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Although there were no indications the four missing miners were still alive, the operations continued in rescue mode, rather than moving to recovery.
When Dick is nine, his parents die.
His parents are killed, violently, while he watches, helplessly. And someone did that. Somewhere out there is a man, and that man killed Dick’s parents, and Dick wants to scream and scream and scream. And he’s nine, so mostly he does.
The social worker tries to talk Bruce out of keeping Dick, Dick out of staying. Has a lot to say about emotional support, and commitment, and the ‘right fit’. There are lots of people who would want to take Dick, apparently.
But none of them were there.
None of them saw, and none of them gathered him in their arms and didn’t try to say anything, and none of them, when Dick could talk again and the first words he said were, "They didn’t fall, they didn’t fall, someone killed them," none of them looked Dick in the eye and swore, swore, "I will find whoever did this, and they will face justice."
Anyway, that’s why it takes Dick a good long while to realise Bruce’s whole crusade thing is certifiably batshit.
When he’s a kid, and so angry all the time it feels like something in his chest has grown teeth and is trying to eat its way out his ribcage, it makes sense. Of course Batman exists. Of course you can’t just sit at home and let other people get hurt. Of course you have to do everything, anything you can, because the worst possible thing happened to you and someone could have stopped it and you wouldn’t wish the thing living in your chest now on anyone. Or, well, you would, and that’s why you wouldn’t. You want to destroy the man who did this to you, but you wouldn’t just be destroying him, because that’s how it works. You can’t know who else you would catch in the blast. You can’t let it be anyone.
When he’s thirteen, and there’s other kid heroes popping up, and the Justice League is starting to reckon with whether they’re okay with any kid being a hero at all, Clark talks to him. That’s how he realises.
They go to a diner. They always go to a diner, when Clark wants to talk. Clark feels safe being emotionally vulnerable in diners for reasons Dick can’t piece together yet.
"It was your idea," Clark asks, once the waitress has brought their food, enough other people already eating to create a comfortable background hum of noise, "Wasn’t it? Being Robin?"
Dick’s not an idiot, he already knew what this would be about – still isn’t quite sure, at this point, how aware the rest of the League is of how much Dick gets told – but he’s a bit blind-sided by that being Clark’s opening. Is that not obvious?
And, well. Huh. Maybe it isn’t. That’s always been a big part of the growing pains of the League, that none of them were used to having to explain their thought processes. One of the few benefits to working solo is no one ever says, ‘Okay, explain to me why your first thought was throwing yourself at the unknown assailant instead of, I don’t know, any kind of reconnaissance?’ Robin was a point of debate, Dick is well aware, when the League first formed. He still sometimes has to remind himself to let go of the bitterness that any of them thought they could tell him to stop. That they had that right.
"Well, yeah," he says, the slightest bit of that bitterness leaking into his voice. "B kept trying to lock me in my room."
Clark blinks. "He did?"
"Not all the time," Dick says, rolling his eyes, several years now out of patience for everyone immediately assuming the worst of Bruce. "Just when he went on patrol, ‘cause I kept following."
"Right." Clark hesitates, before visibly deciding not to ask any follow-up questions. On that topic, anyway. "But he changed his mind?"
Dick hums, non-committal. The first couple months of being Robin are pretty hazy, now. He’s starting to suspect something in his ability to form long-term memories has gone permanently wrong. "I wore him down, yeah. It’s not– I know it was a bad idea, okay. But it’s not like anyone else could copy me."
"Really," Clark says, one eyebrow raised. "No one your age looks up to you?"
Dick rolls his eyes again. It’s rude, but Clark is usually smarter than this. "Not like anyone could, not that no one would want to. Obviously kids look up to Robin, but kids look up to loads of people, and actually doing this as a kid is hard. A shit ton of adults have the means to be heroes, and there’s still only a dozen of you, and at least adults can drive."
"That’s why it’s hard? Because you can’t drive?"
Dick takes a long sip of his milkshake, to give himself a moment to imagine a world where not being able to drive is his biggest problem.
"It’s hard," he says, "because I want to believe people are good and kind and compassionate, and every night I go out and on purpose seek out proof I’m wrong. Because it’s not even that I am wrong, it’s that it’s easier to be shitty. Caring hurts. It really, really hurts." He takes another sip of his milkshake. "But you know that. You know exactly what I mean."
Clark lets out a heavy breath, and doesn't say anything.
Dick steals one of his fries. "The problem isn’t if I’m old enough," he continues. "No one’s old enough. Could Bruce have put me in therapy instead?" He shrugs. "Probably, yeah, but it only would’ve worked if he quit too. And then everyone we’ve saved since would be dead, or worse. And we’re already worse. I can’t imagine anyone being able to talk me into being okay with that, with letting other people go through that."
The look on Clark’s face isn’t one Dick’s really seen before. It’s not one he’s enjoying seeing now. Say what you will about how little Bruce emotes, at least he’s not trying to make concerned eye contact with Dick all the time. "You realise," Clark asks, "Everyone else’s problems shouldn’t be your responsibility?"
There really was a lot of arguing, when the League first formed. Most of it was people who had never really worked in a team before realising they’re a far bigger control freak than they’d thought, yeah. Growing pains, Alfred had said. Some of it, though, was everyone else learning that when you’re Superman, when you’re that much more powerful, it can get hard, sometimes, to remember other people might have ideas, too.
