Chapter Text
It is funny, seeing the similarities between himself and the performers here. He’s not even much older than any of them, really. He had gotten to acrobatics young, so young, but nowadays they don’t let the kids perform like he used to. It makes sense. Fool me once, you know. Dick is in their practice field, the acrobatic set up gleaming and new, with a nice, thick black safety net below them. There are a few new people there – and when he says a few, he really means the majority. Most of the other olders he remembers have moved on to teaching, like him, or disappeared as many performers often do. They’re all in flux, moving to and fro and away and towards like a changing tide or a fleeting bird. At the time, when he was a kid, he remembers the movement being his constant. He wonders, for another moment, how he would have turned out had Bruce not taken him up and away. He probably would have disappeared like his brother.
“So? How are you liking it?” Pops puffs, an exhale of smoke, and eyes watching behind it.
The circus isn’t what it used to be, in all honesty, but Dick enjoys it that way. Everything is softer, calmer – there are birds, horses, and trampolines that kids are currently backflipping on, laughing with each other about each other. The smell of popcorn is the same, cheap food grease and hay. This must be what it feels like to go back to a hometown, recognizing the road but not the restaurants. Everything is slightly to the left. Change is good, he reminds himself. He remembers taking a yoga class, sometime four years ago when he was the happiest he’s ever seemed and the most suicidal he’s ever been, and the yogi murmuring in an entirely too breathy voice: Everything is in flux. And it is. He doesn’t know why he came here.
“It’s great,” Dick says, smiling. “Different, but good.”
Haly laughs, a graveling thing. Dick doesn’t know when he started smoking again, but it wasn’t recently. “You always spare feelings, kiddo. I appreciate that about ya.”
“It is! It’s safe!”
“Safe!”
“You know what I mean –”
“Mister Dick, watch this!”
They both startle, staring ahead as Carlos, one of the kids he had quickly become acquainted with, creaked on the trampoline they both faced, three other bright faced tweens staring up in anticipation. He jumps, one, twice, thrice. Looks back over – just to ensure they’re watching, and Dick knows that look well – and suddenly the kid is up in the air, twisting a somersault forward, launching back on his heels back and twisting into another, two in the air at a time before he collapses into a heap on the trampoline, bouncing on his back before hopping back up. His smile is infinite.
“Did you see? Did you see?”
Dick melts his face, comically impressed, a slow clap and a big grin. He turns to Pops, and it’s partially serious, nearly, because, “What are you feeding these kids?”
Pop laughs, clapping Dick’s shoulder before ambling up to Carlos, who jumps down and lets his hair get inevitably ruffled. Carlos smiles toothily, and Dick’s chest aches.
“They feed on the air – just like you did, Dickie,” He grins.
Carlos’ shoulders puff up, and then, like they all do, he runs off to the other three, all of them fluttering away to whatever else they can get their hands on. He sees the four of them running away and through the vans, disappearing behind one of them and somehow escaping his eye – he’s not shocked. He remembers growing up just as sneaky, strangely so, even before Bruce had snapped him up. He and Danny would hide-and-seek from their parents for hours, and he remembers Haly being a devil on their shoulder, giving them a piece of candy when they disappeared in progressively more creative ways. He always said it was because the circus needed that kind of spark for future generations. Dick feels the smile on his face. They’re cute kids.
“How Danny and I did, yeah,” Dick says. He watches Haly’s shoulders tighten.
“Danimal,” Haly agrees, quietly.
They sit in the silence for another moment, and Dick knows it must be horrible for Haly, because the part of him that doesn’t blame himself does blame the man in front of him. Danny was just a kid. He never should have been alone. Hide-and-seek. Dick’s tongue sours, and he feels the heat of anger simmering in the back of his throat before he swallows.
“That’s why you came, huh,” Haly asks faintly, a sigh on his lips as he shrinks down, shoulders collapsing on themselves. He looks older, Dick thinks, and Dick already thought he aged.
