Chapter Text
Where is it?
Disturbed dust floats in the air, appearing like falling snow in the sliver of sunlight peeking through the curtains. An inordinate mess of wrinkled clothes, old mementos, and outdated school supplies rest on an unmade bed where even the bedsheets have been lifted to look under the mattress. Half a wall’s worth of a bookshelf has been emptied, books now piled up directly on the ground.
In the midst of his bedroom in disarray, Dick pants, lungs burning and throat dry. It’s not the physical effort that tires him, but rather the oppressive weight suddenly on his back. His chest feels tight.
Where is it?
It’s gone.
Dick rushes to the door, whirls back around to neaten his hair in front of the mirror, inspects his reflection closely, then calmly walks out of the room.
It’s only 5 pm, which means most household members should still be here.
With noise from downstairs as a lure, he finds Alfred by the main living room, a box in his arms. Alfred looks up as he arrives, eyebrows lifting at whatever he sees on Dick’s face.
“Hey Alfie,” Dick says. His voice sounds weird even to his own ears. He smiles. “Have you gone into my room recently?”
“Of course, Master Dick. I go into your room regularly. To clean,” Alfred says dryly.
“Cool, cool… And did you take anything?”
“No, I did not. Even the trash in Master Tim’s room stays where it is – unless I’m given permission, of course.”
“Right… What’s this box?”
“I’m doing a little spring-cleaning. Perhaps you could help me evaluate what I’ve gathered so far?” Alfred’s barely finished asking that Dick is jogging to him.
They put the box on the coffee table, and Alfred starts unpacking: but it’s all baubles and trinkets. A few silverware utensils that urgently need polishing, an old candlestick holder that needs fixing, a ceramic vase that’s missing a piece.
By the time the box is empty, Dick’s hands are rhythmically clenching and unclenching. Alfred looks at him and says, with the patience of a saint: “Well? What do you think?”
“Looks good, Alfred,” Dick says with a dry throat. “Actually, you’d know those things better than I anyway, I shouldn’t bother you.”
“You’re no bother at all, Master Dick.”
“Right, right… Sorry for keeping you. I’ll, uh–” He has to look away to draw in a breath. “Who’s home right now?”
“I believe Master Tim and Miss Cassandra might still be here.”
Dick gives Alfred his thanks again, then flees, flailed open from being under that knowing gaze for so long. There’s no doubt in his mind Alfred already knows what’s going on – or at least, has an approximate guess.
There’s noise coming from the TV room; the sound of talking over the low hum of a TV. Tim’s voice, with the occasional input from Cass.
Dick takes a moment to calm his twitching hands, then peeks into the room with a smile.
His siblings immediately notice him. They’re sitting on the couch, facing the TV but not really paying attention – but whatever they were talking about, it’s forgotten as soon as they turn their heads and find Dick there.
“Hey Dick,” Tim greets with a smile. “Did you only just come home?”
No, he came back from school over an hour ago, and then spent said hour scouring his room.
“Nah,” Dick says lightly. “Hi Tim, hi Cass. Did you go into my room?”
“Sure I did. Just last night, actually.” Tim sounds amused. “I carried you back to your bed because you were falling asleep standing up.”
“No, I mean.” Dick struggles for words. His face feels frozen in place, a smile on his lips like they don’t know what else to do. “Since then. Today? While I was at school?”
“No? Why?”
Tim wouldn’t lie to him, right? If he’d done something, like, say, plant something in his room, or take something out, he would just say it outright. And Tim wouldn’t need to take something from Dick’s room, that’s stupid. Tim is the head of Wayne Enterprise. If he wants something, he’ll buy it, and if it’s not something you can buy, he’ll make it himself.
“Cass?” Dick asks.
Cass is frozen stiff – but not with fear, no; her sudden paralysis is born out of care. Dick can see it in her eyes: like a bull in a china shop, not moving to avoid accidentally knocking into anything fragile.
“No,” she says carefully.
