Um this is short and like 5000 years late but

Alfred was buzzing.

We're bringing him home.

They had failed to elaborate, because that, of course, would have been made far too much sense. What he would have given to demand them to put Dick on the comm and to hear his voice —

He would hear it soon, and that would have to be enough. Presumably, Superman would fly them home, effectively cutting down the flight time.

Home.

Richard would be home for the first time in what felt like an eternity and Alfred — well, Alfred was not prepared.

Nor was the manor, for that matter. He'd have to turn up the sheets in his bedroom, dust, and he'd like to have fresh goods out for him (which seldom failed to lighten the boy's mood following patrol, but Alfred worried that this incident was different entirely).

He thought back to the boy in the video that they had watched, unblinkingly, four hundred and thirty seven times, then to the perhaps too eager-to-please child that Bruce had brought home out of the blue, and finally to the thirteen year old he'd known.

It had been a long time, he acknowledged. And it takes so very little to change.

He inhaled sharply. "'Hope is a waking dream,'" he murmured, before getting to work.

He wasn't the type to lie to himself.

It was nearly an involuntary human trait, unavoidable even for the best, but he largely avoided it. Truth went hand-in-hand with Justice, and they must be viewed holistically. And justice was certainly his goal.

He wasn't even the type to lie to others — his charades were calculated moves, but he rarely said outright untruths. Simply led them to believe things due to a garish difference in...everything between his two identities.

He wished he could.

Because if Bruce ever encountered Deathstroke again, he wasn't sure that his morals would remain intact.

"So, um, here we are," Clark said, fumbling with his hands as he spoke. "Er, Dick."

He'd been craning his neck to look at the manor as if he'd never seen it before, and it looked startlingly similar to the first time Bruce brought him here, when Dick's parents had only just—just...

How much did he remember after all?

Dick turned haltingly, as if only just realizing (remembering?) that that was his name and he was expected to respond to it accordingly. "Yes?"

Clark extended a hand, smiling, like that would help jog the boy's recollection of the last five years. Really. "Um, good luck. I, uh, hope you remember."

His blue eyes flicked from the hand, then to Clark a few times, but whether it was appraising or with disgust, he couldn't tell.

(Lie: disgust for the motion, appraising for the man offering it.)

He was having a hard time reading him at all, really.

(Lie: A comforting falsehood over an unpleasant truth.)

"Merci beaucoup," the boy said finally, and slowly shook hands with him.

"Uh," he nodded at Bruce, "I guess this is it. I'll leave you to it." Clark looked emphatically at Bruce, eyes wide and lip bitten in concern. 'Good luck to you too,' he mouthed when Dick's haze left him.

In any other situation, Bruce would have scoffed, either not deigned to give a reply, or said something along the terms of I don't need it. More likely the former. He looked at his ward, his son, his Robin. He nodded in acknowledgement, and Clark grinned at him.

And promptly flew off.

"He keeps a secret identity like that?" Dick asked, when the Kryptonian was no longer even a primary colored speck in the distance.

"Shocking, I know," Bruce agreed. If he had to...banter...to help his protege, he would — begrudgingly.

"I don't even know where to start — the hair out for DNA, or the lack of gloves, or the fact that his entire face is just there, or-or—" Dick sighed, and despite the cirumstances, Bruce couldn't help but feel an odd satisfaction in Dick finding fault in Superman, his professed hero.

Unbidden, his lips quirked upwards. "Let's go," he said, "there's someone I want you to meet."

Whoever was in charge of the universe hated Grayson.

And, okay, yeah, it'd been funny the first few times his luck ran out, when his life got so messed up that he'd thought being mentored by one of the world's most dangerous mercenaries who also happened to be his kidnapper and the cause of his amnesia was normal. But the joke was getting old, and he didn't enjoy being a punchline.

But hell.

"Agent A?"