Robin one shot part 3!

Watching him fade away

Act your age. Dick didn't know what that meant. It felt like such a prickly phrase. Something told to him when he wasn't acting how people expected or wanted him to act. Who's to say he wasn't acting his age? Why did there have to be an age identifier for how you acted? He obviously got that maturity was important and a ten-year-old shouldn't be acting like someone in his twenties but that was the problem. He'd been that ten-year-old acting like an adult. He knew what true exhaustion felt like even before he was supposed to be pulling all-nighters to get an assignment he'd left till the last minute done. Bruce made him act more mature when he was a kid and he understood why but that didn't stop him from feeling offended when people told him to act his age once he got into his teen years considering that he was much more mature than any teen out there. It usually came when he acted mischievously, pulled pranks, had fun. All the things he liked seemed to be disjointed from what someone like him should like. He usually just let the comments pass over him, brushing them off as he did with the many critiques he received in newspapers. They usually came from Batman, sometimes from villains when he was being particularly aggravating or from some disgruntled upper-class rich couple. Every time he assured himself that he was, in fact, very mature. He had to be right? You couldn't see the things he'd seen through his life and not gain some sort of maturity. Saving lives at ten meant you were mature. Taking on a child that wasn't your own was mature. Plus, what was wrong with being a bit more playful as an adult? Made him much more fun than other adults. It was useful. He was useful. Good old useful Dick Grayson. Always there. Call him up, he won't have anything to do.

There was another aspect to growing up in the community he'd been brought into and that was living up to the past. Dick started as a true wonder child. He was smart enough to hack into the computers as advanced as Batman's before he was old enough to be left alone overnight and he was fighting crime like the best of them before he'd hit puberty. He had the most experience when he joined teams with other teens just a few years apart from him and he was known as the first sidekick, setting the example for everyone after. Sometimes it felt like his legacy was more than what he'd done and more so what people thought of it all. They all placed this little boy on a pedestal and threw things at him until they knocked him down but he'd never fallen in their minds. He'd remained a firm stature upon the pillar, balancing the weight of the world on his shoulders until he turned away to be Nightwing. Nightwing felt different than Robin had and he'd be the first to tell you so. The expectations were higher, as though he had to make up for something. His mistakes were more like carvings permanently etched into the record of his legacy rather than the throwaway ones of his past. He wasn't perfect. He made mistakes. He had to look out for everyone and himself now because people expected him to. He had to live up to a person that felt like they never truly existed and reminded that he wasn't the person everyone expected. Gifted kids felt it all the time and Dick supposed he was one of the best-gifted kids to burnt-out adults out there. That was until the other Robins came. Although they never muddied his image, they both improved upon it and fell short of it. Tim was the smart kid now. Smartest Robin out there. Smartest person out there if Dick had a say about it. Jason died which, even though it was horrible to say, meant he'd be remembered as perfect although everyone knew he hadn't been. Same with Steph. Dying tended to wipe the record clean or drown it blood so the words were hard to read. Damian was yet to finish his career but it would no doubt follow the trend. 

"Dick? You've been staring at that chip for like an hour," Tim called. His voice felt light and airy despite the concern woven through the words. Wait, Tim? Tim shouldn't be here, should he? Maybe they'd made up? Although he couldn't remember it, maybe it was one of those unspoken make ups that Bruce made him very familiar with where there wasn't a sorry and they went back to how things used to be. The acrobat dragged his eyes away from the microchip and returned the gaze of his sibling. He noticed in the corner of his eyes that others were giving sneaky looks that felt apprehensive. Had he really been staring at this thing for an hour and doing nothing about it?