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There’s a gala at Wayne Manor, one of those annual events Bruce was forced to attend as a child and now hosts and forces all of his children to attend. Jason used to hate galas, for various reasons. Now, though, it’s one of his favorite nights, because it’s one of the only nights he knows the Cave will be empty.
Or, in theory, the Cave should be empty. When he arrives, though, Stephanie is sitting at the computer, feet up on the desk and eating popcorn while wearing a silver, glittering gown. She gives Jason a smug smile. “A little underdressed for a gala, don’t you think?”
“I look better than every fucker up there. Besides, in public knowledge, I’m still dead.”
“All the more reason for you to make an appearance! It’s been too long since there’s been a scandal at a gala. The tabloids are drying up. It’s literally been years since Bruce has gotten ‘drunk’”—she uses air quotes—“and tried to punch someone.”
“Sad.” Jason decides to momentarily abandon his mission of pillaging for new equipment and takes a seat next to her, giving her an appraising look. “You look like a Barbie.”
She offers him the bowl of popcorn. “Which Barbie? Are we talking Swan Lake Barbie? Diva Barbie? Totally Hair Barbie?”
He takes a handful of popcorns and chews it before he says: “12 Dancing Princesses Barbie.”
Her jaw drops. “Jason, I had no idea you were a man of culture.”
“Bitch, I lived in a mansion.”
She snorts at that, eyes flickering briefly back to the screen. Stephanie quickly snaps her attention away, like she hoped Jason didn’t notice.
Obviously, Jason looks at the screen. At the moment, there’s nothing there, just security footage. “What are you doing down here, anyways? Aren’t you supposed to be upstairs, convincing elderly rich fucks to give money to orphans?”
Stephanie sighs dramatically. “J, it is so boring up there. Truly awful. Everyone smells like potpourri. They are all wearing very boring Chanel. They have so much money, and they actively choose not to wear Gucci. That is bizarre. And? Honestly? The wine is not that good.”
“I’m telling Alfred.”
“Don’t you dare.” There’s something she’s not saying—he can see it all over her face. Instead of pointing that out, though, he just eats another handful of popcorn.
“So you’re bored and you came down here to…what? Eat popcorn and watch security footage?”
He glances at the screen again, notices that the footage is dated almost 10 years ago. Weird. She shrugs. “I knew you’d get here eventually.”
That…well, it’s oddly touching, but Jason doesn’t let on. Something moves on the screen. Stephanie looks at it like she’s hoping he won’t notice, and he decides to stop pretending he’s not curious.
“Why are you watching this footage you’re clearly trying to figure out how to shut off without me noticing?”
“I’m not,” she says calmly, which is her giveaway, because Stephanie is never calm.
“Your hand is hovering over the close button right now.”
She jerks her hand back. “A coincidence. So, what do you say? Want to leave this room and go upstairs sometimes in the next…” she glances at the time on the video, “….32 seconds?”
“Okay, that’s it, we’re both watching this shit now.”
She pouts, but swivels towards the screen. “Fine.”
He watches her watch the screen, totally serene in what is clearly her impending panic. She really does look like a Barbie doll. He wanders what it would have been like, to be able to show up to a gala with a slew of people who were also miserable there, instead of it just being him, Dick and Bruce all confined to their separate corners.
On the screen, a man appears with a gun. Two men. Three. And then-
“Oh my god,” Jason says with ever growing glee and a barked laugh, “why are you fucking watching fucking videos of fucking Robin Tim?”
“We get it,” Stephanie says, still refusing to look at him, “you’re edgy and you say ‘fuck.’”
“YOU ARE WEARING A GOWN AND WATCHING A VIDEO OF TIM WHEN HE WAS THIRTEEN!” He’s roaring with laughter.
“IT’S NOT THAT WEIRD!” Stephanie finally cracks, which only makes him laugh harder. “STOP LAUGHING!”
He’s getting a stitch in his side. “Is this like a sitcom for you? Is this what you watch when you’re bored? Child Tim in my outfit kicking goons?”
Stephanie is giving him a death glare for the ages. Jason holds his ribcage. He can’t remember the last time he laughed like this.
“If I tell you what I was doing,” she says slowly, “do you promise not to make fun of me?”
“Steph, I can just about promise you there’s nothing you could say right now that I wouldn’t make fun of you for.”