And now that Tim’s glanced at her, he’s gone stiff too. He looks back at Dick, studying him, his frozen smile, his clenching hands – and it’s game over.
When Tim became Robin, he also accepted the role of Dick’s older brother; and both as Robin and an older brother, he’s always strived to achieve a perfect score. In the blink of an eye, he’s smiling again, all the calculations disappeared from his face. Even his shoulders loosen invitingly.
It’s like watching a magic trick – the way Tim becomes this strange creature only for Dick’s sake. Even Cass looks on with interest.
And despite himself, Dick feels himself loosen as well.
“What’s up?” Tim says. “Did one of Damian’s animals tear a path through your room?”
“That’s only ever happened with your room,” Dick answers. He feels too energetic to sit down with his siblings, but he at least walks closer. “So neither of you went in my room? Do you know if anyone else…?”
Tim and Cass share a look, then both give a negative.
Duke doesn’t come by that often, and Damian hasn’t been home in a few days. Bruce would never take it from him. The only suspect that leaves is…
“Did you lose something?” Tim asks.
“Yeah.”
There’s a beat of silence where Dick finds himself unable to speak. He looks away then back again.
“What’d you lose?” Tim continues, when it becomes obvious Dick won’t speak. “Maybe we could help you find it?”
For a moment, infinite and breathless, Dick considers refusing. If he doesn’t say it aloud, maybe it won’t be real, and maybe he’ll go back to his room and find it was just inattentional blindness. Maybe he’s just become so used to it being on his bedside table that he can’t see it anymore. Maybe, maybe.
And what if not?
And what if someone has it right now, and is destroying it?
What if he’s wasting time hesitating?
What if, what if.
“It’s my copy of Frankenstein,” Dick says in a rush of breath. “The 1831 edition. Red and black cover. Paperback. It’s annotated.”
“Okay. Maybe you should sit down,” Tim says suddenly, slowly standing up. His hands are open and wide, the way Damian sometimes does it when approaching stray cats. “You look pale.”
“You look pale,” Dick throws back.
“Yeah, but that’s normal on me, not on you.”
Tim slowly coaxes into sitting down; and now Dick is surrounded by his siblings on both sides. It’s not even a surprise to find Cass appearing in his blind spot. Dick swallows heavily, keeping his eyes on the TV.
“So?” he grinds out. “Have you seen it?”
“I haven’t, but we can look together. Right, Cass?”
Cass nods slowly. She puts a gentle hand on Dick’s forearm. She looks a little uncertain, glancing in between Tim and Dick like she can tell she’s missing something. “Yes,” she says anyway, “let’s look together.”
“No,” Dick blurts out. “I mean, no, it’s fine. I’m the one who lost it. I’ll fix it myself.”
“Dick, it’s fine, we can help.”
He stands up, fleeing both Cass’ hand and Tim’s voice. “No, really, it’s fine,” he says with a smile. “I mean, it’s just a cheap copy. It’s fine.”
“Dick,” Tim says helplessly. “Then, if it’s just a cheap copy, should I buy you another one?”
His breath leaves him in a whoosh, like Tim had reached across and punched him straight in the sternum. Instantly, Tim straightens up with wide eyes, realizing his own mistake.
“Is that what you think?” Dick says, betrayed. “That I just– need a replacement? What’s a replacement to you? Do you think you’re a replacement?”
“Dick, I didn’t mean it like that. I was just talking about the book.”
“You’re not a replacement.” His voice trembles, but the words are firm. “I’ve never once thought you were a replacement. Not for Robin, and not for my brother.”
Tim’s fallen silent; Cass is sitting stiffly on the couch, glancing between the two of them. This is something she has little part or say in; something the rest of the family likes to avoid with a ten-foot poll.
“Some things are irreplaceable,” Dick says. “I wish you would realize that.”
“I do,” Tim insists. “I know, Dick. I was talking about the book.”
“It’s irreplaceable too!”
Cass’ calm voice cuts through: “Was it Jason’s?” she asks.
