Passing The Cape

This is the last big story about Robin. It is, in a way, the most important one. Because it is the story of what Dick Grayson became, in the end, after everything.

He became the big brother.

It happened slowly, the way most important things happen. After Dick grew out of the Robin costume and became Nightwing, the bright red and yellow tunic with the great big yellow R did not go into a glass case to be admired forever. It did, briefly. Bruce kept the original suit in a sealed case in the Batcave, where Dick had stood and looked at it the night he first put on the Nightwing uniform. But in Gotham, the truth is, the Robin tunic does not stay on a shelf for long. Somebody is always growing into it.

In Dick's lifetime, three more boys would wear the bright Robin colors. Their names were Jason, Tim, and Damian. And Dick, who had been the first Robin, became the big brother to all three of them. He taught them. He defended them. He laughed with them. He carried them, one by one, the way his own father had once carried him.

Jason Todd was the second Robin.

Bruce found Jason in Crime Alley, on a cold night in October, trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile with a tire iron. Bruce had parked the car in the alley to investigate a tip. He came back out and there was a small skinny twelve-year-old kid with his hood pulled up, prying away at the back left tire, sweating with the effort. Bruce had laughed once — actually laughed, out loud — for the first time in years. Then he had taken Jason home.

Jason was nothing like Dick.

Dick had been a circus boy. Bright. Cheerful. Trained by his father in the trapeze. He had walked into Wayne Manor quiet but well-mannered, with a small suitcase and a small heart.

Jason was a street kid. He had been raised in the worst parts of Gotham. His own father had been a small-time crook who had died in prison. His mother had been kind but very sick. He had been living alone in a condemned building when he met Bruce. He was sharp-tongued. He had a quick temper that flashed like lightning. He could swear in three languages. He punched a wall in Wayne Manor the first week he lived there and broke his own hand.

Bruce was not sure what to do with Jason. Bruce was not, as everybody who knew him would tell you, a natural father.

So Bruce called Dick.

Dick flew up from Blüdhaven on a weekend. He met Jason on the lawn behind Wayne Manor — Jason was sulking on the back porch with his hand in a fresh white cast, scowling. Dick sat down next to him, didn't say anything for a long time, and then said, "I broke my hand the same way the first month I lived here."

Jason looked at him sideways. "Did not."

"Did. Punched the wall in the upstairs hall. Pretty sure there's still a dent."

Jason was quiet for a while. Then he said, "Did Bruce yell?"

"Bruce doesn't yell."

"Yeah," Jason said, almost smiling. "I noticed that. It's kind of weird."

Dick worked with Jason for the next year. He came up every weekend. He taught Jason how to flip off a parapet and land without breaking a wrist. He taught him how to fall safely from a great height by rolling. He taught him the thing that nobody else had been able to teach Jason — that being angry was okay. That anger was not a bad thing in itself. That anger, if you let it, could be turned into focus, the way you could turn gasoline into a campfire. You had to be careful with it. You had to control it. But you didn't have to throw it away.

Jason never softened all the way. Some boys don't. But Jason loved Dick, in the gruff way Jason loved things, for the rest of his life. And Dick loved Jason right back.

Tim Drake was the third Robin.

Tim was the smartest of all of them. He was small, polite, brown-haired, careful, and quietly the most observant person any of the Bat-Family had ever met.

Tim had figured out Batman's secret identity entirely by himself, by the age of twelve, without any help from anyone. He had done it by paying attention.

When Tim was nine, he had gone to Haly's Circus with his parents. He had seen the famous Flying Graysons trapeze act. He had been fascinated by Dick Grayson — the small boy in the bright costume — doing a particular kind of triple somersault that very few acrobats on Earth could do. Tim had a photographic memory. He remembered the somersault perfectly.

Three years later, Tim had been watching footage on the news of Robin fighting alongside Batman in Gotham. Robin had done a triple somersault off a fire escape. The exact same one. Wrist position, tuck angle, every detail.

Tim had blinked at the television. And then Tim, being Tim, had gone to the public library and started reading old newspapers.

He had found the article about the Flying Graysons' tragedy. He had found the article about Bruce Wayne becoming the legal guardian of an orphan boy named Dick Grayson. He had matched the dates. He had matched the somersault. He had done the math.

Twelve-year-old Tim Drake had gone to Wayne Manor in a rainstorm. He had rung the doorbell. Alfred had answered. Tim had said, very politely, "Hello, Mr. Pennyworth. I'd like to speak to Mr. Wayne, please. About his work as Batman."

Alfred had nearly dropped the umbrella stand.

Bruce had taken Tim seriously immediately. Bruce had known — about ninety seconds into the conversation, when Tim explained how he had figured it out — that this small polite boy was going to be the most brilliant detective the cave had ever seen, with the possible exception of Bruce himself.

Tim had said, very calmly, sitting in a chair in the study with his small feet not quite touching the floor, "Mr. Wayne. The Bat-Family needs a Robin again. I think I might be able to help."

Dick had visited Tim almost every weekend during Tim's training.

He had taken Tim out onto the foggy Blüdhaven rooftops, because it was good practice and because Tim deserved to see a city other than Gotham. He had taught Tim the quiet stuff. How to read a city — how to know which alleys were safe to drop into and which were dead ends. How to listen for footsteps in fog. How to throw a Bird-arang with two fingers instead of a full grip. How to slip past a sleeping watchdog. How to be small.

Tim was a sponge. Tim absorbed everything. Tim was, in many ways, exactly the kind of Robin Bruce had needed all along — careful, brilliant, kind, quiet.

