Chapter 2
Augury shuffled into the room, smiled awkwardly, and sat down, staring at the tea like he didn’t really know what to do with it. Leslie let him poke at the tray for a while, and waited for him to speak.
Eventually, after the third time he glanced at her, clearly, at this point, hoping she would say something, Leslie asked, “how is it, being a Titan?”
Harry smiled in relief, and sat back, tea in hand. “It’s okay. There’s a lot to memorize in the handbook, procedures and emergency codes and all, but it’s going pretty well.”
“That’s good,” Leslie said, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Harry opened his mouth again, sighed, and finally said, “it’s just. It doesn’t really feel like a team, though?”
Leslie felt a frisson of anxiety, that old worry that she’d missed some major fracture in one of the teams she was supposed to be caring for. She raised a careful eyebrow and said, as neutrally as she could, “what’s wrong?”
“Oh, no, nothing’s wrong,” Harry said, smiling again, as Leslie’s worries evaporated just as quickly as they condensed, “but they mostly send me out on my own. Individual assignments, you know, the same as I already did patrolling New York. And I thought it was – I mean, I thought we’d be together, but it’s really just new branding, isn’t it?”
“Ah. Most missions won’t require all of you, or even many of you,” Leslie said, with an expansive shrug. This, she thought, could stand to be part of intake. “Is it hard for you, doing the same thing as usual instead of something more exciting? Or is it better that it’s familiar?”
“Oh, it doesn’t bother me at all,” Harry said, as if trying to convince her, but at least not, seemingly, trying to convince himself. Trying to rack up points, Leslie guessed, in case this went in her report about him. “I was confused the first couple of times, worried I was doing something wrong, but I’ve been looking at the rosters, and it’s always like that.”
“Oh?” Leslie said, wondering whether this was where she needed to pull out the boundary talk, or if it was just healthy curiosity.
“I’ve been making suggestions,” Harry said, sounding…Leslie rifled through mental note cards, hitting somewhere between apologetic and solicitous, wondered about his childhood again, dead parents and all. “Nightwing’s very good about that, you know. He’s actually taken it under serious consideration and he’s having a computer program built.”
“Oh,” Leslie said in surprise, thrown off track for a moment. She’d expected to have to talk him through standing up for himself, not, “what were your suggestions?”
Harry preened slightly under the attention. “Well, I thought, since it was slow, you know, not too much villainy going on – well, why put everyone where their powers already fit? Wouldn’t it be best to put us where we’re weakest, let us shore up those skills?”
“Huh,” said Leslie, looking him over again, reassessing once more. “That’s an interesting idea I haven’t heard before.”
“Well, as a team, as a unit,” Harry continued, warming to the topic, and Leslie watched his body language, “we cover each other’s weak points. But especially if we go out solo so much – well, you know, I think physical heroes should get a chance to practice against magic users, and us against speedsters, and so on, when it’s, you know. When there’s someone to call for backup if we run into trouble.”
“It’s a good idea,” Leslie said, approvingly, as she saw that nervous glint return to his eye. “I can see why Nightwing implemented it.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, relaxing again. “Well, he says we can run an algorithm based on how much risk there is given different abilities and training, and how much available backup there is. So that it should turn off automatically in emergencies. He’s um. He’s really smart.”
Leslie heard him trail off and asked, “did you talk to him? About his Robin days?”
“I,” Harry flushed. “Not yet. I don’t know. It seems strange to bring up, like there’s never really a good moment. And then, of course, we’ve had so many conversations by now that it feels like if I was going to say something I should have already.”
“I’m sure there will be opportunities,” Leslie said, nodding at him. “Just don’t think about it so hard, and it’ll probably come up naturally.”
“That’s your advice?” Harry said, laughing a little. “Just don’t worry about it?”
“In a lot of cases, that’s really the only way to go,” she told him.
Harry considered that. “I was going to say something, segue in when I met Robin – you know, the current Robin – only I already worked with him once, so.”
Leslie sipped at her tea, hoping this wasn’t going to devolve into another complaint about family squabbles that the rest of the team didn’t even realize were family squabbles. This was the thing about the caped community, she’d realized: they developed family ties, and didn’t always realize they did. Batman, at least, acknowledged it himself, even if he tried to keep the rest of the heroes in the dark. “What was that like?”
“Oh, he’s got a bit of a temper,” Harry said with a wave of the hand, “doesn’t always look both ways before crossing the street, you know? I think he might be a bit young.”
