"Why then tis none to you; for there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison."

-William Shakespeare; Hamlet

"Brown is an insufferable nuisance."

Dick nods absently as he contemplates the coffee-maker. It has it out for him, and villainously withholds his precious caffeine. Intimidation will not work here, and calling for Alfred would be cheating.

Groaning, Dick starts pressing random buttons. Why won't the machine surrender the liquid of everything that is good and righteous in the world? Doesn't it understand that he . . . is . . . Batman?

"Grayson, pay attention!"

Dick catches his hand in the dispenser where it probably shouldn't have been in the first place, but obediently turns to look at his little brother. Damian is radiating a death glare that has clearly been inherited from his father. After a long moment, it deflates.

"Tt . . . get out of the way."

Damian elbows Dick out of the way, dislodging the offending limb from the delicate machinery. It only takes the kid a few seconds before there is a reassuring beep and the sound of coffee being properly dispensed.

Dick smiles, and fondly ruffles Damian's hair, skillfully retracting his hand before the kid can retaliate. "Thanks, li'l D."

"Now that you have your precious coffee, I want you to do something about Brown."

Dick sighs, and retreats to the table. "What did you and Stephanie destroy this time?"

"The only thing damaged is my IQ after listening to her twaddle about engaging the Calculator last week," Damian leapt up to settle himself on the counter with his own coffee.

Dick grimaces. Last week had been lousy. With a technology black out in effect, courtesy of Oracle's warning, Dick had introduced Damian to the concept of board games for fun rather than strategic education. Monopoly had been a terrible choice.

"Gordon's superior control over her own mind is admirable, but I take offense at being included in . . . in her dream of mediocrity."

Dick blinks. "First cup of coffee. Explain."

"Gordon has created a fictitious world in her head to serve as a barrier between the sensitive information she safeguards and any would-be infiltrators. A perfect world scenario," Damian scoffs. "According to Brown, the pair of you are married and living in the suburbs. No secret identities and no wheelchair. Just the boring routine of a 'normal' lifestyle."

Dick nods slowly. He's not fond of Babs' method of locking parts of herself away, security measure or not, but Damian isn't discussing the ethics of mind over matter. Something else is bothering the kid.

"Brown has informed me that while she remains absent in that reality—presumably due to issues regarding her secret identity—Drake and I are included. According to Gordon's scenario, she helped you raise me."

"And Tim," Dick offers.

"Forget Drake," Damian scowls into his coffee mug. "Why would Gordon dream such a thing? A year ago, she didn't even know me."

Dick makes a noncommittal noise, because he's learned not to underestimate Babs. Damian misunderstands.

"Brown is obviously lying."

"Steph isn't lying," Dick got up to refill his coffee; he was going to need it. "You and I are a team, Damian. Batman and Robin. Dick and Damian. There is no one without the other. Whither thou goes, I shall go . . . and all that."

"But it's a perfect world scenario. You do not have to . . ."

Dick gestures menacingly with his coffee cup. "Brothers. You. Me. Tim. Jason. It's complicated."

"There is not a single blood relation to justify . . ."

"D, do not make me hug you. I will enjoy it. You will not."

"Tt, as if you could," Damian sneers. "I am merely attempting to convey that I do not belong in that scenario. In a perfect world, you would not be responsible for me."

"None of us belong in a perfect world, Dami," Dick sighs, running a hand through his hair irritably. "That's why it's called a perfect world, and what Babs has? It's not even that. It's just a distraction, and Babs wouldn't want to actually live like that. She's not a superhero there, and she can't have Stephanie or Jason anywhere near it or the whole construct will shatter."

"Gordon fills those spaces with irrelevant details," Damian muses aloud.

"Don't forget the terrible literary references," Dick smiles. There are many things about Babs which qualify her as a perfect woman. The mention of any one usually makes Dick grin like a loon.

"It is evidently a satisfactory shield against outside influence. Each layer of fictitious memory over the last would create a fresh maze of thoughts. Gordon must have put a great deal of time into the entire history."

"Babs knows a lot of confidential information. Any mention of the Birds of Prey leads to Thanksgiving dinner. Ask about Bruce and he's running late . . . again. It's creepy, but awesome," Dick agrees, because Damian actually sounds approving of someone and that's meant to be encouraged.

