I'll be good

I Don't Want To Be You Anymore

The sound of his phone vibrating on the table next to him snapped him out of his thoughts. He looked down and stared at the contact displayed on the small screen, his thumb hovering hesitantly over the 'answer call'.

The vibrating soon stopped, and Bruce's name disappeared before the screen turned black. Dick sighed, placing the phone back on the side table next to the couch that he'd slept on that night. His head fell heavy into his hands as he let out a long sigh; he shouldn't have ignored Bruce's call, but in truth, Dick couldn't summon the energy to answer Bruce's round-the-clock question and let him down again.

"Hey," came a soft voice from behind him, momentarily interrupting his quiet thought process. "Did you sleep out here last night?" she asked, her voice laced with concern.

"Yeah," Dick answered flatly, turning in his seat to face Barbara as she stood in the doorway. "We got in late last night and I didn't want to wake you." He smiled tiredly at her, watching as she made her way into the room, his eyes never leaving her figure once.

Barbara sat next to him on the cream-colored couch, noticing that his clothes were the same he had been wearing yesterday, only more scruffy looking now. "We?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Dick rubbed behind his neck sheepishly, trying to avoid Barbara's questioning gaze, "Tim's in the shower," he answered, motioning his head to the closed bathroom door. "It was late, and I said he could crash here. He took the guest bed, I hope you don't mind."

She shook her head, grinning at his anxious belief that she was somehow going to be angry at him. "Not at all," she said, "but you're gonna have to give me a heads up if Jason's in the closet."

Dick chuckled at her comment, completely accepting the easy-going mood that Barbara brought into the room with her. He shook his head after a moment, however, the smile remained, "you don't have to worry about that; he went back to his old place."

"Does Bruce know where the three of you are?"

"No," Dick sighed, rubbing his hand across his face and through his hair, "but it's not like we're not gonna come back, you know? We're just..." he trailed off, heaving out another sigh.

"Looking for Damian," Barbara finished as she took Dick's hand in hers, brushing her thumbs over his bruised knuckles. "Look, Dick," she paused slightly, waiting for his eyes to meet hers, "I know you're all desperate to find him, but what if he doesn't want to be found; He must have left for a reason, right? I mean, none of you have known him for that long, you don't know his background. How are you so sure he is who he says he is?"

Dick looked at her skeptically, "he's a little kid, Babs."

"You were nine when you became a sidekick to a vigilante," she pointed out, earning an eye roll from Dick.

"That's entirely different-"

"All I'm saying is that you had a super-secret life when you were young, so why can't he? He's not that much older than you were, and no offense to him, but he's a little strange; not your typical ten-year-old." Her blue eyes scanned his face, she could see that he was extremely worried about the boy, and she had to admit, so was she.

She was skeptical about Damian's past, considering not even Bruce could find anything out about him. Still, Gotham wasn't exactly the friendliest of places for a child to be roaming the streets by himself for an hour let alone two days!

"Never mind. He's probably just some runaway orphan who just so happened to be found by 'Billionaire Bruce Wayne', and now he misses his friends back at the orphanage," Barbara said, trying to lighten Dick's mood again; she hated seeing him upset like this.