“Right,” Leslie said, half a dozen things on the tip of her tongue where she bit it. She tried not to have this argument as often as she did, anyway, and Augury was hardly the hero to have it with in any case.
Harry grinned at her. “I suppose I was playing babysitter, in a way – usually he has Batman, or one of the other adult heroes to look out for him, I suppose, so I got to be that for a moment. I do hope he listens to them more than me.”
Leslie smiled entirely professionally and didn’t say anything at all.
“He’s an extremely well trained martial artist,” Harry added. “Probably he’d have a better time of it if he didn’t hit so hard, anger issues, I suppose, not, um, not that I’m trying to ask you about that. But he’s very good.”
“Yes,” agreed Leslie, eyes going slightly unfocused as she maintained a pleasantly neutral expression, “well, he is one of Batman’s proteges.”
“I’m fairly certain I could beat him in hand to hand,” Harry said, waggling his fingers, “now, I mean – he’d have me at his age flat on the ground in no time. Ranged weaponry, though – he’s impressive with those things, um, not batarangs – do you know what he calls them?”
“Robinrangs,” Leslie said, with a straight face.
“Right,” said Harry. “Those things. Anyway, you can see where Nightwing’s been training him, he does the same flips, it’s really kind of cool.”
“So I guess you do get a teamup, every once in a while,” Leslie said, allowing her smile to loosen up a little. Robinrangs, indeed.
“Yeah,” Harry nodded enthusiastically, and Leslie wondered what it would take to get him to open up enough to have that attitude all the time, “I got to do one with Superman, even if it took all of five minutes. Deactivate a magic trap, you know, but I was free.”
“How was that?” Leslie asked, now on firmer footing, a toehold into Harry’s needs as a patient, at least on the heroic end.
“Well, you know,” Harry said, with a little smirk. “Always nice to be cradled in a big, strong man’s arms, but, also, he can hear your heartbeat and smell your pheromones.”
Leslie’s eyes widened slightly. The Superman on her couch was nothing but manners, but, then, Leslie had never had eyes for him. “I hope he was polite enough not to say anything.”
“Ever the gentleman.” Harry shrugged. “I mean, we both knew that he knew, though. He gave me an extra loop before he took me back and everything.”
“That’s nice,” Leslie said, wondering whether this was an attempt to open up the topic of his love life, or just an aside. She tried to remind herself to give it time, as always, but with her particular patients – there wasn’t always time to be had before something critical came up.
“Not Batman, like I was hoping,” Harry said, with that wistful sigh of childhood longing that all the younger heroes had about at least one member of the Justice League, “or Nightwing. Which. He’s done training sessions with all of us, even, uh, supervised a few of my individual practice sessions, but I’d like to go out with him… I did work with Raven a few times.”
“Is your magic compatible?” Leslie asked, always the first problem that cropped up with a pair of magic users, and better to know now. Especially when the problems were mental blocks rather than magical ones. She worried about Raven, her susceptibility to that scrutiny.
“Oh, very, once we worked out the kinks,” Harry said, and made some sort of motion that created a glowing circle Leslie supposed probably meant something to him. “Constantine’s taught me a bit of demonic magic, it’s not the most intuitive to me, but I understand the constraints. A lot of my natural magic flows in that direction, if I concentrate a little.”
“Good,” Leslie said, with a smile, trying to figure what was, or possibly wasn’t, demonic about the magic circle floating in the air. “Do you like working together?”
“She seems nice,” Harry agreed, dismissing the magic. “Real quiet, don’t know if that’s because we don’t know each other yet, but I don’t think she minds me, I think she was just worried she’d have to teach me about magic, the first time, and she warmed up to me when she didn’t. She really knows what she’s doing, especially with all the really flashy business.”
“Flashy,” Leslie said, which she didn’t think described Raven much at all. A presence, certainly, but flash?
“Oh, you know, her brand of magic is dead showy,” Harry said. “There’s a lot of it goes right into creating atmosphere, and that actually feeds into the spell instead of the other way around. It’s impressive. Always the way with demons, though, isn’t it?”
“Does,” Leslie paused to straighten out her words, another of Raven’s forlorn expressions coming to mind, “her heritage bother you?”
“What?” Harry said, sounding genuinely surprised, and Leslie wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, “of course not. Can’t help your family, can you? He’s not even her real family, anyway, and she’s got all of us and everything. It’s just blood.”