“It had been too long,” Dick says, quietly. “I spent a lot of time not thinking about him at all, you know?” He looks back out, and pictures himself here, twelve years old. He pictures his brother, four. The both of them running to and fro, sneaking up and away, feeling the fondness in the smiles surrounding him. It has been a long time since he thought about the good parts. This month had been strange, parts of him opening that he always anticipated keeping in a small, locked box of newspapers hidden in the back of his closet.
“Everyone does, at some point,” Haly murmurs again. He lights a cigarette he had rifled from his pocket, puffing on it aggressively. “Grief does that to ya.”
“Grief,” Dick echoes. He pauses. “I don’t even know if he’s dead.”
“Dickie…” Haly warns.
“No, but seriously,” He pushes, shaking his head. “I’m serious. I have… there are people looking into it.”
He doesn’t want to say it’s his brother on an absolute bender. He doesn’t say there’s literally no reasonable evidence to suggest Danny is anything else but under the harbor. Nothing’s changed, but for some, godawful reason, he can’t get Tim’s horrible insistence out of his head. Some godawful reason, , Dick thinks dryly. It isn’t for some random reason – it’s the way that he saw how Tim lit up. It’s the way he hasn’t heard an apology yet. If Tim hasn’t come to him, an awkward tail tucked between his head, it means he’s still on the hunt. It means the well hasn’t dried yet.
It means he might have actually fucking found something.
“Dick,” he hears sharply, and Dick snaps out of it, looking to Haly.
Haly looks uncomfortable and pale, clutching his cane and puckering his cigarette, in a moment at the butt of it, letting it flick to the floor before lighting another one immediately.
“Don’t say that,” Haly says, glancing at Dick before looking out to the caravans, sun turning down at them. “The chances are…”
“I know.” Dick says, shrugging. But to be honest, at this point? Fuck it. Dick has grieved his brother in a thousand different ways in a thousand different situations with a thousand different strangers who really didn’t sign up for it – God forbid he actually deepdive like he should have in the first place, when Bruce first tried to shelter him from it all. Dick knows what he is good at. He’s an evader. He is flighty, always has been. But for Danny, he’ll plant his feet at the frontline, even though he knows it is probably going to lead to a corpse.
Jesus. Sounds like something Jason would say.
“I’ll keep you updated, anyway,” Dick says, “If you want to know.”
The caravans are alight with the heat of the day, mixed with a Northeastern wind that flutters his shirt, making the heat lighten from its imposition, becoming a warm touch, a weighted blanket. The kids are giggling in the background somewhere – he still can’t find them. The arid dirt beneath his feet is just as dusty as it was way back when, and although he’s still wearing sandals now, he imagines the look and feel of it under his feet, hard and warm and familiar. The sun glares, and he smiles back, as he always has.
When he looks back at Haly, he’s staring right back. One hand holds on his cane, grasping, letting go, grasping, letting go. The sun ages him, the lines on his forehead and droop of his eyebrow shielding his eyes, making them dark and weighted, creases in the lower corners of his mouth, making the frown ever more prominent on his face. Haly has always been something untouchable, Dick remembers, suddenly. He was always larger than life, than the circus, like his spirit was infinite, jumping from one body to the next. Dick remembers being a kid and looking up, up, up and at the greatest bend of his neck, seeing Haly look down at him with a smile and a piece of candy. He does not look infinite now, and there is an ache in Dick’s chest when he realizes it. Age catches up with the lucky ones, he remembers from his yogi, who maybe he should go back to, now that he’s thinking about it. Apparently they said more good advice than he thought they did.
Haly opens his mouth, closes it. He continues to hold his cane, grasping, letting go, grasping. He shuffles through his pocket, and his pack comes out, a cigarette in between index and middle. Flick. Flick. Flick-ctsh. He sucks in, and his shoulders fall.
“Don’t –” He winces, in pain. Rubs his left shoulder and the creases on his forehead grow deeper.