Damian refills both their cups, sliding into the chair across from Dick. "You seem to know Gordon's mind very well."

There's a joke to be made about the female mind and assumptions, but Dick doesn't make it. He's got an inkling where Damian is going with this . . .

"What would it have been like to be normal? In case I ever need to adapt the technique," Damian defended.

Dick hates being right.

"Damian, no one in this family is normal. We prefer it that way actually."

"Liar."

Dick is getting better at reading Damian, but the flip side of that particular coin is that Damian can see through Dick too. "I don't like imagining that we were never superheroes," Dick finally decides. "Even if life isn't perfect, I don't like to think about what would have happened to all the people that we've saved over the years."

"Tt."

"But I'm going to need more coffee if I'm rewriting history," Dick announces. He smiles when Damian hands over his own. It's lukewarm already, but Dick drinks it anyway. "If we got you as a baby instead . . ."

You would have been a cranky baby, and Bruce would be at wit's end every time Alfred left the room. But in between the diapers and the spit-up, I would be there . . . my awesome big brother self just chilling with my little baby brother. I'd make bat plane noises to get you to eat your baby food, and buy you Superman pajamas just to mess with Bruce.

But you'd refuse to wear them and somehow with your devious little, genius baby mind . . . you'd arrange a suitable accident to befall them. Poop or pureed carrots or maybe both. Probably both.

And at first, Babs would be just your babysitter on nights that she isn't Batgirl. I'd come up with excuses to skip fundraisers and parties so that I could hang around. I'd try to impress her with my awesome big brother skills, but you would troll me magnificently every time, and Barbara would see right through both of us.

Even when I got mad at Bruce, I couldn't stay away from the combined pull of you and Alfie. I'd be home almost every other night, talking to you instead of Bruce. It'd be my fault that your first word is 'jerk' and Bruce probably smacked me upside the head so hard that I nearly dropped you.

Not that I would have. It's just after months of the 'tt' sound, I was blown away by actual English . . . and your dad has a bad habit of sneaking up on people.

Besides, you learned much worse words when Bruce brought Jason home after patrol one night. Bruce swears you were just teething at the time, but he was deluding himself. He needed to believe that you didn't stop teething until eight or he just might have cracked under the pressure of all those disapproving mommy glares and parent-teacher conferences. We both know that you were sharpening your teeth on Jason's leg that night, and you better believe that Jay knew it too.

But Jason was a good kid—the occasional tire aside. He forgave you after realizing he couldn't catch you, and eventually the two of you made friends. Mostly to improve your odds when it came to crashing my dates and raiding my room for things that preteens and toddlers aren't mean to have.

Sometimes Babs and I would take you to the park just to give Bruce and Alfred a break. We'd wear you out, stuff you with Alfred's picnic lunch, and then she would read out loud to you until you both crashed and we could be mushy in peace.

He wouldn't like me telling you this, but Jason can sew almost as well as Alfred. So when your Batman plushie loses an arm in a game of tug-of-war with Ace, Jason is the one who fixes it for you. Then, just because he's Jason, he made you a Robin plushie too. No Nightwing plushie because Jason can be an obnoxious little snot when he wants to be, but you loved the Robin one. It stunned Bruce speechless when you demanded Robin pajamas instead of Batman ones. Jason called you 'Mini Me' every time you wore them, but you had decided at three years old that you would be Robin once Jason grew up. You practiced every day, but Jason didn't grow up as planned. The Joker . . . Jay died and it was terrible.

The night of the funeral, we almost gave Bruce a heart attack because I wasn't in my bed when he came through to check on us. I'd gone down the hall and crawled into your kiddie Batmobile bed with you, because even at five years old, you were too stubborn to come to me. Bruce actually cried at the sight of both of us scrunched up to fit on the mini-mattress; it woke us up, but we pretended to be sleeping anyway. Sometimes you have to do that for people.

You did it for Babs. After what the Joker did, she shut down in a lot of ways. Most of the time, she wouldn't even speak to me, but you'd walk in, climb onto her hospital bed, and demand to go outside like a little prince. Then, so help me, I would get two glares—the kind that say "Get with the program, Grayson"—until I was wheeling you both out into the garden.