Just blood, Leslie thought, filing that away on a mental index card. “I would be careful about how you phrase these things to her, though.”
“Oh, right, of course,” Harry said, suddenly looking guilty. “Oh, I should watch out for that. I suppose ‘some of my best friends are demons’ can hit different ways, can’t it?”
“Some of your what,” Leslie said, reflexively, without the time to think it through and phrase it a little more softly.
Harry looked, if anything, guiltier. “I mean, we’re not. Precisely. Friends, per se? Business associates, maybe, I should say? Not all demons are bad people, is all.”
“Right,” Leslie said, and put that one in with an underline.
Nightwing walked in with the kind of stiff body language Leslie knew meant trouble, and she pulled out the coffee instead of the tea when he sat down, still dressed in his suit, yanking the domino down to hang around his neck. “Something has to be done about the new guy.”
“Okay,” Leslie said, and pushed the mug of coffee toward him.
“He’s so,” Dick waved his hands, at a loss for words the way frustration often rendered him, and Leslie waited while he gestured angrily for a while. “Pushy. Arrogant. He feels like he knows how to do my job better than I do.”
“Does he?” Leslie asked, admittedly a little surprised.
“You know something,” Dick accused, and Leslie raised an eyebrow at him until he relented. “He needs to know his place on this team, which is, you know, he’s the fucking new guy! He doesn’t know how things work yet! He can’t go around changing them!”
“Has he been causing problems?” Leslie asked, lightly, watching Dick’s reaction.
Dick growled in almost perfect imitation of his father. “Hell, yes, he’s been causing problems! He wanted us to change our whole mission assignment system!”
Leslie paused, sipping her own coffee. “I thought you implemented that.”
Dick threw up his hands, sounding, if anything, angrier, “well, that’s because it was a good fucking idea! I couldn’t just throw it out!”
“Hmm,” Leslie said, watching him struggle with himself, and then give in to the urge to shove himself off the couch and pace. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” and Dick’s hands were shoved into his hair, tugging on it with all the extra grip the gloves afforded him, “is that he thinks he knows everything and he’s going to get himself killed. Or one of us. Who fucking trained this maniac?”
Leslie stayed professionally silent, even though her instincts were warring with themselves on both sides. The answer wasn’t a solution to any imminent danger, though, and so she said nothing.
“He shows up on the scene, no recognizable name, no history, no family, and he just,” Dick dropped himself back on the couch with a huff. “He came out of nowhere and he thinks he’s better than those of us who have fucking practice under our belts.”
“No family,” Leslie repeated in surprise, not used to hearing Dick put it that way. Of all of them, his was the only that functioned like that in the real world, even if the rest looked like they did in costume.
“You know,” Dick said, waving a hand, “Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl, Aquaman and Tempest, that kind of thing. Was he even trained?”
“He was trained,” Leslie agreed, trying to figure out where the bounds were, here. It would be easy with anyone but Nightwing – even the few members of the Justice League they all agreed needed access to the information, or some of it, at least, would be less fraught to navigate than Augury’s direct superior. One of the few times Batman was easier to talk to than Nightwing, Leslie thought to herself, not laughing out loud.
“Anyone reputable?” Dick asked, rolling his eyes and fuming again.
“Someone with a reputation, certainly,” Leslie said, and cursed herself for the wordplay. “Yes, by someone who knew what they were doing.”
“Are you going to tell me?” Dick asked, sounding annoyed with her, now.
“Have you asked him?” Leslie countered.
Dick tried to glare her into submission, and gave up after a few beats. “But you know.”
“But if he didn’t tell you,” Leslie said, with a shrug. “I have to assume he doesn’t want it known, or his mentor doesn’t, or it would be publicly available information.”
“It wasn’t Trigon, was it?” Dick asked, warily. “Look, I mean, I know you’re not supposed to tell me, but please –”
“It wasn’t Trigon,” Leslie confirmed, her voice softening involuntarily, “why would you even think that?”
Dick sighed. “Something Raven said, about when they went out together, how well their magic meshed, I got to thinking. Got to worrying.”
“Magic users can often harness a wide variety of magic, Dick, you know that,” Leslie said, and let a little chiding into her voice as he looked pleadingly at her
“Yeah,” Dick said. “Yeah. Is he – can you tell me that? If he’s a demon?”
