Title: Night Watch [or The More Things Change, The More Love Sucks]

Author/pseudonym: J.C.

Rating: PG

Fandom: Superman/Batman

Pairings: Superman/Batman (or if you prefer, Clark/Bruce)

Series: The True Adventures of Batman and Superman (Story Five)

Feedback addy: jazzedup@prodigy.net

Author's Website: http://www.hawksong.com/forest/jc.html

Disclaimers: All characters used in this story belong to someone else... but they still insist on hanging around me. And they're superheroes, after all, so nothing I'm doing seems to have any permanent effects on them.

Summary: Nightwing makes a discovery.

Warnings: none

I know that I got it from him -- the tendency to sit in the dark occupied with my thoughts -- and it doesn't even bother me anymore. I spent a good part of my youth desperately trying to be like him, and quite a few years after that trying just as desperately *not* to be like him. At least that was my rationale -- that I wouldn't be like him, because I would be 'normal'. It was only in recent times, and only in those quiet moments of dark reflection, that I allowed myself to truly see the extent of my fallacy.

*Normal*. What was that anyway? To my mind it had been to have a life -- wife, kids, home. And yet at the point when I had decided in earnest that normal was what I wanted, I didn't even pursue it. I didn't take my newly acquired college education and go out to find a job, didn't follow 'normal' pursuits, or put myself on the road of ordinary men. Instead, I took my trust fund money and headed off to far-flung corners of the world in search of training in skills that no ordinary man would ever need. Just like he did a long time ago. And for a lot of the same reasons.

But I didn't want to be like him. I wanted to be *with* him. And since there seemed like no chance of that, I wanted to be better than him. To show that it was possible.

Did I succeed? Not in a lot of ways that I wished, but I learned some things - a few lessons that I don't think he ever learned.

When he retreats to the darkness to think... inevitably to *brood*, it's almost a given that he will come out of it with an answer, a decision, a direction. More often than not, so will I. But I try to learn something about myself in the process. I've found that you can always come up with an answer, but the *right* answer may sometimes require you to change. I think that's something that he won't allow himself to acknowledge.

Even the kid could see that we're really a lot alike, and though I may never admit it out loud, and definitely never say it to anyone's face, I'm not so blind that I don't *see* it, and not so stupid that I can't understand certain advantages. But it's the differences that make *me* strong. The 'me' that doesn't always wear a costume. And I'm not so stupid that I don't understand how important that is, either -- no matter how alike even I think we are.

I had been presumptuous enough to think that maybe I could make him see how different we both could be, and maybe teach him a bit about himself as well, and when it seemed that I couldn't, I was smart enough to know that it was his loss. That didn't make it hurt me any less, but I lived with it... and hopefully learned from it.

Each Master that taught me in every discipline that I pursued while traveling told me that for all my enthusiasm and dedication, something was missing. At first, foolishly, I thought it just referred to me finding a way to have him in my life.... It took a long time to realize that it meant finding a way to have *me* in my life. And, I still find myself struggling with *both* of those issues.

Looking back, I've noticed that crucial events that effect my Bat-related world seem to happen to me on rooftops at night. Maybe it's a divine joke, or maybe it's just a run of weird timing. Either way, it's a good thing that I'm not afraid of heights... or the dark.

There had been the time during the summer before my senior year in college, right after a particularly close call with a few of Gotham's unsavory characters. We had swung to a nearby roof to watch the police clean up behind us, and when they were done, I started to head down to the Batmobile, but he called out to me. The way he said, "Robin", made me freeze for an instant, then I turned around, watched him standing there safely locked in that suit, listened to him speaking with that voice -- that voice that was remarkably the same as the voice that he so recently had used with me in bed -- and he ripped out the previous four weeks of our lives. As if tearing off a page of a calendar and tossing it away means that those days never happened.

I don't remember what he said exactly, though I'm sure it made perfect, practical sense. After all, what we had been doing had been crazy. It had been scary and exhilarating all at once, breathing life into things to which I had never had the nerve to even give conscious thought.