Most kids wouldn't have been able to do it. They'd want to get down, explore, play, but you stayed right there and—dare I say it—practically cuddled. Sort of. You let yourself be held at any rate, and it was a very noble sacrifice on your part.

There wasn't much worth smiling about after the Joker, but you were the only one who could get Bruce or Barbara to smile for a long time.

When Tim became Robin, you were so angry. You wouldn't wear the Robin pajamas any more, and you hid the plushies under your bed, and you told your dad that you wanted to be Nightwing's sidekick instead of his. I'm not going to lie; I was a little afraid of staying at the Manor after that one. But you weren't being nasty on purpose. You had just lost a brother, and it felt like he was being replaced.

You locked Tim out of the Batcave more times than I could count, and you took advantage of him trying to be nice to you with shameless abandon—stealing his stuff and whaling on him during training. Bruce always had to keep the two of you separated just to avoid bloodshed. You would try to lose Timmy every time we went out in public, and the one time—just one time—Bruce put the Titans in charge of you for a weekend, he ended up having to replace entire sections of the Tower.

And when Stephanie . . . when Stephanie became Robin, you ran away. Babs called me at work to tell me that you were gone. You disappeared from school, and I can't even tell you how many times people tried to abduct me from school and I was just Bruce Wayne's ward. I broke laws trying to get back to Gotham. Bruce and Steph were already out looking for you as Batman and Robin. Tim had Superboy fly him in from his school while Alfred interrogated the officials at yours. Someone had called Cass, and Babs was hacking every system known to mankind.

She's the one who figured out where you went, and she called me when I was halfway to Gotham to tell me that you took a bus to Bludhaven. Eight years old, and you managed to get a bus ticket all by yourself. By the time I got home, you'd already broken in. You were sitting on my sofa, and I didn't know whether to hug you or wring your scrawny neck.

Then you held up the Robin plushie that Jason had made for you—this was right after Hush, and absolutely no one would have teased you for going back to sleeping with the thing, honest—and you said the saddest thing I've ever heard.

You said that you were not replaceable.

I don't think you believed me when I told you that none of us were replaceable; that that wasn't what Robin was all about. That the differences were what made all of us Robin. After everything went down with Steph and Jason came back . . . well, Bruce and I started working out a way for you to stay with me. Get you started on super-heroing under me instead of the Bat.

We were all so worried about being Robin or not being Robin, that none of us gave a thought to being Batman. It was just always assumed that Bruce would be there. So when he disappeared, it was a shock to all of us. I like to think that we didn't fight over the cowl . . . that we sat back and thought long and hard about everything. Maybe we voted, or got Alfred to choose, or even drew straws.

But when I first donned the cowl, you were waiting for me by the Batmobile, suited up in all that random hand-me-down gear. You told me that I wouldn't get rid of you by taking on a new persona, and I told you that I wouldn't have tried.

So we went out to kick ass together. You and me. Batman and Robin.

"Is that it?"

Dick shrugs, a little miffed at the lack of appreciation for his epic story-telling skills. "Well, I'm pretty sure that between you and Selina, the Manor would be overrun with cats. Plus a team-up between you and Cass would make the muggers cry, and Jason would have shot the first person to successfully kidnap you without a word of protest from any of us because no one touches the Baby Bat." Dick nods in satisfaction. "You know . . . the boring routine of a normal lifestyle. For Bat people at least. But you're missing the point, Dami."

Damian tilted his head to the side which might mean he's actually listening.

"If we raised you, then maybe you'd use first names. You probably would call Bruce your Dad instead of your Father, and if I had my way, the word 'perfection' wouldn't even be in your vocabulary. You wouldn't have killed Spook, but you would still be the tiny badass that you are. You'd still be Robin."

"Tt . . . are you finished?"

Dick thinks about it for a moment before agreeing. "Yes."

"You are overwhelmingly sentimental, Grayson. Your improbable narrative is largely inconsistent, lacks any cohesive structure or recognizable timeline. Besides, I have nothing in common with Gordon."

Dick sighs.

"But it is more palatable than Gordon's version. Except for the parts about Drake of course."

"Of course."