Dick swallows. “Yeah. With, with his notes, too.”
Tim’s brows furrow. “And you think he’ll get mad you lost it?”
“What? No! Of course, he won’t.”
And why would he? That old copy of Frankenstein, he’s surely forgotten about it by now. If not due to time, then surely because he never cared in the first place. Jason didn’t care about this copy – the book had come to him already damaged, dog-eared, and annotated by an ‘idiot,’ as he ranted so many times. Compared to the hardcover, limited-editions classics Bruce got him, what’s one old, worn-out copy of Frankenstein?
But that’s what makes it special.
Jason would never directly annotate any other book, far too precious in his mind, but this copy was fair-game. He’d gone into it slowly, almost shyly, and then one day he’d found Dick doodling his best impression of Frankenstein’s monster on the title page, and that’d been the end of his hesitance. By the end of it, that little paperback book had become warped like the ocean, stained with blue and black and red ink, containing all of Jason’s thoughts – including all the curses an 11-year-old could think of – and carefully decorated with Dick’s best crayon drawings.
“I lost it,” Dick says, numb. “I… I lost it.”
All of that, the faint memory of his older brother, forever penned down in that ratty old Frankenstein copy. And it’s gone.
He lost it.
How could he lose it?
“Dickie,” Tim says helplessly. He’s stood up, and is now holding Dick by the arms, leaning down slightly to be more on his level. He starts to speak again, but Cass interrupts.
“Tim,” she calls, shaking her head. “Dick, you… take your time. Call Jason.”
“Sure,” Dick says. His whole body is starting to feel numb. “Thanks Cass. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt–” His head twists around to look at the TV. “I’ll leave you guys to it.”
“Dick,” Tim calls again.
Cass speaks over him: “Okay. Call Jason.”
“Sure.”
Dick leaves the room, and behind him, his siblings. As he crosses the door, he hears shuffling, and already knows Tim is finally showing his frustration. Cass doesn’t know anything, can only understand what Dick is feeling; but Tim saw. He was there to watch.
But he doesn’t know either. Neither of them do.
They never knew Jason like Dick knew him. They can’t understand.
That boy who read him Frankenstein and wouldn’t get mad even when he drew in the margins. That boy who held his hand when they crossed the road. That boy who didn’t know the first thing about being a sibling, but who’d sworn to do his best anyway.
Even Bruce and Alfred don’t know what it was like to have Jason as a brother.
What it’s still like.
Having to hold onto every little thing, because he was there for so little time, and it was so long ago, and you were too little. And memory fades with age and time – most people’s earliest memories are from age 6, you see, and by Dick’s 6th birthday, Jason was already gone. For most of Dick’s memory, Jason has been nothing but a feeling. Someone you miss even without realizing, and it’s so intrinsic to your person that you can never do or be without. Waking up every day missing your brother, even though you’re already starting to forget his voice; clinging to every bit he left behind, trying to remember and rediscover who he was all at once.
Who was Jason Todd?
A straight A’s student who’d hesitated on signing up for the drama club. Studious and smart, and always hungry to learn more – but not obedient or docile in the least, cursing the authors he didn’t like and arguing with phantoms of the philosophers he disagreed with, Dick as his only spectator.
A hero, Robin, first and second all at once. The first in the public’s eyes, but the second in reality, secretly following Dick’s footsteps and dreams. The Grayson’s legacy on his shoulders, in a spring songbird’s colors. New hope springs forth, and with it, two boys’ dreams of justice and freedom.
A brother.
His brother.
But he’s still here, isn’t he?
He came back, and…
Dick knows Jason feels the weight of Bruce’s grief. He resents him for it – must surely feel that Bruce expects him to go back to the way he was. That’s why Dick will never admit it. He’d rather die himself than make Jason feel ashamed of who he is today.
It’s just not like that.
For so long, Dick was defined by his grief. He’d had a brother who loved him, loved him so much that he wore Robin’s colors.
And Robin killed him.