“I absolutely cannot tell you that,” Leslie said, shaking her head at him even though he already knew what was wrong with what he was asking. “But, also, do keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything if someone is.”
“I know,” Dick said, dropping his head into his hands. “I know! I trust Raven with my life, she would never – I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know how I meant it.”
“Dick,” Leslie said, reaching over to pat his knee, “if you think he’s doing something wrong, or he needs to change his behavior, or even if it’s that you’re just worried about his attitude or his expectations, tell him.”
“I don’t think he’d listen,” Dick said, with an angry shrug.
“Executive decision, because I do think this is incredibly important to your team dynamics,” Leslie said, slowly, deliberating, “yes, he will. He looks up to you. A lot. He’ll take anything you say incredibly seriously, probably more than you’d like, actually.”
Dick looked surprised. “Really?” Always the detectives, wasn’t it?
“Yes, really,” Leslie said, “don’t look so surprised, Nightwing, it’s not an uncommon reaction to you or your track record.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Dick agreed, halfheartedly, and Leslie wondered whether she should bring up his guilt over lives unsaved again, or wait for him to talk about it in his own time.
“If you think he’s acting recklessly, though, you need to tell him,” Leslie added. “I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do, and I certainly don’t want to see other people hurt because that kind of behavior went unchecked.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dick agreed. “Maybe it – maybe I’m judging too harshly. It’s just, Jason said, well, he was rushing into danger, all in it for the violence.”
“Did he?” Leslie asked, not as surprised by that.
“Well, no,” Dick said, “he did describe a lot of – well, maybe that’s more Jason’s fault than Augury’s, I don’t know. He is. Kind of. Well.”
“Yes,” agreed Leslie.
“Right,” Dick said. And looked at her again, skeptically, and Leslie wondered exactly what story he was putting together, now that for sure Augury wasn’t yet another child of Trigon sent to destroy the earth, “does it bear out?”
“His arrogance?” Leslie asked, looking at her patient. Older, now, but still always very much the child with the utopic vision of the future and his part in it. “I don’t know any of your training, Dick, you’re the one in charge of that. I don’t know if any of you should be as arrogant as you are. But you all are. It’s not just him.”
“We are, I guess,” Dick relented, and pulled off his gloves to take a cookie. “Sorry, I’m – Bruce is knee deep in another case and hasn’t been sleeping again, Alfred’s having some sort-of-secret tete a tete with some of his old spy buddies, Jason’s been spending more of his time patrolling than is honestly healthy and he keeps skipping class, Harry’s finally talking to me again but he’s being cagey about it, and Babs is having girlfriend drama. Plus I think I failed my chemistry test, not that this one is that much of my grade. So.”
“Jason’s skipping class?” Leslie said in surprise, then held up a hand and cleared her throat. “Never mind.”
“Not to narc on him or anything,” Dick said sheepishly. “I’m just stressed because. You know. Life. It’s not, um. His fault.”
“Right,” Leslie agreed, trying not to make a note to confront Jason. “Tell me what’s going wrong with Chemistry.”
Dick sighed, closed his eyes, got that expression on his face that usually told Leslie he’d hurt someone in the crossfire, except that this time, that person was clearly himself. “Too much Titans stuff, I think. I’d cut down on it, but. I mean. What goes, right? So then I never make a decision, and poof, school goes. So that’s that.”
“Do you want to talk about delegating again?” Leslie asked, a little less delicately than she probably should have, but Dick could see his problem as well as she could.
“Yeah,” Dick agreed, with the world’s most put upon sigh.
“No, because school is boring as fuck,” Jason disagreed, “so like. Why am I going to go if they’re covering something I don’t even care about?”
“Jason,” Leslie said, with a sort of sigh that usually went along with this kind of statement, even though she couldn’t really disagree, “your father wants you to get an education.”
“How much of an education am I getting if they’re telling me things I already know and/or won’t pay attention to?” Jason asked, crossing his arms and kicking his feet up onto the table, where Leslie tracked his boundary pushing progress.
“Well,” Leslie said, with another careful sigh, “you still need to graduate.”
Jason snorted. “Why, exactly? I’m going to do the same as Bruce does, milking income off my companies and devoting all my time to protecting Gotham. You don’t exactly need a college degree for that. Or a high school one. Or a certificate. Or, if you do need some sort of license, the Justice League’s okayed me, so I’ve already got the closest thing.”
