August 19, 2120h

        Bruce paused at the basement door.  He felt childishly reluctant to
go downstairs and had felt that way ever since they'd moved Dick up to his
own bedroom.  It was as though the basement was haunted with the last
vestiges of pain that wracked the house and Bruce wanted nothing less than
to go wallow in that.  He'd promised Barbara he'd bring up the IV stand
though.  He'd never shirked from a difficult job before and he wasn't about
to start with something so - insignificant.  He opened the door and trudged
down the stairs, automatically listening for the staccato click of his own
quiet footfalls on the concrete stairs.  He heard something else instead.
Something rasping and metallic.  His pace increased and when he hit the
bottom, what he found made even the Batman pause.
        Spud sat on the floor with a pair of kitchen scissors, determinedly
slicing apart a Nightwing suit.
        "No," Bruce gasped hoarsely, closing the distance between the
stairs and the little boy in record time.
	"Spud, no!"  Bruce dropped to his knees on the concrete floor, barely
registering the pain and shock of the impact that ran up his thighs as he
scrambled first for the shreds of the ruined suit then for the scissors in
Spud's hand.  "Spud - Jim - James," he fumbled.  "No, you can't do this."
        "But I have to," Spud protested.  "If I don't cut up all his suits,
he'll go back out and he'll get hurt again, or WORSE!"  Spud's lower lip
trembled and his 9-year-old resolve wavered in the face of Angry Adult.
        "No -"  Bruce's strong fingers pulled the scissors from Spud's
small hand and cast them to one side.  They skittered loudly across the
floor, the sound echoing.  "You can't," Bruce said, quietly, his own eyes
stinging with tears for the first time in 35 years.  "I tried, I tried,
James, I did it too!"  He took the little boy by the shoulders and looked
him in the eye.  "I tried to stop him, too.  I made him stop being Robin a
long, long time ago because I was afraid he'd get hurt, too.  I was wrong.
He thought I didn't love him anymore and he became Nightwing.  We can't
take Nightwing away from him, James.  If we really love him, we can't take
Nightwing away from him."
        "But - but -"  Spud started, helplessly.  His eyes spilled over
with frightened tears.
        "I know," Bruce whispered fiercely, crushing the boy in a bear hug.
"I know."  His tears escaped now, washing hot and bitter down his face.
        Together the sat on the cold concrete floor, rocking gently and
crying for the man who had given them both a family.