If Jason had never become Dick’s brother, if Jason had never loved him enough to become Robin, then. Then.
Then…
Then what?
A world in which Jason never was his brother. Is that possible?
Dick blinks slowly, and heavy tears fall with it.
Laid down on his bed, he stares at the ceiling, feeling the heavy weight of a missing book on his bedside table, and realizes hours have passed.
It’s dark, only a sliver of golden light coming from the gap in between the door and the floor. Muted noise comes from downstairs, the chatter of a family gathering in preparation of dinner.
The clock shows 7 pm. Alfred will call him soon.
So Dick swallows the bird in his throat, wipes away his tears, and tries to forget.
Someone knocks on the door.
Dick, plunged head first into a copy of Little Women, lifts his head for the first time in hours. He’s sat on the floor of his bedroom, legs crisscrossed and back against his bed. Surrounding him are piles of books, all of them once belonging to Jason, and in near perfect condition.
“What is it?” he calls.
“It’s me,” Bruce’s voice answers. He sounds normal, but the fact he still hasn’t opened the door says enough. “Can I come in?”
Dick closes his book. “Yeah.”
Bruce opens the door, and it’s the lack of emotion on his face that seals it. Dick sighs, closing his eyes. He folds his legs against his chest.
“Hey chum.”
“Did Tim tell you?”
“No. It was Cassandra, actually.”
“Seriously?”
Bruce sits down next to him, carefully moving the books away. He always treats them preciously. Only a few weeks into coming to the Wayne household, Jason scolded him for not being respectful enough to the books in the Wayne library – some of them older than Alfred himself. To this day, Bruce hesitates to staple documents for Wayne Enterprise, and even winced the first time he saw Tim’s high school textbooks. Dick still teases him for it.
“Don’t resent your siblings,” Bruce says. “They’re worried about you, that’s all.”
Dick rolls his eyes. “What? Because I got a little upset over losing something? That’s a normal human reaction. It’s only weird to you guys.”
“Dick, I know what that book meant to you.”
“Oh, do you,” Dick says meanly. “I don’t think you do, no.”
“I still have copies of Jason’s report cards. And,” Bruce closes his eyes. “There’s the uniform, downstairs.”
At the reminder, all the aggression leaves his body. He knows Bruce understands – if not what Jason meant and still means to him, then at least, the need to cling onto the pieces left behind.
“Are you gloating right now?” Dick mutters. “Good for you. You still have them. And meanwhile, I… I’m…” He swallows. “I’m stupid enough to lose it!”
“Dick…” Bruce says.
He puts an arm over his shoulders, gently tipping him over so Dick can lean into his chest. Dick’s head falls against his neck, and like this, with Bruce’s heartbeat loud in his ear and the warm weight of his arm around him, it feels like he’s a kid again, struggling to understand what it means to lose family for the second time.
“You’re not stupid.” Bruce’s voice rumbles in his ear, his chest vibrating with the sound. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Dick confesses, struggling not to sound as pathetic as he feels. “I… It was there in the morning, then when I came back from school, it was gone.”
“Are you sure it was there in the morning?”
“Yes! No. I don’t know. I… I can’t remember. Usually, I don’t…”
The words die on his tongue. A wave of shame washes over his body.
Usually, he doesn’t pay attention. How long has he kept that book by his bedside? Years and years. And how many times has he carelessly pushed it to the side to put a mug of hot chocolate next to it, or nearly slapped it off the table while trying to turn off his alarm clock?
And it was only that day, when his literature teacher had mentioned they’d be studying Frankenstein starting next semester, that all the memories had come rushing back, and he’d wondered, all of a sudden, if that book was still watching over him in his sleep.
Dick’s lower lip trembles. He bites down on it.
“It’s alright, Dick,” Bruce says into his hair. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It happens to lose some things, even important things.”
“I…” Dick starts to speak, only to choke on his words.
He turns his head further into Bruce’s hold, hiding his face into the crook of his neck,
This is so embarrassing, and Dick hates himself for it. He hasn’t clung to Bruce in so long – hasn’t allowed himself to – but with this, and about this, he can’t help it.
