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whetstonefires · 6 years

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fictober prompt #11: “But I will never forget!”

“You win,” said the child.

“I win?”

“Yes. But I will never forget! My parents. Where I came from.”

“That’s fine?” He was aware he sounded less like the Dark Knight than the easily bewildered Lord Wayne, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Even if it wasn’t really easy to bewilder him, it could still happen, and it had. “It’s good, actually. I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Oh, right.” Dik Grayson folded his arms. “Because they’re why you want me.”

He winced a little. He hadn’t meant to give the impression by talking about the loss they had in common that if the young tumbler recovered from his grief he would lose interest in him. He hoped the edge of his temper would ease a bit, as time passed. His had, if only slightly, but then his parents’ killer never had been caught. He was hoping Zucco’s upcoming public trial would help. “That’s not exactly…”

“What they taught me. That’s what makes me valuable.”

“I would…say I value you for your own unique talents….”

“Stop it, I’m not stupid.” The child acrobat’s head dropped. Defeat and defiance mingled in every line of him. “I know what you did.”

Bruce was stumped. “And what did I do?”

The young face flashed up again, furious and covered in tears; he was weeping, but his voice didn’t catch at all. “You wanted me, so you got them out of the way!”

It felt surprisingly like being stabbed. “What?”

“Don’t think you’re the first one to try it! Everyone says, what a pretty little bird, I wish he were mine, and then some of the lords and ladies try to buy me. And some of you don’t like to hear no. You’re just the first one to pull it off.”

“It was Zucco. We proved it was Zucco.”

“Yeah.” The tears of fury were slowing, stemmed to bitterness. “Once I calmed down, I thought—that’s awfully convenient, isn’t it. It’s not like the circus sees that much coin, and we’re only here a few weeks at a time. It’s weird that a thief-king with that much pull would bother to set up such a fancy murder just to threaten old man Haley.”

“You…heard him confess, I’ve got him locked in the Tower of Justice awaiting trial right now—”

“Convenient!” The child repeated. “He’s out of your way and silenced as soon as he’s dead.”

“…We’ve abolished execution as a punishment in Gotham.”

Blink. Finally thrown off his stride. “Oh. Well, still! If you did it through an intermediary he won’t be able to point to you.”

“Dik. Dik Grayson, listen to me. I only wanted to help you. And punish a crime committed in my city. Those were my only motives.”

“Yeah? So why am I still here? Why not let me go with the rest of the Circus?”

Bruce took a bracing breath. At least he was getting to the root of the misunderstanding. “Legally, I couldn’t. None of them were your blood relatives, nor did they produce written proofs that your parents had willed you to their care.

“I wouldn’t normally enforce those rules on non-citizens unless someone was being hurt, but for Zucco to see justice you must give evidence at the trial, and once you are entered into the record as an unattached infant, protocol dictates that you must be found a legally responsible guardian. If I allow you to disappear, the case comes under suspicion for bad practice and possible conspiracy and may be overturned in the lower court on review, as your testimony will not be available but Zucco’s influence in the lower city will.”

This was rather more politics than he had intended to explain to an eight-year-old, but apparently if you didn’t tell children what was going on they cooked up elaborate paranoid fantasies.

…he’d been the same way, come to think of it. “I told you you would have to stay here in the city,” he reminded Dik, “if you wanted to see him brought to justice.”

The flea of a boy was goggling up at him. His eyes really were enormous. “I thought that was a bargain!”

“What?” Egad. Of course he had. Bruce pinched the top of his nose. “It wasn’t. Just a necessity.”

“So…if I go kill him now, you won’t need to try him. So then can I go?”

“If you go and kill him now I’ll have to put you in the Tower.” Bruce tried to keep his tone even. He managed not to pinch his nose again. He wasn’t really getting a headache, he just felt like he should be. “But…I don’t think you’re the kind who could kill a chained man in cold blood, Dik.”

The boy sighed. “No, you’re right. I couldn’t.”

They both stared at the paving stones between them. Thank goodness the child had chosen to do this in a private courtyard, where they shouldn’t have been overheard.

“So you’ll let me go?”

Bruce let out a long breath. “If you don’t mind the Zucco case falling through.” A caravan could only move so fast, and they’d only left yesterday; if he loaned Grayson a fast horse tomorrow morning Alfred could be back before dinner.

It would be a wrench, to have the thief-king slip this noose. It might be years before Bruce caught him so dead to rights again. But he wasn’t a tyrant. That was important. He wasn’t going to start stealing children against their will just to keep order in his own city.

The boy grimaced, torn between two unacceptable futures.

“You don’t have to stay with me, of course,” Bruce said. He’d considered it a bribe, at the time, though one that would profit him as well; hundreds of youths would be thrilled to be taken into his household, even as stableboys. But not everyone wanted the same things in life. “I could find you another guardian, if you don’t mind working for your keep, or you can go to the orphan’s house in the lower city. I hold it to strict standards,” he added, since this again probably sounded like a threat. “It’s clean, there’s as much food as you want, and no one will be permitted to beat you. They’ll keep you until you turn sixteen or find a trade.”

“I have a trade,” the boy grumbled.