We crossed the line from dreams to reality so fast, I don't think even he considered the consequences for the first three days. Then every day after that, I waited for him to say, "No more." I knew he wanted to, knew he was struggling with his role in my life, with having trained me from childhood, knew that the fact that I was twenty-one wouldn't cut it. I knew all the reasons and prepared to fight them, but as each day silently passed, I relaxed a little more.

But then I faced him on that roof, and realized that it had nothing to do with Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne, instead I got pelted with fractured phrases about Batman and Robin and dedication to 'The Life'. The all-important bottom line. No chance of anything but costumed capers... like Dick Grayson didn't exist just because he wouldn't let Bruce Wayne really exist. And he was too fucking upstanding to even give me the bittersweet comfort of a lie such as after all was said and done he didn't love me. No, I had to walk away knowing full well what he was turning his back on.

I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of the end of us as Batman and Robin. Two days later I started my last year at the University. By that first weekend, I was dating Barbara Gordon with a vengeance.

Even so, I still found myself fighting by his side. After all, a crimefighter's work is never done. But I'd be the first to admit now that I wasn't at the top of my game. I was too busy trying too hard to prove that I could be all that I could be, and still be the best damned partner he could ever have. Except, all of a sudden, I wasn't. There was Batgirl. Slipping in and picking up where I left off -- taking up my slack. I could feel the pressure starting to build.

And Batman was unapproachable, and Bruce was non-existent (even at my graduation ceremony), and I couldn't talk to Barbara because that would mean revealing deep, dark secrets... both of the costumed variety and of the kiss and tell variety, and I couldn't go there, I couldn't go anywhere, and it all came to a head on a rooftop one night....

It's a moment of which I shouldn't be particularly proud. My excuse is that things had been building for so long, that finding out that Barbara, my *girlfriend*, was Batgirl, and worse, that *he* knew about it, well that was the straw that broke the Robin's back.

My last night as Robin.

It had been time anyway... maybe past time. And now, I can't even think of a way that it could have ended reasonably. I've often thought that maybe I would have just kept tottering after him even when he was in his seventies, or until the next needy boy came along to fill my tights. No easy way out. So, it wasn't my most shining, mature moment -- punching Batman in the face, knocking him on his ass, and throwing down my cape in the heat of anger -- but I'm still kind of proud of it. Because that was *me*. He would never have let his emotions get the best of him... his outbursts were all calculated as a means to an end -- all show. Even when it meant roughing up someone in front of their kid. But never anything more real than that. So, I'm glad that I had it in me. No matter how much it hurt -- and I don't just mean my swollen hand, either.

My last night as Robin. My first night as -- I didn't know what. But the journey to find out took almost three years and took me far away from Gotham... and brought me back again.

New identity, new resolve. Same old anger from the same old wounds.

Even though it had jokingly crossed my mind, I never really expected there to *be* another Robin. And it hurt me in a place that I had kept locked up for so long, in a way that a whole harem of Batgirls never could have. For one sharp, agonizing moment in time, it didn't matter what actually was, only what it looked like -- that he had taken my girlfriend (and had been involved with her longer than I had), a woman who would wear a costume and fight the good fight, and gotten a new Robin, one that wasn't likely to try to get the drop on him one night and slip him some tongue. It had been a long road, and I had tried to move on, but that didn't mean that there weren't some things I hadn't gotten over.

It was easy, maybe too easy, to put my mask in place, affect a show of nonchalance, and pull out my new costume... my new *life*... and hold it up for viewing. Still more like him than I wanted to be, but I was still working on it.

Which took me to another rooftop, another night, spilling my guts to a cocky kid who to this day thinks he has all the answers. His first answer to me had been that I was "just like Batman". It's a little humbling, and a lot annoying when you pour out the traumatic story of one of your life's major turning points and some smart alec kid says, "And you still haven't forgiven him?" Like it was my fault, my call. Truthfully, I had to acknowledge that that part had been within my power. So, later when Robin tossed another one at me, concerning Batman having a heart after all, I caught it cleanly, and decided that maybe time could indeed heal, if you let it.

