsymbol]

( a fleeting glance lifted from the tank he's working on putting back in, he looks back down. hands covered in grease and grim. )

Yeah.

( paying attention for a moment to make sure he's doing it right, he sets the tank in where it previously was. starts reconnecting it. )

I did a lot of street races when I was a teen.

[cohero]

I did too. Street car races. I kept taking one of Bruce's cars so frequently he eventually gave it to me.

[There's a tiny smirk on his face. Sadly, that car had been totaled a few years back, but it was hardly a huge loss when lives were at stake. There were other things that were more important. Dick began to move to grab another part of the car that had been pulled out and bent over sideways, flipping himself in half so that he could work mostly upside down to get at it. ]

Wish I had all my tools here. I did finally get my suit. All of it. Aurora was generous enough for that much.

[batsymbol]

( again, he glances over to dick and, again, it's fleeting. focused on his task at hand, the batmobile something he'd spent hours and hours working on to get it just the way he liked. he's not about to mess his baby up with being careless. needs to make sure she's good to go in all the right spots.

still, he listens. )

The Nightwing one?

( he's assuming that's what he means. )

[cohero]

[Focused on the task at hand, Dick barely looks away. He knows better than to fuck up something that belongs to Bruce, especially something as important as the batmobile. He's worked on one before, and Dick knows that it can mean the difference between life and death-- maybe not here, but he would never intentionally do anything to make it run inefficiently.

Checking over the work he's done, he frowns and then uses his fingers to unscrew parts and refit them better. It looked like something had been bent out of shape. There's a huff, and Dick yanks what he was working with out.]

Yeah, the Nightwing one. I didn't have it before.

[As if that wasn't obvious when they were in the labyrinth. Taking the piece over to a workbench, Dick looks around and finds a hard stone and begins to use it as a hammer to unbend the piece he's working with-- muttering under his breath about Damian being a stupid little bugger for ripping it apart without thinking.]

Appreciation for cars... needs to learn it... Dick should teach him.

[It's all muttered, almost unable to be heard, but if Bruce wants to, he can hear what Dick is saying.]

[batsymbol]

( he [mostly] catches the muttering coming from dick there as he helps with the work and while he doesn't say anything right off the bat at first, he does after a moment. after he takes a second for himself with looking down at the piece he's working on reinstalling. )

Where you're from... ( his gotham, he means. ) ...is there a Jason?

[cohero]

[The hammering stops when Bruce speaks. There's silence for a space of time. Dick's heart lurches for a shot and then is normal again. There's still guilt that resides there even though there shouldn't be. There really shouldn't. He's trying to move beyond it, he's done his best over the past year.

Bringing the part back to the car, Dick kneels back inside and sits. ]

Yes, yes there is a Jason. Why?

[batsymbol]

( he doesn't want to ask this. not when he notices the way dick stops his hammering when he goes and mentions that name. but... he can't help it. he wants to know. needs to, in some way. so, when he asks what he does, it's done both softly and carefully. )

Did he die?

[cohero]

[Dick hands over the piece he had in his hands when it's time. He starts to get out and goes over to the wires on the floor, moving to begin attaching some of them from where they'd been carefully plucked out. It was harder from his angle, working around Bruce- but if he was going to talk about it, he needed something for his hands.]

Yes. He did not that long before I did. The joker killed him. He came back through the Lazarus pit, the same one I did after my death.

[It didn't seem like an overly important detail to Dick. No one was responsible for his death. It happened, and he came back through a mess-- he faced his worst fear and it was horrid. Lazarus pits were not for the faint of heart, but that wasn't a thing he liked to talk about with anyone. Only one other person here knew about his death and neither of them spoke about it.]

[batsymbol]

( the joker killed him. just like damian said had happened to the jason that's here. bruce falls silent. gaze dropping. expression going blank as a means to try and keep himself — and his thoughts —composed. there's also the fact that both dick and jason had died... and so had damian. how many of them die? even with the whole miracle of coming back to life? three is already far too many for him to accept. )

Lazarus Pit?

( a thought he latches onto as a means to keep himself here. with dick. and not fall into whatever spiral of thoughts he has going on beneath the surface. )

[cohero]

Yeah, it's an al'ghul thing. We didn't really have them in my universe like they have in the others. The pits are a way to raise people from the dead and extend life as far as I know. My Bruce wrote about it in his book. They're dark magic from what I know, but I only know what I read, what Rachel shared. There was one in Gotham.