It wasn’t always like this. When Jason left, Bruce wasn’t in any position to help Dick through his emotions. He tried, but…
When Jason died, Bruce went with him.
For days, weeks, and even months, Bruce was changed. He wasn’t the man who’d taken in an orphan toddler and a Crime Alley kid. In his place was a man who bore their father’s skin, but none of his insides. He had the same habits, the same voice, and the same warmth – but something had changed, on a level so intrinsic to his person that, to this day, looking at him feels like staring at a gravestone.
But Bruce came back, with Tim, and then Damian and Cass. He’s different; undoubtedly he will never be the man Dick and Jason knew him as, but he came back and stayed. Resurrected from a self-imposed death through Tim’s efforts.
Jason came back too.
So why is it so different?
Why did Dick stop missing Bruce, when Jason’s absence still feels like a bleeding wound?
Arguably, Bruce is more important to him. Dick depends on him legally and financially, as well as emotionally. That’s the man who saved him from a life of hatred and resentment before Dick could even understand what those words meant, the man who taught him justice, who raised him.
Yet.
Yet…
Dick remembers hearing of the damnatio memoriae, the condemnation of memory, an ancient roman punishment of erasing someone from history – purging all records of their existence until it’d been like they’d never existed.
He blames his failing memory most of all, though logically there’s nothing he can do about it. Why does he forget his brother? Why can’t he hold onto these memories? The boy his brother was, who disappeared so violently, who is still disappearing to this day, all because Dick can’t engrave those memories onto his very being.
He’d thought that, even if he couldn’t keep the memories, at least he could keep the mementos.
But he lost it.
He lost the book. All of Jason’s annotations and thoughts. The way he’d underlined some paragraphs with excitement. His angry notes about Doctor Frankenstein. His self-made biography of Mary Shelley. It’s all gone.
Dick’s Frankenstein doodles, all signed with his name; the way Jason warped his annotations around his drawings.
It’s not only Jason who is being forgotten, but their brotherhood.
That’s what bothers Dick most, and he hates it.
Jason is still there. He came back. In the end, the only thing that disappeared is their brotherhood.
Jason came back as someone else – someone who is no longer Dick’s brother.
And what if one day even his brother's memory disappears forever?
Damnatio memoriae.
“What was he like?” Dick asks in a quiet voice.
“Jason?” Bruce sounds surprised. “He was… a bright kid. Passionate. Very dramatic – he took some things far too seriously for his own good. One time, he suggested doing an oath ceremony like a medieval knight. He said it like it was a joke, but,” he laughs quietly, “I could tell a part of him was serious. I think he’d just read Le Morte d’Arthur.”
Dick closes his eyes. He can almost see it: his brother’s youthful face, just like in the family album photo, trying to look nonchalant while the rest of his body betrays his excitement.
“You were his favorite,” Bruce continues. “In the beginning, it was that I was… an adult man, and so was Alfred, though Jason was less wary of him. Meanwhile, you were his little brother, even before I’d had the chance to adopt both of you. He talked with you the most. Too much, even. I’m sorry you had to hear things that no normal child should hear…”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Dick counters with a small smile.
He remembers that. After Jason had told him about train riding, Dick had dreamed about it for ten nights in a row, all the dreams featuring Batman, Robin, and the last Grayson jumping and flipping over train carriages in the darkness of the night. At one point, he’d tried to sneak out after Batman and Robin left, and then had to be carried back home shivering wet from the heavy rain. He’d gotten sick, and Jason scolded.
Dick has been described as a menace in his youth, especially compared to the way Jason used to be. He wonders if Jason ever thought he was more trouble than he was worth.
The thought makes his throat tight.
“Can you tell me more?”
“Of course.”
Dick closes his eyes, and loses himself to memories of his brother, Bruce’s chest rumbling against his ear.
“What are you doing?”