She groans. “Ugh. FINE.”
He reaches out and taps her forehead. “You gotta tell me though, or I’m going to assume that this is what you do for fun.”
She seems to weigh these options in her head. He taps her again, just for good measure, and she gives in. “Okay,” she says, leaning back and using her arms to start wildly gesturing, as she often does. “So I’m up at this gala, right? And, you know, it’s weird. No one up there understands why Bruce has adopted a million random ass kids. I’m, you know, blonde, which makes me look very different from all his little freaks. And I’m just…I’m so bad at it. I don’t know how to mingle and float and say all the right things and make Bruce look good and I keep looking over and Tim is just…well, let’s be honest, Jason, he’s crushing it.”
“He’s really good with rich assholes,” Jason says with a grimace. “Mostly because he is one.”
She nods emphatically. “And it reminded me of… look, I don’t know how much we’ve told you about my historic two month stint as Robin.”
“I was unaware you lasted two months.”
“Well, I obviously killed it during that time, as I always do, but… well, the whole time I was very aware that I wasn’t Tim.” She gestures at the screen. “And I just wanted to watch and see if, you know. He was actually that good.” She points upstairs. “Because up there? He seems like he’s that good.”
Jason is finding it difficult to laugh at her, and he remembers what it used to be like, to watch Dick do his little backflips and know they weren’t the same. “Look, I obviously missed most of the golden era of Robin Tim,” Jason says, clearing his throat, “but I can promise you were better. Part of that is because, well, I still think we could stick an iguana in a Robin outfit and it could outdo Tim. But also, man, you’re Spoiler. You were better.”
Her lips twitched. “You’re too biased.”
He shakes his head. “That can’t be it.”
There’s the distinct sound of someone coming into the Cave—the distinct sound of Dick, actually, because he’s the only one who bounds in anywhere like that, even though he’s the oldest of them. “Steph,” he calls out before they can see him, “please tell me you already brought snack food down here, because-“ He cuts himself off abruptly when he sees Jason. Dick pauses, twisting his mouth, and then he continues with his approach. “Hey, J. Fuck you for not being obligated to go to galas anymore.”
“Hey, you can do it too, if you’ll just die.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dick mutters. He points at the screen. “Why are we watching baby Tim kick ass?”
Stephanie and Jason exchange a look. She shrugs.
“Hey Dick,” Jason says, swiveling towards him, “who do you think was the better Robin— Stephanie or Replacement?”
Dick raises his eyebrows. “On what basis? Are we talking longevity?”
“FUCK longevity,” Jason says, and Stephanie nods.
“Quality,” she says. Dick takes a seat.
“Steph,” he says, adopting that big brother voice that makes Jason’s skin crawl, “neither was better. Every Robin is different.”
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, wrinkling her nose, and Jason snorts.
“Who’s edgy now?” he whispers, and she hits his arm.
Stephanie turns so that she’s fully facing Dick. “We all know that everyone thinks Tim was better, except for buddy over here, and that’s just ‘cause he hates Tim.”
Dick shakes his head. “No, Steph, that’s not true. It’s the… it’s the Robin effect.”
Both Jason and Stephanie tilt their heads.
“The what?” Stephanie asks, and Dick gestures meaninglessly.
“The Robin effect. Ya know. Everyone thinks the Robin right before them was way better. We all try to keep up with the kid that came before us. Except me, obviously, and I was trying to keep up with the fucking Batman.”
“That’s not a thing,” Stephanie says, at the same time that Jason says: “I never thought you were that good.”
“Okay, not to be a raging asshole, J, but one time I literally had to convince you that Bruce wasn’t going to unadopt you because you couldn’t figure out a double pike vault.”
“You’re always a raging asshole,” Jason mutters, and he gives Stephanie a dismissive look. “I was thirteen.”
“And it IS a thing, Steph, ‘cause you and I both know that Tim spent a lot of energy and a lot of time trying to be Jason.”
“That is true,” Stephanie says as an aside to Jason, and he frowns. The facts are stacking up, and…holy shit. Dick is right. He glances at Stephanie and sees the same realization play out on her face. Stephanie stands up and reaches a hand out towards Jason while still facing Dick. “Dick,” she says in an oddly professional voice, “this has been a very enlightening conversation. Jason and I are going to sidebar for a minute, over there, but I don’t want you to move, okay?”