And it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. Okay, actually, it *was* great. On those occasions where we fought side by side, we were more in sync than we had ever been before. Even when we clashed, I felt he had a new level of respect for me. I was sure that it wasn't just wishful thinking on my part. I grumbled, he grumbled back, and I had to fight down how happy it made me feel sometimes. And I had hope. Hope that maybe one day we'd find ourselves back at a certain point and things would go down differently. That he would let me show him that what passed for normal in our world could include something that went beyond the masks.

So, I was merrily going along until last night when I found myself sitting alone on a roof in the dark, having just made another discovery. I had been on top of a building not too far from where I live. Batman had dropped me off a bit earlier because the night's activities had resulted in an unfortunate accident involving my favorite Nightwing cycle, leaving both me and the bike a little worse for wear. But I hadn't felt like sleeping. I felt too restless, too wound up to just sit home, not wanting to admit that it had anything to do with thoughts of what I would have wanted to happen if I had taken Batman up on his offer to stay overnight at Wayne Manor. So, after the Batmobile turned the corner, I took to the skies, finding a nearby rooftop perch just to look around for a while, not really looking for anything. Not looking for anything, but seeing too much anyway.

I saw Batman kissing Superman.

Saying it like that sounds like some dirty ditty kids would make up in a schoolyard, but it wasn't child's play. It was the real thing -- vividly, achingly real. I had been taking in my surroundings through my night goggles, and all of a sudden there they were. They just dropped down three buildings away, and it looked like they said a few words, then they kissed, and then they were gone again. If I hadn't felt the pain like a kick in my gut, I would have thought it was an hallucination. It was like being witness to a murder, being in the wrong place at the right time. Or something like that.

I sat there in the same spot for what seemed like hours, right where my knees had buckled, refusing to support me any longer. Sat and tried not to give in to a full-blown bout of depression, a round of *brooding*. Fresh pain licked at the edges of my scabbed-over places inside, and I fought to get a handle on it.

I felt like a total ass -- not just because I had actually been assuming that he and I were on the same page, but because I never even suspected anything about the sudden increase in inter-city anti-criminal activity that had been going on. It would have been much less surprising if it had been Catwoman. At least I had some inkling of his attraction in that direction.

And I wanted to know how he had made it to that point. How he got from fighting Luthor's mutant robots with Superman in Metropolis to sticking his tongue down the Man of Steel's throat on top of a building in Gotham. What had happened when Superman had saved him while Batgirl and I were off in Romania trying to track him down?

Then again, I didn't really want to know that. What I really wanted to know was how had he made that sort of leap without me even being in contention. How dare he even have something that looked like something when there was supposed to be nothing until *we* had something?

I had tried to tell Robin that things change, and he said that Batman had said the same thing. The kid took it as another clue that the Bat and I were so much alike -- as in the more things change, the more they stay the same. But that's not always the case.

Sometimes things just change.

The reality of that had just exploded in my face, and I was going to have to go to the Batcave the next day, and try to overhaul my bike, and watch him, knowing... knowing nothing, actually. Only knowing what I saw, and imagining the rest. Except that Batman and I weren't getting as close as I had thought just twenty-four hours before.

When I got tired of thinking about it, I got up and crossed to the edge of the building. For a brief moment, I considered stepping off. Nightwing has the ability to fly in a way, and I usually love it -- that feeling of freedom. But as I stood there, all I could think about was how he was with someone that could really fly, and I got Technicolor images of him wrapped around a hard body floating on air currents high above me, and I wished violently that he were with me. The thought of another lost chance made me shudder, and step back from the edge.

Suddenly, I was overcome with the urge to get out of my costume, to get into some jeans and boots, and find that same feeling of freedom from more ordinary pursuits, like speeding along a highway on a classic motorcycle. It was time for *Dick Grayson* to fly.

I knew that I wasn't over him -- but I wasn't running away, either. I wasn't going to let every Bat bombshell send me scrambling for cover. *My* bottom line was that Nightwing had a job to do, and Dick Grayson had a life that he needed to learn to live.

Resolutely, I threw out a line and swung towards home, looking forward to getting a Harley under me, and hitting the road for a while. Even so, I had the feeling that it probably wouldn't be the last time that I would find myself in quiet contemplation or facing shocking revelations on a roof at night.

Good thing I'm not afraid of heights... or the dark.

Even better that I've learned not to be afraid of myself.