Bruce winced again. He really had made a hash. Alfred was going to rake him over hot coals. “It’s not the done thing to bind a boy out to a master tumbler, but if you find one I’ll expedite the paperwork.”

“But still in your city.” Those huge blue eyes were narrow in calculation, drying, salt tracks beneath them white. “Under your control.”

“There’s a transfer system,” Bruce said. “At the orphan asylum. You’re a likely young lad, any city would—be happy to have you.” Want you, he’d almost said. Surely he’d chewed enough boot leather for the month already.

Please stay, he did not say. The place under his ribs that had felt so surprisingly stabbed was no longer joyful at the thought of having the boy close, but if he left now all of this had been for nothing. Just a dumb-show. A puppet play.

Dik Grayson’s fists were tremble-tight. Bruce’s knuckles ached with sympathy. “Will you swear.” The autumn-blue eyes were a thousand miles deep. “That you had nothing to do with it? Swear?”

“On my parents’ graves.” His most solemn oath, but hardly enough to a child who suspected him of dishonoring their memory so. “I neither wished nor brought nor condoned nor bought harm unto your blood or house. I swear it on my city’s future, on my honor, and the name of my house. May my blood turn to water and my tongue wither to dust if I lie.”

Once, the stories said, such oaths were not taken in vain, and one who swore falsely would suffer the penalty he named. Bruce made it a policy to always act as though that were still the case, but it wasn’t, and a man’s word of honor was worth only as much as the honor of the man.

But slowly, the boy nodded. And put out his hand. Bruce raised his eyebrows, but if the circus was old-fashioned in its manners so much the better. His hand enclosed Grayson’s whole forearm, while the small callused palm pressed barely above his wrist, but that changed nothing. “I’ll stay,” said the boy. “I promise by my name.”

“You didn’t have to,” Bruce said. It was one thing to ask an oath of someone you could bind in no other way. To take one from someone under your power, even without compulsion, seemed poor form.

Dik shrugged, and disengaged. “It’s even, like this.”

Not fair, because nothing between them really could be, the gap between Bruce’s power and his too absolute. But even. Because an exchange of promises was something you made with an equal. And the circus performers weren’t Bruce’s people. They didn’t answer to him, though his laws bound them within the bounds of his domain.

“You said I’ll need to earn my bread,” the child said, hands thrust deep into scarlet pockets. “I’m eight, so I figure that means scut-work. Nobody would trust me alone with geese yet, let alone pigs. If I stay with you, would you want me to perform?”

“Would you want to?” asked Bruce. Dik shrugged. “Of course you don’t want to lose your family trade,” Bruce allowed. “But if you stayed with me I rather thought I’d take you as an apprentice.”

It seemed silly now, the starry half-formed fantasies he’d had after running the rooftops with the child at his heels, perfectly coordinated and brilliant, silent as a bird on the wing.

And, currently, gaping. “What, at lording?”

“..if you like,” Bruce shrugged. “I haven’t any other.” It would put some hearts in Gotham to rest and unsettle some that needed it, and show certain parties what you got by pressuring a Wayne, even an affable and easily influenced one. “You’d probably be rather good at it.” The gaping had, if anything, grown worse. “But I meant at my other trade, in fact.”

Incredulity retreated a little, at this, and for the first time in this whole bedeviled conversation the boy seemed to brighten. “You’re serious.”

“Only if you’re interested,” Bruce said blandly. “I think my friend Sir Dent could use a message-runner, and Lady Kyle might need someone new to look after her cats, since you’re interested in animals…”

“Oh, shut up!” Dik clapped a hand over his mouth, and Bruce surprised even himself with an outright laugh.

“No, go ahead, please. It’s an important function of every member of my household to tell me when I’m being insufferable.”

And then the boy was smiling back at him. “You’re serious,” he said, settled this time, as he affirmed his trust.

“Mm. I’ll have you a knight inside ten years.”

The child laughed. “Me, a knight! What Mam would have said.” He waved a hand grandly, the gesture a little too large for the room even with his short arms; designed to be seen from a distance. “I’ll do it, of course I will. Obviously you need someone to translate you to normal people.”

“You’ll need to learn the law if you’re going to explain it to people,” Bruce pointed out, the flat stabbed place under his ribs starting, cautiously, to grow light again.

His new apprentice nodded, grinning confidence. “Every line.”

He put his hand out again—normally Bruce would formalize such an agreement with a parent, or whoever stood in place of one, but there was nobody—Master Haley had left the city already and, as Bruce had explained, under Gotham law had had no legal standing, though Bruce would have discussed this formally with the man as a courtesy if it had occurred to him.

They clasped forearms again, the size disparity no less ridiculous than before but less important, somehow. Bruce inclined his head with all due solemnity for the sealing of a contract. He didn’t want Dik to think ever again that he did not see him as an equal.

#fictober 2018 #bruce wayne #dick grayson #batfam #class issues #sort of an early-modern city-state AU?#power dynamics #orphans #apprenticeship #technically apprenticeship contracts were terms of indenture #so the way Bruce is framing this mentally is super ironic #fanfic #my fic #hoc est meum #infant historically was the technical term #we replaced it with 'minor'

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