Becoming Robin

After the night Bruce Wayne showed Dick Grayson the Batcave, life at Wayne Manor began to change.

It changed slowly at first, the way mornings change. Quiet, then a little brighter, then suddenly the whole house felt warmer than it had in a long, long time.

Alfred Pennyworth, who had run Wayne Manor by himself for years, found that he was cooking much bigger breakfasts. Pancakes with banana faces. Stacks of cinnamon toast. Bowls of porridge with honey drizzled in spirals. Alfred loved this. Alfred had been waiting his whole life, secretly, for a child to feed properly.

Bruce, who had spent years coming home only at sunrise covered in bruises, began coming home in time for dinner.

And every night after dinner, after Alfred had cleared away the plates, Dick would follow Bruce to the grandfather clock in the hallway. CLICK. The clock would swing open. And down they would go, into the great cave under the manor, into the soft fluttering of the bats and the hum of the computers.

Training had begun.

The training was hard.

Bruce had spent ten years of his life traveling the world, learning every fighting art he could find. He had studied with monks in the Himalayas. He had trained with ninjas in the mountains of Japan. He had learned escape artistry from a master in Brazil. He had studied criminal psychology in Vienna. Now he was passing all of it on to a small bright nine-year-old boy from a circus train.

"Slower," Bruce would say. "A punch is not a wild thing. A punch is a thought. Throw the punch where they will be. Not where they are."

Dick would try again.

Bruce taught him how to throw a Batarang — that flat black metal bat-shaped throwing tool — so that it curved through the air and came back to your hand. He taught him how to pick a lock with two thin metal picks. He taught him how to fall safely from a great height by rolling at the bottom. He taught him how to disappear into a shadow by simply standing very still and breathing slowly.

Dick was already incredible. The trapeze had given him that. He could leap higher than Bruce. He could flip faster than Bruce. He could do triple somersaults in midair that left even Bruce shaking his head and saying, "I have never seen anyone do that." But Bruce taught him the things the trapeze had not taught him. Patience. Stillness. The long quiet waiting in the rain on top of a gargoyle, listening for footsteps on a wet alley below. The ability to be small. The ability to be silent.

It took months. It took years, actually — but in the early months, the bright, quick, brave boy who used to be a Flying Grayson began to become something new.

One night, after a particularly long training session, Bruce sat Dick down on a stone ledge in the Batcave.

"Dick," he said. "I think it's almost time."

"Time for what?" Dick asked.

Bruce reached over and laid a stack of folded newspapers on the bench between them. They were articles about Batman. Headlines. Drawings. "Batman Stops Gotham Bank Robbery." "The Bat-Signal Lights Up The Sky." "Mystery Vigilante Saves Hostages."

"If you're going to fight beside me," Bruce said, "you're going to need a name. Your own name. Not a copy of mine. Yours. Something that belongs to you, only to you, that says who you are."

Dick was quiet.

He sat for a long time on the stone ledge, swinging his feet a little, looking up at the dark vault of the cave where the bats slept in soft clusters. He thought about Mary Grayson. He thought about her braiding his hair before a circus show. He thought about her whispering into his ear, just before he climbed the trapeze ladder, the same thing she whispered every single time.

"Listen for my voice. Listen for me. I'll catch you, mio piccolo robin."

Mio piccolo robin. My little robin.

Mary had loved the robins back in the old country. She had told Dick about them — the small bright birds that came back first in springtime, even when there was still snow on the ground. The bravest birds, she had said. The cheerful ones. The ones that said, with their bright red chests and their loud morning songs, I am still here. The cold did not stop me. Spring is coming.

Dick looked up at Bruce. He felt a warm, steady, glad thing rising in his chest, the way it used to when he was about to step off the platform and trust the trapeze.

"Robin," he said. "I want to be Robin."

Bruce nodded, very slowly, very seriously. "Robin," he said. "That's a fine name."

The costume was Alfred's project.

Alfred had been waiting for this, too. Secretly, in a drawer in his pantry, he had been collecting fabric samples for months — red wool, yellow felt, green stretch material the same color as a leaf in summer. He had bought a small sewing machine and set it up in a quiet corner of the laundry room. Now he set to work.

For three nights, the lamp in the laundry room glowed late.

When he was finished, Alfred carried the costume up to Dick's bedroom on a wooden hanger, covered carefully with tissue paper.

"Master Dick," Alfred said. "I do hope this is satisfactory."

Dick opened the tissue paper.

The Robin costume was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

It was bright. So, so bright. There was a red tunic, the same red as his old Flying Graysons leotard, with a great big yellow capital letter R sewn over the heart, set inside a black circle. There were short green sleeves, the color of spring leaves. There were green leggings. There was a long, swooping yellow cape lined with black on the inside. And there was a small black domino mask, with little eye-holes and a thin elastic strap to hold it in place.

Dick put on the costume in front of his bedroom mirror.

He stared at himself for a long, long time.

He did not see a sad boy from a circus train.

He did not see a quiet orphan in a too-big manor house.

He saw a bright, brave little bird, standing tall, sleeves like wings, ready to fly again.

He went downstairs. He padded through the hallway in his green boots. He went to the grandfather clock. CLICK. He went down the stone staircase. And there, in the middle of the great cave, in his long black cape with his cowl pulled up and his eyes barely visible inside it, stood Bruce. Batman.

Bruce looked at Dick. He did not say anything for a moment. His mouth twitched — just the smallest movement in the corner of his lips — which was, for Bruce, an enormous smile.

"Robin," Bruce said.

"Batman," Dick said.

They stood there for a beat in the soft flutter of the bats and the gentle hum of the computers.

Then Dick said, "Can I show you something?"

And without waiting for an answer, he ran. He sprinted across the cave floor. He leaped onto a stone column. He scrambled up a thick coil of rope, hand over hand, all the way to the tippy-top of the cave, way up where the stalactites pointed down.

He stood up there. He looked down at Bruce, who was now very small far below.

He shouted one word.

"CATCH!"

And he leaped.

WHOOSH.

Triple somersault. One. Two. Three. Tight tucks, hands free, exactly the way his father had taught him.

Bruce moved.

Bruce caught him. Wrist to wrist. The way the Flying Graysons had always caught each other. Perfect.

For a long moment neither of them said anything. Robin was hanging from Batman's wrists, breathing hard, his yellow cape draped around them both like a flag.

Then Robin grinned. Bright as a robin's chest in springtime.

And Batman, very quietly, grinned back.

The Dynamic Duo had been born.

The world did not know it yet. The world would find out soon — in the morning headlines, in the whispered stories told in Gotham diners, in the panicked shouts of bank robbers running away from a small bright bird who could flip over their heads. But in that one quiet moment in the Batcave, with the bats fluttering softly overhead and Alfred watching from the staircase with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes a little shiny, the team that would change Gotham City forever was already alive.

Batman. And Robin. The Boy Wonder.

Mio piccolo robin.

The bird that always comes back first in spring.