Nightwing Rebirth

This is a story about how a Robin becomes a Nightwing.

It begins, as many important things do, with the feeling that something does not fit anymore.

Dick Grayson was nineteen years old. He had been Robin for almost eleven years. He had grown six inches taller than Bruce Wayne. He had grown into broad shoulders and long lean arms. He had a small thin scar on his eyebrow from a fight with a robot that had gone a little sideways. He was, in every way that mattered, no longer a boy.

And one morning in Jump City, when Dick was getting ready to go out on patrol, he put on his Robin costume — the bright red tunic with the yellow R, the green sleeves, the green leggings — and he stood in front of the mirror in his room at T-Tower, and he stared at himself for a long, long time.

The costume fit. It still fit perfectly. Alfred had altered it many times over the years, letting out a seam here, adding a panel there, keeping pace with Dick as he grew.

But it didn't fit.

It didn't fit in some deeper way that had nothing to do with seams.

Dick stood there in the bright costume and looked at his own face in the mirror — the small black domino mask, the bright yellow cape — and he saw a young man dressed in the costume of a boy.

He took the costume off. He folded it carefully. He laid it on the bed. He sat next to it for almost an hour.

That weekend, he flew home to Gotham.

He didn't tell Bruce why. He didn't have to. Bruce, who had been a detective for thirty years and a father of sorts for ten, took one look at Dick walking up the long driveway with a duffel bag over his shoulder, and Bruce knew exactly what was coming.

That night, after Alfred's dinner — roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, a small lemon tart for dessert — Bruce and Dick sat together on the back porch of Wayne Manor. It was autumn. The fields beyond the manor were turning gold. The first stars were beginning to come out, and the air smelled like woodsmoke and apples.

Dick said, "Bruce."

Bruce said, "Mm."

"I think I'm done being Robin."

Bruce was quiet for a long, long time. He did not turn his head. He did not nod. He just looked out over the dark fields, his hands folded in his lap.

Then he said one thing.

"I know."

Dick looked at him. "You know?"

"I've known for a while."

"How long?"

"About a year."

Dick laughed, a small surprised laugh. "And you didn't say anything?"

Bruce turned then. He looked at Dick. And in his eyes, just for a moment, there was something Dick had almost never seen there — a softness, an old gentle pride.

"It wasn't my decision," Bruce said. "It was yours. I was just waiting."

They sat together in the dark for a while.

After a long time, Dick said, "I want to tell you a story. Something Superman told me a couple of years ago. Have I ever told you this one?"

Bruce shook his head.

So Dick told him.

The Teen Titans had been working with the Justice League on a difficult mission off the coast of Florida. After it was over, Superman had taken Dick aside, just the two of them on a quiet observation deck of the Watchtower in orbit above the Earth. Superman had said he wanted to tell Dick about a Kryptonian legend.

In the old stories of Krypton — Superman's lost home planet — there had been a hero. His name was Nightwing. He was not a god. He was not a king. He was a warrior, a defender, a guardian of the bottle city of Kandor. He wore a long dark cape and he flew through the night skies of Kandor protecting people who could not protect themselves. He was a hero of the night, but not a hero of fear. He was a hero of hope, who simply happened to work after the sun went down.

Superman had said, "On Krypton, Nightwing was the bird that flew after dark. A nocturnal flier. Beautiful. Quiet. Brave."

He had looked at Dick — at the bright Boy Wonder in his red and yellow — and he had said, very gently, "Dick. If you ever needed a new name. Something for after Robin. I think Nightwing is yours."

Dick had carried that conversation in his pocket for two years. Folded up small. Saved.

Now, on the porch of Wayne Manor, he told Bruce about it. He told him about the bottle city of Kandor. He told him about the bird that flew after the sun went down.

Bruce listened all the way through. When Dick was finished, Bruce was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "Nightwing. I like it. It suits you."

Then he said, "Let's go down to the cave. I want to help you design it."

They worked on the new suit for three weeks.

Alfred joined them every evening. He brought tea. He brought careful measurements. He brought the small sewing machine he had once used to make the first Robin costume so many years ago. Alfred took the work very seriously. He kept saying, "Master Dick. A hero must look the part. This must be done correctly."

They started by deciding what the Nightwing suit was NOT.

It was not bright. The bright red and yellow and green of Robin had been a child's flag — Dick had once said, only half joking, that Robin had needed to be visible because his job was partly to give the bad guys a target other than Bruce. Nightwing was not going to be a flag. Nightwing was going to be quiet.