Leslie refrained from rubbing at her temple, looking Jason in the eye. He didn’t even look challenging, at the moment, just, as advertised, bored. “And what if you change your mind one day, Jason? And you want a career? Or to attend university?”
“Um, then I’m the kid of a billionaire, and I can just buy my way into any of that,” Jason said, sounding genuinely confused, prompting almost a real sigh from Leslie. “Besides, it’s not like a GED’s hard to come by if I change my mind about college.”
Leslie leaned back in her chair and surveyed her patient. “I thought you liked school.”
“No,” Jason said, waving a hand. “I like learning, and here I was under the impression that rich people schools are more okay with that, but it only took three months to disabuse me of that notion, and look where we are. I’m still going. You know. Most of the time.”
Leslie opened her mouth to argue with him again, and Jason glowered.
“If you’re going to tell me to give it a chance, I did,” Jason said, curling up on the sofa and turning away from her slightly. “I gave it a whole year. Because I was the new kid, so it wasn’t a fair impression. And then I gave it another year. Because I needed to give it a fair shake, now that I’d got the hang of it. And then Bruce said, oh, high school is different, and it’s not, so I’m not going.”
“Jason,” Leslie said, and let it hang in the air, because she wasn’t sure she had anything to add that Bruce hadn’t already said a dozen times.
“What do I need school for?” Jason asked, hands in the air, waving wildly. “Why can’t I just hire infinite private tutors like Bruce did, if there’s something I need to learn? That sounds like a lot more fun, anyway, honestly.”
“It’s not always about fun, Jason, you understand that, right?” Leslie said, with a sigh, watching him shift on the couch.
He went still, and turned to face her slowly, voice cold, not quite as low as it would be once he’d perfected Batman’s growl, but low enough. “Do you think I don’t understand suffering, Leslie? I’ve been through plenty that isn’t fun, and I think I’ve earned my right to relax a little. I get it. This isn’t a game. Real people get hurt. Real people die. I’m not here to enjoy that; I’m here to save as many of them as possible. Put away as many bad people as possible. I’m not being cavalier with my responsibilities, Dr. Thompkins. I just don’t want to do homework.”
“It does seem quite small in the scheme of things, doesn’t it?” Leslie said, softly, not reaching out the way she would with Dick, or Bruce, or most of her patients. “But things that seem small now have a way of looming larger when you don’t have the ability to change them anymore. And I think, Jason, not finishing school might be one of your regrets someday.”
“If it is, then it is,” said Jason, relaxing back into his seat. “I can’t see the future. All I can really do is be here, now, trying to do the right thing. And getting a piece of paper that says I did the same thing as everyone else just doesn’t seem relevant to protecting my city. Do you know what the right thing is, Leslie?”
Leslie sighed, pouring herself a cup of tea. “Is this where you expound at great length on some new philosophical treatise, or are you asking for my help with something?”
“I was going to say Justice,” Jason said, with a pout. “And I was going to do it in Bruce’s voice, but you ruined the joke.”
Leslie laughed slightly, despite herself.
“There are just,” Jason clenched his fists, and slowly relaxed them, and Leslie nodded at him in approval. “There are so many people who need help, and there are so few of us, in the scheme of things. Heroes, I mean. Bruce has – he has all these things for orphans, for underprivileged kids. For the homeless. Hospitals. Food banks. Fixing Arkham, fixing Blackgate, fixing the cops, top down and bottom up. Inventing security systems, curing diseases, making education free and everywhere. He rebuilt the library, you know.”
“I know,” Leslie said, nodding at him.
“And I’m – it’s not like there’s anything else for me to do? If it’s something that needs doing, Bruce Wayne is already trying to do it. And Batman, too. All that stuff. But still, I go back to like,” Jason waved a hand vaguely, lips pinched and looking close to tears, “my old haunts, you know, and there’s still so many people – and it’s not like I can punch hunger, or winter, or cancer or whatever. But they’re – they already don’t have anything, and then you get Penguin’s guys roughing them up for protection money, or Joker’s clowns thinking it’s funny to take their clothes and paint their faces, or Wonderland using them as cannon fodder.”
“I know, Jason,” Leslie said, this time reaching out to take his hands. He let her, but didn’t squeeze back, staring off into the distance. “It’s not all up to you. And I know that sounds trite, and that’s because I have to tell it to every single person who comes in here. It’s not your fault, and you can’t put it on yourself to do everything. You need to take time for yourself.”
