Avoiding Past And Future

(102) Intermediate

November 28 - 30

Coming off of the successful Conner-harassment that was Thanksgiving really pointed out some of the things they had not quite want to address just yet.

For starters, Dick seemed to genuinely come out of his self-imposed shell once more. The days he spent with a barely noticeable, but so blatant once you were aware, mask dictating his actions and emotions seemed behind him. The forced smiles and disingenuous interactions were even noted by his teachers at school once he actually remembered to go to his classes.

They were more than accommodating the moment they saw the turnaround he had made these past few weeks. Though his grades never suffered, his energy in class did. Even during winter it felt like a little ray of sunshine was sitting in their classroom and clearly they felt the need to inform and praise Bruce for helping him through what was bothering him.

It also served to explain itself when Danny had to be snuck in to do is entrance testing late in the evening. By request of course since he wasn't public yet. Gotham Academy wasn't the top rated school for nothing, bending protocol for those with deep enough pockets or a reputation that dwarfed theirs. Plus, with the power of an alum and current student backing it, the choice was easily made. Still, they wanted to be sure the administration had time to get everything sorted before being overwhelmed by midterm and vacation madness.

Which was another thing they were somehow caught off guard by.

Having to make sure nothing got leaked, it was only Danny who went to maintain plausible deniability of there being only one of them. They had figured the boy would have been shy, closed off even from the rundown of how fancy rich kid schools work from Dick's experience. Hell Dick even recounted some of the stuff Roy had to deal with back when Oliver first took him in.

Yet, despite all of that, there he was. Comfortably socializing with the supervising teachers and board members. He carried himself so confidently well that even Dick's homeroom teacher mixed up their names so much Danny simply stopped correcting the poor woman. A simple charming smile to wave it off and it was like nothing was ever amiss.

It wasn't a surprise at all when he seemed to breeze through the tests they had prepared for him either. All the work Selina had put into making sure he got used to Dick's level of schoolwork, and all the times Miss Waller and Mr. Wilcox spent with him to make sure he wouldn't fall too far behind, seemed to have paid off.

Danny even asked if sending them a little thank you note would be too much, but they deemed it to be a little much if not creepy for Mr. Wilcox who was not in the know and tracking down Miss Waller seemed more tedious than it was worth given that she moved to more off grid work after leaving Belle Rêve.

Even on less academic aspects were they daring to call out the evolution seen in their two trouble makers.

While Dick was still keeping most at an arms distance, he had taken to spending more time talking with Conner and Zatanna. Even Red Tornado found his communicator pinging a few more times with random little inquiries the boy had.

On the other hand, Danny had found himself daring to ask J'onn some low ball questions. He still struggled to know what to ask the Martian as he wasn't sure what counted as appropriate, but he had the confidence of Bioship's support of him to back him up.

It also didn't help that he had Aquaman message him a few times since the mission. The man insisted Danny called him Arthur like everybody else, but Danny refused. Finally he could understand where Frostbite was coming from as anything other than Aquaman or King Orin felt wrong. Still, he would take the awkward small talk over Dick having to deal with the awkward chats with Barry.