[He could go on to talk about how they used it to raise half the city from the dead, but he can tell from the silence there's more. Bruce doesn't give anything, but his dropped gaze and carefully controlled face is more than enough for Dick to know that something is there. Dick knows about Damian, not in so many words- but they shared enough for him to know. There's a pact though, and he'd never say a word. Instead, he goes a different way. With a deep breath, he twists a piece of wire and sits up.]

I felt really guilty about Jason. I- I got in a huge fight with him. Huge [He hit him] and then he ran off to try and prove himself. I should have seen it. I - I was too busy focusing on me, on the fact that I wasn't Robin anymore, and he was. He had a purpose, I didn't. I wasn't Nightwing yet. I didn't know who I was. He went after Dr. Light and got captured by Deathstroke.

[He pauses, this isn't where Jason dies, but Dick feels like it was the start to the end. The short version of a much larger story.]

I had his hand. I had him, and lost him. He fell, fell all those stories. If it weren't for Connor. I don't think he'd have made it. Then he ran away with Rose. He never came back. Joker killed him. It was my fault. I couldn't save him. I was too busy not seeing it. I didn't see how much he needed help.

[Dick goes silent, hands still. It's clear how much it still bothers him. There's more, there's always more, but that's going to take a lot for Dick to admit. It's probably something he'd only admit if they were much closer. ]

[batsymbol]

( so there's similarities there. in death[s].

he hates that.

there's a lot to unpack with what dick says to him. what he lets him know. what he offers to give to him. he hadn't asked for any of it — hadn't demanded or expected it. yet he gave it over to him willingly and it has bruce quiet. pensive. until he finally lets himself look over there to dick. )

Maybe it was his fault.

( a beat. )

Mine.

( the bruce dick knows. )

For not protecting either of you better.

[cohero]

He killed the joker.

[There had been so much going on. Bruce hadn't thought that Jason had what it took to be Robin. He'd let him go, and that was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. Not that Dick knew that. It had already been hard on Jason, fighting with Dick, being dropped, abandoned, dumped by Rose, then rejected by the only person to ever show a modicum of attention to him. He was already juicing on the new fear drug. It was easy for him to pick a fight with the joker.

Then Dick discovered that Bruce had been searching for new Robins before Jason's body was in the ground. New weapons. Dick and Babs let Bruce have it. They weren't going to be as harsh, but he lost it, Babs already knew what he did because of her father. The next thing Dick knew he was looking at a bloody crowbar, and Bruce was leaving Gotham. ]

He. My Bruce never knew I died. He left. He gave up being Batman for a while after. He had to. He wasn't ... himself. He's not you. You know. I know it. He never made it his priority to protect me, or Jason. That wasn't who he was. We were trained weapons to him.

[There's a lot more that Dick can say here, but he's not sure he wants to start, not sure that Bruce will even hear him. ]

[batsymbol]

( to hear that the version of himself dick knows had killed the joker... he doesn't know what to think of that. how to feel. he refuses to sink so low. to do the very thing that had been done to his parents. regardless of the anger. of the pain. of the guilt he carries with him over having lost them. no matter how many times gotham tests him and pushes him to the point of where he doesn't even know if it's worth saving anymore. he can't kill. he won't. not even here.

but there's something about the way dick says he and jason had been viewed as weapons. how they weren't meant to be protected that has him stare at dick. long. silent. as if trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle he only has some of the pieces for. and, with how things are here, could very well be two separate puzzles. )

He didn't think of either of you as sons?

[cohero]

He called us son, but he never adopted me or Jason. He kept me as a ward for my entire life. He never hugged me or comforted me. I had to sign an affidavit that stated that ... [he pauses as he remembers the words...] "under no circumstances, not death, nor love, nor loneliness, will I ever give comfort to fear." This was after he dropped me into the woods with a hungry wolf when I was a boy, younger than Damian, I think. I had little training. He was never my father.

[It was all a part of what would become his training and the man who would be his mentor. That's what he thought of Bruce. He was not a father, he was a mentor, a trainer. The person who gave him the strength to do what he had to in order to be as strong as he was today. It made him a much darker person that most of the people back at this mansion expected, but that's how life was. Why he'd given up trying to connect.]

It doesn't matter anymore. He was my mentor. He's Batman again, and I'm Nightwing. We work in the same city, and I use his equipment, but it's not the same, will never be. See, we all handle this type of job differently. I felt responsible for the lives that were lost indirectly because of me. I feel the weight, but know that I can't let it bury me.