“I don’t need time!” Jason snapped, hands trembling. “What is my time for? I don’t need to feed myself anymore, or steal clothes, because Alfred gives those to me. I don’t need to work to pay for them, either, because Bruce does that. I don’t need to pass warnings around and tell people to watch out, because Dick handles those things, when I even see them anymore. I don’t even need to find time for recreation, because Harry always drags me somewhere anyway! So all that time – I’m supposed to, what, memorize dates? I have all this extra time now, and I can’t use it to stop one more person from hurting anyone?”
“You need to sleep,” Leslie said, softly, trying not to grip tighter where Jason’s nails were digging into her hands now.
“I sleep,” Jason said, quietly. “I still sleep. I still eat. But the rest of the time…I need to be out there. I need to be stopping people while I can.”
“We can’t be on all the time,” Leslie told him, even though, from the glazed look, she wasn’t quite getting through. “You need time to decompress. To not worry about anything. It’s a process, Jason, and it’s not something you should, or can, do by yourself. Read a book. Watch a movie. Listen to some music.”
“I do!” Jason said, pulling his hands back to drop his head into them. “I do, and I – every time I try to enjoy something, I always – and Bruce doesn’t trust me to go out alone. You know that, right? Like. He grabs one of the Titans to watch me, even though I can handle it myself.”
“I know it’s frustrating,” Leslie said. “But you’re overworking yourself. You’re going to burn yourself out, and once you hit that point, it’s going to take years to recover. Years where you won’t be able to help anybody.”
“But they need help now!” Jason said, and by this point he was seconds away from crying, and Leslie was worried she was about to follow him. “How am I supposed to just wait, when I’m not sure help will even show up?”
“I think I’m neglecting my people,” Bruce said, simply.
“By people,” Leslie said, “do you mean Gotham, or your family?”
“I meant Gotham,” Bruce told her, eyes widening just slightly, comical with the black rings around his eyes. “Do you think I’m neglecting my family?”
“Alright, tell me about Gotham,” Leslie said, sipping her tea.
Bruce sighed, tapping at his belt, like it was still the one full of pockets hanging on the coatrack, and not the hand-tooled leather accessory. “I’m spending too much time with the Justice League. No, not – they need me, of course, and I want to help, but…Gotham is my home, and there’s a lot I owe to it. I promised I would protect them, and they rely on me for that, even when there are other people in need.”
“But it’s hard to prioritize when we’re talking lives at stake,” Leslie said, nodding. “You don’t have the power to be everywhere at once, like some of your coworkers do. And even they need the downtime.”
“Of course they do,” Bruce said, nodding. Pressing his fingers against his lips in thought. “We all have our cities, our homes. Our people.”
Leslie nodded back at him.
Bruce looked up at her. “Why do you think I’m neglecting my family?”
Leslie sighed and gave him a look, spreading her hands wide. “Why do you think you’re neglecting your family, Bruce?”
Bruce ran a thumb over his mouth, a gesture he’d mostly trained himself out of in their early years together, and Leslie tried not to sit up at that. “I think Dick’s taking on too much again. He’s not sleeping, not enough…and I know that, because he’s moved back into the Manor, and you know how that goes.”
“He’s dropped out of school?” Leslie asked in surprise, wondering why Dick hadn’t mentioned anything. Had, in fact, given her the opposite impression.
Bruce looked up, just as surprised. “No, he’s just misusing the League teleporters. We pretend we don’t know about it. If anyone deserves a break….”
“I wonder where he gets it from,” Leslie said, drily.
Bruce rolled his eyes at her, once again the sullen teen. “Yes, I know. I’m setting a bad example. But the Justice League needs me, and the Titans need Nightwing, and there isn’t much either of us can do about that. He’s not dropping out of school, is he?”
“Bruce,” Leslie said, trying not to sound quite as exasperated as she felt.
“No, no, right,” Bruce said. Scrubbed at his stubble. Shifted in his seat. “I’m spending too much time watching the world instead of the city, so Dick’s spending too much time watching the country instead of at school, so Jason’s just skipping out on everything wholesale. It’s a wonder Harry’s not getting into any kind of trouble.”
“How is Harry?” Leslie asked, gently.
“Called again,” Bruce said, with a faint smile. “Didn’t seem like anything was wrong. Alfred said he was probably just partying or something like that, forgot to call home. These things happen. Having too much fun with friends, girls. Boys, I guess. I don’t think he fell off the wagon, though. He looked okay.”