Does he realise. Like Bruce wouldn’t have ever asked. Like Bruce didn’t write notes for their arguments.
"Sure," Dick says, easily, brightly, so much better now at keeping his temper reigned. "What else have I got, then? If I’m not allowed to help? My parents are dead, and I’m not. I should just keep going anyway? Go to school, see my friends, watch TV and do my homework?" He steals another fry. "Because that’s what they’d want, right, for me to be happy, and pretending like them being dead doesn’t make me want to set things on fire will start to look like happiness if I just do it long enough? Maybe I’ll forget what it’s like to not want to die, and then that can be what happiness is."
Now Clark looks like Dick just sucker-punched him, if Dick happened to be holding a fistful of kryptonite. It’s a long moment, before he speaks. Dick drinks more of his milkshake.
"You’re thirteen," is what Clark manages. "You shouldn’t have to think like that."
Dick wonders what Clark was doing, at thirteen.
This is the root of the problem, really, with Clark and with Diana – sure, both of them have their scars, but none of those scars are older than their adult teeth. Figuratively speaking, anyway; Dick doesn’t know if either of them actually had two sets of teeth. Maybe Kryptonians just keep growing new ones, like sharks. It’d be rude, probably, to ask.
Anyway, they’re not Bruce. They got a whole childhood.
And Dick doesn’t want to say that, because he can never say it to anyone, because it’s like setting off a bomb. Because it wakes the thing in his chest up. He just grins, instead, brittle and bitter, and steals another handful of fries.
"That’s the problem the League has," Clark admits, looking away from Dick, off into the contemplative middle distance. "We know exactly what has to happen to someone, to set them on this path, and we don’t want to admit it happens to children."
"Other children," Dick corrects. Clark flinches, just barely noticeable. "Was there a point to this, or did you just need me to confirm what you already knew?"
"You’re thirteen," Clark says, again.
"Yeah. And the other night I got two girls away from their shitheel of a dad," Dick says, "And they’re four and six."
Clark changes the subject, after that.
Later, when Clark’s back in Metropolis and Dick’s back in the Cave, walking on his hands along the desk while they wait for Bruce’s analysis program to spit out the most likely locations, he’s still thinking about it. Bruce tried to say he was too young, of course, but he always meant Dick didn’t have as much experience. That he still had a lot to learn.
"Hey, B?"
"Mmm?"
"D’you ever wish you’d just put us both in therapy instead?"
Bruce looks at him, at that, and Dick has to jump down to the floor. This isn’t the kind of thing he can talk to Bruce about looking at him upside-down.
"Sometimes," Bruce says. "When you get hurt."
There’s a lot of fidget things, in the Cave. Dick picks up one of the little rocker switches he’d rescued from one of Riddler’s more convoluted schemes, and flicks it rhythmically.
"Clark doesn’t get it."
"Clark feels he has a duty to do things others can’t, and he feels that way because of his abilities." The computer beeps, and Bruce starts sorting through the program’s results. "We don’t have those abilities, which confuses him. Is this the same warehouse Penguin was–"
"No, it’s two blocks north. Or, wait, did it get–"
"There are only so many warehouses in Gotham."
"Yeah, but Penguin owns this one. And the one we already looked at." Dick pulls up the worst of the intel flowcharts, the one that depicts Penguin’s web of influence. It always gives him a headache if he looks at it too long. "Four of his warehouses have been destroyed and rebuilt in the past couple months. Do we still have that snitch?"
"No, he moved to Philadelphia."
"Well what did he go and do that for."
"An engineering apprenticeship, I think." Bruce is looking over the flowchart too, both their eyes on the screens, Bruce’s forearm not-quite-touching Dick’s shoulder. "Do you? Wish that?"
Dick doesn’t look away from the tedious, terrible list of warehouse employees and insurance policies. "I wish my parents were alive," he says. "I wish yours were. I wish the Joker was loved more as a kid, and Gotham city councillors had more conviction, and Reagan was shot in the head instead of JFK. I wish we never invented guns or private healthcare or the stock marker or the police. If wishes were horses, y’know?"
"I wish you didn’t know," Bruce says, quietly. They both let that sit, for a beat, and then Bruce says, "I can’t see any reason Penguin would be destroying his own property; his insurance policies aren’t nearly profitable enough. This is someone making an attempt on his territory."
The rest of their evening is a lot of looking at lists until Dick’s eyes start to cross. He tries to imagine, whenever his mind drifts, what else he could be doing. Where Haly’s is, right now. Which movie everyone at school’s been talking about. He could have joined that gymnastics club for real, not just as a potential cover for injuries.
When they were on long drives, one of the ways him and his parents used to pass the time was imagining what their towner versions were up to. His Ma had used that old Star Trek episode as inspiration; A universe where everyone’s evil, that’s the only place I’d ever settle down. Their towner selves worked in offices and ate TV dinners, and the version of Dick that never became Robin feels just the same. Some other person entirely, with his name and his face.
Everyone else’s problems, Clark had said. Like Dick ever got to sit idle. Like he hadn’t helped where he could his whole life.