[batsymbol]

( he's not sure what he expected. for all the similarities there seem to be between the gothams and those who strive to save it, there are differences as well. ones which bruce is still trying to figure out, as well as their similarities. partly to try and see if he can figure out how his own path might be carved within his gotham, and partly to try and see if there's some specific reason there are multiples from different gothams here to try and prove theirs worth saving.

how funny it would be if gotham had some sort of captivating hold on eos here, much as does to him.

he goes back to reinstalling the nitro tank, the car itself not needing much else than that. it's fine the way it is — the way he'd put it together back in his own gotham over a series of months. he just never needed the use of his passenger seat. until damian decided here that he did. now he — bruce — doesn't think it does. )

And you still want to save Gotham.

[cohero]

It's my city. I can't have it wiped off the map by criminals.

[This is a new path in questioning and it's actually a relief for Dick. He's feeling a little heavy, and it's easier to find light things to talk about while they work. Jason had been a lot, and while he knew that Bruce might had needed to find something, Dick was done with oversharing. He'd reached his emotional quota for the day.

The fact that the city here had focused on people from gotham only meant that there were heroes there. Dick also noted that there were plenty from other places. He knew that other people had found those that they knew. He'd talked to one, Bobbi, who had her ex-husband here and they were both from a group as well. She'd mentioned that her friend had an ex, or something similar here too, so it meant that they were represented well enough.

Dick was figuring that this was taking stock of people, and not universes. They were the social experiments. Ultimate powers didn't need permissions or heroes to show up to pick where to blow up, that was always at the whim of a god. In his opinion, if something was strong enough to do this, that it was strong enough to be labeled as such, worshiped as such somewhere.]

You want to save it, or still just looking for the ones who killed your parents.

[Putting in the last of the wires, Dick turned and looked at what more there was on the ground. He grabbed a couple of crossbars and latches that needed to be affixed to the side and moved back to the other side of the car.]

[batsymbol]

( with the nitro tank reinstalled, he reaches down for a rag. takes a moment to wipe his hands on it. stares off to nothing in particular as dick goes and asks him that. it's a rather loaded question for bruce, given the point in time that he's from and everything that's going on and been going on in his own gotham.

licking over his lips, he looks down. strands of hair falling in front of his face some as he does. )

I don't know.

( he's not there yet in realizing what gotham needs is hope more than vengeance. )

[cohero]

[Being that Dick has no idea what's going on in Bruce's Gotham, he doesn't realize how loaded. Asking Bruce questions is tricky. There's a time where he'll talk and times he won't. Then suddenly he'll switch topics as his mind turns tricks on it's own. Dick is slowly figuring it out, but hasn't managed it yet.

It's still going to take time. That doesn't mean he doesn't look up and across at the other man while he wipes his hands. He stays watching for a few seconds longer, long enough to watch him lick his lips and those strands to fall. His fingers itch, but he stays.

Turning back to his own more fine tuned work, Dick re-inverts himself again one final time to finish the project he was working on. He pauses, and takes a breath before his next question. It's been in his mind for a while, and he wonders if it's okay to ask it. ]

That's fair. Can I ask, beyond your parents and all of that, how did you get started as... well, batman. I mean, when did you get the idea? How long have you been training before coming out. You don't have to answer, of course. I was really just curious.

[batsymbol]

( dick goes and asks him that and bruce throws a glance his way. keeps it there on him. before he drops it back down and gets himself up. )

Not that long. ( a beat. ) According to some of you here.

( he's checking on the nitro tank — making sure it's how it should be before he's pushing hair out of his face and standing there. tired. more so emotionally than physically. at least he's more or less got this covered. )

[cohero]

[There's a mental shrug. Dick rubs his face and cements a large streak of grease across it without thought. His hands and arms are coated as well. It doesn't bother him obviously.

Looking over his work, he nods a few times. and then sits up straight.]

This looks like it's put back in right. Does it have a cover then?

[batsymbol]

It's fine as it is.

( that is to say, he can do it later. another glance over to dick then. )

Thanks. For the help.

( for... telling him what he did. )

[cohero]

Sure, anytime. Is there a place to wash my hands off upstairs then or should I just wait until the manor. You know, I'll wait.

[Wiping his hands on the small towel, he gets some of the grease off, not much but it's fine. He knows he's already overstayed his welcome. He nods at Bruce and walks back to the elevator, more than happy to show himself out. ]

Take it easy.

[on yourself.]