(Untitled)

[goldeneyedflash]

Training with Tim. Lab work. Training with Dick. More work. Sleep until dawn. Then start over. That was Bart's life in a nutshell. Except that it was going to change because Dick had informed him he was signing up for his gymnastics class. The words were Dick's, but it was an order from Nightwing. And Jill was still worried

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[cantstopmoving]

Pass after pass, Bart misses tricks, misses landings, leaves out critical turns. On the horse, his swings lack focus and precision, having just raw power from the anger leaking off him like a thin black oil slick. Dick wants to work it out of him, but Bart's inside himself so far putting him on bars or rings or anything where concentration's any more critical is asking for him to get hurt.

If anything hurts Bart today, it's going to be him.

He watches Bart stretch, arms crossed over his chest, fingers tapping impatiently against his bicep. His question snaps Dick's patience and he's in motion before Bart can finish the sentence, standing over him when he does.

"You want to know the point? Get up." Bart's not talking about the gymnastics, really. He's not talking at all. Dick's let Kon and Cassie and Jill try. Hell, he's tried. Now they're going to settle it a little differently. At least for today.

[cantstopmoving]

Dick lowers himself to the ground, ankles crossing first, then the rest of his body following in a slow, controlled, elegant drop. "None of us know what to do, Bart. Not even me."

[goldeneyedflash]

"But you know what you want," Bart said, pretty certain it was the truth. "I thought I did. But I didn't want to be the one. The guy in the cowl, like nobody even cared it had changed hands again. I'm not Wally, I'm not the Flash, or Kid Flash or Impulse. What's left?"

[cantstopmoving]

"Nice to know I'm projecting more confidence than I feel." Dick gestures to the ground beside him. "Sit down, Bart. I don't know who to be here any more than you do."

[goldeneyedflash]

Bart sighed, and took a seat, nowhere near as graceful as the older man across from him. He didn't even realize he was pulling his 'bad' knee to his chest until it was too late to take the movement back. It was easier to not put the stress on it sometimes.

"I never thought about being anything else. Not until after Kon died. I was going to be like Grandpa Barry, a hero," Bart said, looking down. "You...you're always so...in charge. Everyone listens to you, even when they don't want to. Me? I'm just a kid who grew up overnight."

[cantstopmoving]

The knee, still. He really needs to get Bev to take a look at that. Her tech probably can't do anything with it now, but having a better sense of the damage might help him design training to strengthen it more.

Pulling his own knees to his chest, he puts his arms around them, casual. His tone's gone from angry, to teaching, to conversational. Now he's just sharing, hoping maybe it will help. "When I was a kid, I used to ask Batman if we were going to do this forever. Be Batman and Robin. I never wanted to be anything but his partner. Then I got fired and he got a new partner. A new Robin." He glances at Bart and asks, "Do you know where the name Robin came from?"

[goldeneyedflash]

"Never really thought about it," Bart said. "It's just one of those things. The kind that don't make sense unless you were a part of it. Not everyone's names make sense. I wasn't even born in this century. Plenty of things go over my head from that. Never saw an episode of Sesame Street, which Abby still won't let me live down."

[cantstopmoving]

"I was born the first day of spring. My mother called me her little Robin, and my uniform was based on her uniform." He pauses, looking at Bart, insistent, waiting for it to sink in. "He took my only legacy from my mother and everything I knew how to be and gave it to a street brat he found stealing his tires."

There's more to say, about how he became Nightwing, but it's not a pity party, so he shrugs. "It took Tim coming to get me to bring me back. And Superman telling me B couldn't take away who I was. He gave me the name Nightwing from Kandorian legend. So I remade myself. Part Bat and part bird. I made Nightwing out of who I already was. Not the other way around."

[goldeneyedflash]

Bart listened, thinking for a long moment. Dick was sharing because he thought it would help him, and he needed to try. There was a lot going on in his mind, there always was, but it kept coming back to one thing, like a refrain.

"What do you see in me?" he finally asked. "I can't stop, but I don't know how to keep going, either. I'm not the Flash, that much I know for certain. I won't wear that mantle ever again."

[cantstopmoving]

For a long minute, Dick sits quietly thinking through what he knows about Bart, separating it from Bart Tim's best friend who Tim needs, and Bart the ex-Flash and Impulse, winnowing out his suspicions about some of what happened in Bart's relationship with Tim, and consulting his own instincts about the young man he's been training

[goldeneyedflash]

If it were Tim or Kon, he would have made some comment about preferring to keep his feet on the ground, but he might never be that comfortable with Nightwing. So he didn't.

"It's not pointless to be prepared," Bart said, quietly. "You haven't been here for any of the truly disruptive stuff, but I'm sure Robin would have covered the bases. There's so much put into not letting the situation get to you by most people that they don't want to think outside the box. The system works for the usual things, but anything major goes down, and folks fall to pieces. There was a bit of an earthquake, and power in the compound was out for maybe ten or twelve hours, and you would have thought the world was ending.

"That's what Tim and I talked about, when I first showed. When it was just the three of us."

[cantstopmoving]

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." There's no thought involved in that answer and a twitch of a smile accompanies the Bat koan. He shifts and settles again more comfortably. "It's more the costumed vigilantes part that I'm questioning, but that's neither here nor there."

Of all the people he might have that conversation with, Bart who can barely be convinced to keep their identities secret is not at the top of the list. Not today anyhow, but when he lifts his hand, a smile accompanies it, no censure for Bart in it. Just a redirect.

"I don't have answers for you. I have faith in you. Different beasts. All I know is that giving 100% in your training will help you come unstuck mentally. Commit to it, and give it a chance to work for you."