“That’s good,” Leslie told him, patting his arm.
Bruce grunted in that familiar lead-in. “If he had a boyfriend, he’d tell me, wouldn’t he? If that was. If someone was taking up his attention.”
Leslie sighed heavily, folding her hands in her lap. “We’ve talked about the kind of conversation you desperately don’t want to have, Bruce. You’re going to have to make an overture, and until you do, maybe not, no. Maybe he would avoid it to keep you comfortable.”
“Fuck,” Bruce said, leaning back. “I knew you were going to say that, but I had to ask, anyway. Is it normal to want to keep Alfred safe, locked up in the Manor?”
“Your father?” Leslie said, with a skeptical look, “yes, Bruce, it’s normal to want to keep your father safe. I don’t think the impulse to lock him in is a good one, though.”
Bruce laughed, finally, looking back at her. “I wasn’t really going to lock him in. I just think he’s getting too old for all this spy stuff. He wasn’t young even when I was, and – I just worry about him, that’s all.”
“Is it dangerous?” Leslie asked, pouring more tea for him.
“I don’t think so,” Bruce said, sighing. “Loose ends, or maybe even just curiosity. He acts like he’s sneaking around, and I pretend I don’t know, so we haven’t talked about it. I mean, I know he knows I know, but…he’s only been willing to leave out one letter, and it obviously talked about the issue very obliquely, so. I don’t have details.”
“Dick’s worried about him, too,” Leslie explained. “And I say this not to, as was his point, put a stop to whatever Alfred’s doing, but because I think you need to take some time to spend with your sons. Get Dick to take the break you can so clearly tell he needs.”
Bruce stared at her in confusion. “Dick told you to…to tell on Alfred to me?”
Leslie stifled a laugh. “He did, yes.”
“Did he think I didn’t know?” Bruce asked.
Leslie shrugged, waving a hand. “He didn’t say. I have no idea.”
“Does he think I can stop Alfred?” Bruce asked.
“You know he does, Bruce,” Leslie said, shaking her head at him. “You know he’s still at the point where he thinks you can do anything, and it’ll take him a few years yet.”
“Of course he does,” Bruce said, sighing and shaking his head. “It’s more than just stress and not sleeping if he thinks I’m missing everything Alfred’s been up to.”
“He’s just worried about his grandfather, Bruce,” Leslie said, patting his hand.
“Yeah. Jason too,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “He’s brought it up on patrol three times. Distracted from a mission, once. I – I want to ground him, you know. Put away Robin for a little bit. But I think that might be worse.”
“It might be, yes,” Leslie agreed, with a challenging look at him.
Bruce laughed. “I know we can’t talk about whatever’s going on with him, Leslie, but I don’t think there’s any advice you can give me, anyway. I’m already doing as much as I can. It’s not enough, but it is what it is – I think maybe he’s right. We should pull him out of school.”
“So he can be Robin all day,” Leslie clarified, not bothering to keep the annoyance or disappointment out of her tone.
“So he can homeschool,” Bruce corrected, with a sigh. “He – he’s such a bright kid, he has so much promise, and I – I just hate to see that stifled, under…when I was his age, I was trying to seem mediocre, unremarkable. It didn’t get to me. But I remember, Leslie. I remember the frustration with someone taking your book away to hand you one more ‘appropriate to your reading level’, on the topics they thought you should be interested in, without, maybe, questionable material in it. Politically unobjectionable, or edifying. It. Well. Sucked.”
“Yes,” Leslie agreed, with a sigh of her own. “It really did suck.”
“If I can do something about that?” Bruce said, waving his hand in a gesture he clearly wasn’t certain of himself, “if, I don’t know, I can make him feel like he has some power here, that he’s in control of something? Don’t I need to do that?”
“I don’t know, Bruce,” Leslie said, folding her hands in her lap. “Would it help?”
Bruce sighed even more forcefully. “It might. Or he might blow off his private tutors, too, and spend even more time putting himself in danger, without any of us there to reign him in. And what if he hurts someone? What if he gets hurt?”
“All of you could get hurt,” Leslie said, moving to, as she tried to do sparingly, sit next to him and wrap an arm around his shoulders.
“I know. I know.” Bruce closed his eyes and leaned into her. “And it’s a risk we take, that we agree to, because people need us to. I know. I’m glad I have one kid who’s out of the line of fire, at least. One of us will be safe, even if worse comes to worst, at least.”