A shadow obscures the prettily-penned ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’ written in the middle of the page. With the change in lighting, the Frankenstein head carefully drawn under the title starts to look more blue than green.
Dick cranes his neck up. Jason is standing over him, looking at the crayon in Dick’s hand with a weird expression.
“I’m drawing.”
“I can see that. And why are you drawing on my book?”
Dick straightens up, wondering if he’s made a mistake. So far, Jason hasn’t gotten mad with him. In fact, he’s always so careful not to upset him that it makes Dick feel a little weird. Even when Dick gets mad and screams at him, Jason just stays upset for a while, then comes back like nothing happened.
“You draw on that book all the time,” Dick defends himself.
Jason crosses his arms and lifts his chin. “I don’t draw, I annotate.”
“Same thing!”
“Not really…”
Jason sits down next to him, leaning over to peer more closely at Dick’s drawing.
“It’s Frankenstein,” Dick says. “He’s green, right?”
“Frankenstein’s the doctor.”
“He’s a doctor?” Dick gasps. He’s never seen a doctor with green skin and bolts in their neck, but considering some of the people he’s seen Bruce and Uncle Clark face… “Is he from Gotham?”
“No, I mean,” Jason flounders. “The guy you’re drawing is Frankenstein’s monster. Doctor Frankenstein created him.”
“So what’s his name then?”
“He doesn’t have one.” Jason picks up the book and starts fluttering through the pages. “Actually, you could argue that the monster is not the creature – that’s the green guy with a bolt in his neck – but rather Doctor Frankenstein, who fathered him. He created the monster then immediately fled, alienating him and essentially leaving a newborn to fend for himself. What kinda dad does that?” Jason goes quiet for a moment, upset, then glances at him. “Uh… I mean, that’s just what I think, at least. I dunno. I haven’t finished reading it…”
“So Frankenstein’s monster is a good guy, and Frankenstein is a monster.”
“Kinda? The creature did kill a few people…” Jason stops fluttering through the pages, stopping back at the front page, where Dick’s Frankenstein’s monster drawing is. “Hey, it’s fine on this one, I guess, but don’t draw on any other book, okay?”
“Not even my school textbooks?”
Jason laughs. “No, those are fair-game.”
“Your books are so boring though. There’s never any picture…”
“Not true! Little Women had drawings!”
Jason finished reading him Little Women just last week, though for the life of him Dick can barely remember any of it. For some reason, Jason always reads to him in the evening, when Dick is huddled into his bed and with only the bedside lamp turned on – just the way Bruce used to, before Jason suddenly decided to do it himself. Half the time, Dick ends up fighting against his eyelids to stay awake long enough to reach beyond three pages.
When he describes it like that, it sounds like they’re reading him bedtime stories. But bedtime stories aren’t so long, and never so complicated. Alfred’s read him a few, so he knows.
Jason shows him a few pages of Little Women, all of them with intricate black and white drawings of well-dressed girls.
“Not enough color,” Dick says smartly.
“I’m not letting you color them in,” Jason says, secretly a mind-reader. “Listen, how about you keep your drawings to Frankenstein? You draw and I annotate. It’ll be like…” His face goes red. “Like, our thing, you know? Between brothers.”
Dick grins. “Okay! Are you gonna read it to me?”
“Uh, I don’t know Dickie… I think Alfred would be pretty mad if I did. It’s not exactly for kids your age…”
“But you read me Pride and Pre-juice?”
Jason’s face darkens. “Pride and Prejudice, yeah. And I got grounded for that. They’re right, I shouldn’t have. You should be reading the Cat in the Hat, not Frankenstein. How do you even know about Frankenstein’s monster anyway?”
“Saw him on TV.”
“Just what are you watching…” Jason glances at his face once and immediately gives in. “Okay, fine. I’ll read it to you. But don’t you dare mention it to Alfred! Or Bruce.”
Dick nods seriously, even though it was Jason who accidentally let it slip that they’d been reading Pride and Pre-juice.
“Promise!”