Dick was very proud of Tim.

Damian Wayne was the fourth Robin.

Damian was, by far, the hardest of all of them.

Damian was Bruce's actual biological son. His mother was Talia al Ghul, the daughter of a very old and complicated man named Ra's al Ghul who ran a worldwide organization called the League of Assassins. Damian had been raised inside the League until he was eight. He had been trained from infancy to fight, to kill, to lead. By the time he came to Wayne Manor, he had been the tenth-best assassin in the world.

He was ten years old when he met Dick.

He had a small sword strapped to his back.

He scowled. He scowled all the time. He scowled at the breakfast table. He scowled at the gym. He scowled at Alfred's cookies. (Alfred, hurt, said, "Master Damian. Even one's enemies do not, generally speaking, scowl at one's cookies.")

Damian did not WANT a big brother. He thought Dick was silly. He thought the Robin tunic was — and these were Damian's exact words, said in his small precise voice — "a humiliating costume designed by a colorblind clown."

Dick had taken this insult with great grace. Dick had said, "I designed parts of that costume when I was nine. Maybe it does look like a colorblind clown. But it's a brave one."

Damian had scowled harder.

When Bruce went missing — the long crisis you already know about, the one where Dick became Batman — Damian became Dick's Robin. Damian did not want to be Robin. But Dick had been very patient with him. Dick had said, "Your father is missing, and you and I are going to find him. While we do that, Gotham needs to be protected. I am going to be Batman. I am asking you to be my Robin. Not because you are a child. Because you are the only person in this city who is fierce enough to make the bad guys actually worry."

Damian had stopped scowling for a single moment when Dick said that.

That was the secret Dick had figured out about Damian. Damian was fierce because he was scared. The scowl was a mask. Underneath, there was a ten-year-old boy whose father had vanished and whose mother had been complicated and who had been raised by killers and who had never, in his whole short life, been somebody's little brother.

Dick decided to be the big brother.

It started on the Wayne Manor lawn at sunrise. Every morning, Dick would meet Damian out on the wet grass with two practice escrima sticks. They would spar. Dick was much faster, much more skilled. Damian was very good for ten. But Dick was Dick.

Some mornings, though — Dick would deliberately let Damian win. He would slow down just a little. He would leave an opening. He would let Damian land a clean hit. Damian would whoop with triumph. Dick would say, "Good, brother. Good." And Damian — who would never, ever admit it — would smile, just barely, before he scowled it away.

It happened slowly. The way trust always does. But over weeks and months, Damian began coming up the stone staircase from the Batcave at breakfast time instead of staying down there alone. He started sitting at the breakfast table with Alfred and Dick. He started, very grudgingly, eating Alfred's cookies. He still scowled. But the scowls got smaller.

One morning, after a long sparring session, Damian sat down on the wet grass beside Dick to drink a thermos of cocoa.

He said, "Grayson."

"Mm?"

"You are an acceptable elder brother."

Dick, who had been bracing for an insult, took a moment to register the actual sentence. Then he laughed. A great big surprised Dick Grayson laugh.

He said, "Damian. That is the nicest thing you have ever said to anybody in your entire life."

Damian scowled, of course. But he also took a sip of cocoa, very small, and Dick saw — very clearly, in the morning light — that the corner of his mouth was twitching up.

Years later, when Bruce was back from the past and Gotham was steady again and the Bat-Family was full of grown-up versions of all these brothers, somebody — a reporter, I think, for a magazine doing a profile of the Justice League — asked Dick Grayson what the most important thing he had ever done was.

The reporter expected Dick to say something dramatic.

Maybe "leading the Teen Titans."

Maybe "becoming Nightwing."

Maybe "wearing the Batman cowl when Bruce was lost in time."

Maybe "cleaning up Blüdhaven."

Dick thought about it for a long, long time. He looked out the window of the room they were sitting in. He thought about Jason punching the wall. He thought about Tim sitting in his Blüdhaven living room with a magnifying glass studying old newspaper photographs. He thought about Damian on the wet grass at dawn, saying acceptable elder brother. He thought about his mother, Mary Grayson, braiding his hair before a circus show. He thought about his father, John Grayson, catching his wrists in midair. He thought about the trapeze.

And he said, very quietly:

"I taught my little brothers how to fly."

That was all.

The reporter blinked, waited for more, and then realized there was not going to be any more, and quickly wrote it down.

It was the truest answer Dick could have given.

Because the trapeze had always known this. The catch is the most important part of the trapeze act. The catch is the whole point. The flip is beautiful, the somersaults are beautiful, the costume is beautiful — but if there is nobody on the other platform reaching out their hands, the whole act is just falling.

Dick Grayson, the small boy who had once been caught wrist-to-wrist by his father in front of a packed circus tent, had grown up to be the catcher for an entire family of Robins.

He had caught Jason when Jason was angriest. He had caught Tim when Tim needed someone to take him seriously. He had caught Damian when Damian needed somebody to outlast the scowl. He had caught every one of them, in his quiet, patient, joyful way, year after year after year.

The big brother. The Boy Wonder who had grown up to be the catcher.

That was the most important thing Dick Grayson ever did.

And that — that is the whole story of Robin.

From the trapeze in Haly's Circus, to the Batcave behind the grandfather clock, to T-Tower in Jump City Bay, to the foggy rooftops of Blüdhaven, to the great spread blue wings of Nightwing, to the cowl of Batman in a moment of crisis, to a wet lawn at sunrise where a small fierce boy in a sword learned how to be somebody's little brother.

Mio piccolo robin.

The bird that always comes back first in spring.