“You okay, Pop?” Dick says, fully turning towards him. “You look a lil’ –”
“God forbid a man get old,” Pop complains, waving his cane at Dick’s feet so he can’t get closer. Haly waves him off, “I’m fine, I’m fine – Just,” he takes another breath of smoke, in, out, “Just be careful out there, Dickie. Don’t want you putting your head somewhere… you know. Just be safe.”
Dick waves him off, this time, grinning. “Aww, come on, Pop. Don’t you know me? When have I ever?”
Haly chuckles, a crackling thing, looking out to the vans. “Sure, kid. When have you ever?”
Haly breathes, smoke in, out.
—
There are multiple lines of thought that he could follow, technically. Absurdism leads him to believe that the chances of death were high, considering the topic of conversation and the treatment within the Gotham prison system. Hypertension and risk of deep vein thrombosis in his Gotham City medical chart would mean that a pulmonary embolism is not necessarily an out-of-the-blue cause of death and paired with poor governance and prison abuse? It would wrap up Zucco’s pathetic, wormy life quite well. It did especially well when it made the paper a week later, a sad, pathetic little footnote under the newest scheme by the Riddler that actually almost had everyone stumped. Well, almost everyone. Tim thought it was a bit simplistic, but that’s never changed. Regardless, however, Zucco’s death was believed to be perfectly normal, and Tim’s bribe was perfectly successful in making sure his name was nowhere near tied to it.
The issue, however, is that Tim was there. And Tim is not an idiot like police are, and there was more than enough information given that would suggest foul play.
The second issue? He has a feeling that maybe he has dipped his toes into something a little bigger than he thought.
“So that’s why you brought me in, finally?” Barbara says, unbearably unimpressed.
He’s… a little sheepish. But not much.
“I know that I should have brought you in sooner, but… I wasn’t going to give false hope if I did not have a clear line to track. It would be a waste of everyone’s time and emotional energy.”
Barbara’s face doesn’t change, but she sighs, which is how Tim knows he’s somewhat in the clear. He shuffles awkwardly onto her couch, which is entirely too big considering how small the Watchtower is, and folds up his knees to his chest as she rubs her eyes.
“Listen – I don’t actually disagree with you, but…” She looks at him a bit emptily shocked. “I just can’t believe you actually found… anything. Bruce and I have combed over everything a thousand and one times.”
Tim shrugs. “I don’t know. I had a feeling.”
Barbara can’t believe this kid. Everytime she sees him, it’s like this. Bullshit detective main character bullshit. She pauses, though, and looks at him again.
“Do you have a feeling that he’s alive?”
He pauses, looking at her warily.
“I’m not saying that to start an argument or lecture you, Tim,” She waves him off, annoyed, “I mean, like seriously. Do you?”
Tim unwraps himself, tapping his knee with his left index, and biting his tongue. For all intents and purposes, the kid is dead. 100% there is no earthly reason to believe that he is alive anymore. Even if there was some super secret cult that got to him instead of a trafficking ring, he would most likely be used as fodder, a sacrifice – something replaceable, at the very least. The Grayson’s are Romani, with no spiritual connection larger than ethnic and cultural, so they shouldn’t have been connected in any larger way with a cult for him to get special treatment in any way. And that’s going deeper than he assumes, as most cult kidnappings are based in virginity, age, and look – and Danny seemed paler than Dick, which would line up with sacrificial lamb.
But.
“I have a feeling,” Tim says, voice low, measured. “I don’t know why. I just do.”
Barbara looks at him, sighs. She wheels back to the masses of monitors fasted to the wall, her glasses pushed all the way up. She cranes her neck back to him, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, you gonna to tell me what I’m searching for, or what?”
Tim smiles, slight, before slinking to the side of her. One hand rests lightly on her shoulder, the other on the desk, leaning forwards. He talks.
Barbara types.
Something, leagues away, pings.