It was not a sidekick uniform. There would be no yellow cape. There would be no big R. This was Dick's suit. Dick's identity. Dick's career.

It was not the same as Batman, either. Nightwing was not going to be a copy of Bruce. There would be no cowl with pointed ears. There would be no long sweeping cape. Nightwing would not look like a creature of the night. Nightwing would look like a young man who happened to work at night.

Then they decided what it WAS.

It was sleek. The body was a fitted armored mesh, dark as deep water, that moved with Dick the way the trapeze leotards had moved when he was a boy. Light enough to flip. Strong enough to take a hit.

It was black. Mostly. The dominant color of the Nightwing suit was a black so deep it almost looked blue in the right light.

And then, across the chest — Dick's own idea — there was a single bold marking. A bird in flight. A great spread of wings, stretched from shoulder to shoulder. The wings were a deep royal blue, the same color as the sky when it has just gotten dark enough for the first stars to come out. The bird had no head, no tail, just the great spread wings, the way you see a bird from underneath when it is silhouetted against the sky.

The wings reached his shoulders. When Dick lifted his arms, the wings on his chest seemed to lift with them.

Alfred sewed the bird himself by hand, very carefully, over the course of three nights, while Dick and Bruce went through the gauntlets and boots and weapons.

The weapons were a big change. Robin had thrown Bird-arangs. Nightwing was not going to throw anything. Nightwing was a fighter who closed the distance and dealt with the problem face to face. So Dick brought up something he had been quietly training with for almost five years. Escrima sticks. They were short black batons, about the length of a forearm, made of a polymer harder than steel. Dick had learned escrima from a master in the Philippines during a Teen Titans trip, and he had been practicing on a mannequin in his bedroom in T-Tower at six in the morning ever since. He could spin a single escrima stick fast enough that the air whistled around it. He could spin two of them at once and look like a propeller. He could disarm three adults in under five seconds.

They built him two escrima sticks. Black. Telescoping, so they collapsed down small. Clipped to the small of his back, one on each side, where Robin's belt pouches used to be.

The mask was longer. It was no longer a small round domino. It was a sleek black mask that stretched from one temple to the other and curved slightly back along the cheekbone, like a swallow's wings. The eyepieces had been re-shaped to match the eye-line of the bird across his chest. From the front, the bird and the mask seemed to belong to the same animal.

When the suit was finished, Dick put it on in the Batcave.

He stood for a long time in front of the great oval mirror near the costume cases.

Behind him, in a softly lit glass case, was the old Robin costume. Bright. Sequined a little, in the way Alfred had stitched them on for old time's sake. The yellow cape. The black domino mask. The small yellow boots. The little Boy Wonder, frozen in fabric.

In front of him, in the mirror, was a tall young man. Black-mesh armor. A great spread blue bird across his chest. Sleek mask. Black escrima sticks crossed behind him. The same wide bright Dick Grayson eyes inside the mask, but older now, calmer, certain.

He stood there for a very long time.

Bruce stood behind him. Alfred stood beside Bruce. Neither of them spoke.

Finally, Dick said softly, "I'm not leaving him behind. Am I."

It wasn't really a question. He was looking at the old Robin costume in the glass case as he said it.

Bruce said, "No. You're carrying him with you."

And he was right.

Dick was not leaving Robin behind. He never could. The little robin that his mother Mary Grayson had whispered to before every trapeze show — mio piccolo robin, my little robin, the bird that comes back first in spring — that little robin was still inside Dick's chest. Brave and bright and warm. He would always be there.

But the little robin had grown up.

A robin, after all, is a small spring bird. And spring eventually grows into summer, and summer into a long deep night sky full of stars.

The bird Dick had become was no longer a robin.

It was a Nightwing. A bird with darker feathers. A bird that did its best work after the sun went down. A bird with wings broad enough to carry a whole city if it needed to.

Dick smiled at his reflection.

Behind him, Bruce — who never, ever cried — had to clear his throat very quietly and look up at the ceiling for a moment.

Alfred, who never had to pretend to anything, simply put his hand over his heart and held it there.

"Master Dick," Alfred said softly. "Welcome, Master Nightwing."

Dick turned around. He grinned. The full bright Dick Grayson grin.

"Boys," he said, "I think it's time I went and found my own city."

And so he did.