Jason stands and takes her hand and she starts to drag him away from Dick. A few steps in, though, she stops and turns back to Dick. “Hey, I didn’t ask. Why did YOU leave the gala?”
Dick shrugs. “Old people kept touching my face.”
“Fair enough,” they both say in unison, and Stephanie resumes dragging Jason.
“Ok,” she whispers once they’re a decent distance away from Dick. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He nods slowly. “I think so. Because I…this is physically painful for me to say, but…”
“You assumed everyone thought Dick was the best Robin?”
He grimaces. “Yes.”
She nods. “Yeah, I thought the same thing. About Tim. And now…”
“Who the FUCK is the best Robin?”
Stephanie throws her hands in the air. “EXACTLY.”
Jason points at Dick. “He’s not going to get it.”
“Well, no, because he’s going to try to tell us that we all have intrinsic worth and value.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, but you know what I’m thinking?”
He nods. “I think it’s what I’m thinking.”
“This is a really good night to figure out who’s the best Robin?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking we should all cage fight.”
“That wouldn’t determine anything,” Dick calls out, and when they look over he’s leaning back with his feet on the desk. “I can hear you, dipshits. And us fighting now doesn’t mean anything, ‘cause we’re not Robin anymore. What you NEED to do is a bracket.”
xxx
At around 10:30, Damian decides he’s had enough of this gala. It’s all empty people there, with empty words and empty conversations. He understands the importance of the galas, understands the importance of the checkbooks in these guests’ pockets. However, he’s dreadfully bored, and he can’t help but notice that some members of the family have already found ways to escape.
He has a quick word with his father, and he sees Drake watch his exit with unabashed envy. Damian doesn’t feel pity for him, though—this is one of the only cases in which Damian’s status as the youngest gives him an advantage.
He makes his way down to the Cave, because even though he knows Signal and some others are keeping the city safe tonight, he wants to be sure thing is in disarray. When he enters the Cave, though, he is greeted by the sight of Todd, Grayson, and Brown all shouting at each other and holding markers.
He clears his throat. They all swivel to face him, two of them still in their formal attire, though Grayson has unbuttoned several buttons and thrown his bow tie and jacket to the ground, and Brown has tied her gown around her knees for better mobility. “Father says it’s a reasonable time for me to pretend it’s my bed time,” he says, “and I thought I would check to be sure the city was safe. He said that was unnecessary, seeing that both Nightwing and Spoiler were already present. However, I doubt he knows you are both playing games on a white board.” He purses his lips. “I didn’t even know we had a white board.”
“Hey brat,” Todd says cheerfully, throwing him a marker. “What do you think is more important? Overall athleticism or”—he sends Grayson an annoyed look— “can-do spirit?”
“Follow up question,” Brown chirps, “is the ability to annoy your opponent a positive quality?”
For a moment, Damian looks just stares at them. “Damn,” Grayson whispers, “I finally see the resemblance to Bruce.”
“Are you attempting to rank the Robins?” Damian says, wrinkling his nose as he looks at the scrawls on the whiteboard.
“Well, yeah,” says Brown. “But we realized that first we have to determine the essential qualities of a Robin.”
“And weight them,” Grayson says gravely. “Because in the first go around, we realized that you kept losing because you’re short.”
“I am not short!” Damian protests. “You are all adults!”
“Yeahhhhh,” Todd drawls. “We started accounting for that in round 3.”
Damian is silent for a moment, staring intently at the board. Then, in a focused voice, he says “You have forgotten to account for stealth.”
“Fucking A,” Todd says, “I should’ve known you’d be useful.”
xxx
It’s nearing midnight when Tim looks around and realizes that he is the only Wayne representative besides Bruce who’s still up here. This isn’t surprising—everyone else has always been able to shirk all Wayne Enterprise duties, and, as a result, be much less essential to galas. It’s not that Tim is forced into this, of course—he likes Wayne Enterprise. He likes the things he does, and he likes being damn good at it. It’s just times like now, when he’s sure that Dick and Stephanie are out somewhere trying to perfect some impractical stunt like doing a backflip on a motorcycle, that he’s jealous.
He looks at Bruce, willing him to look up. Amazingly, Bruce does, and Tim does something he hasn’t done in years: he pouts. He can tell that Bruce has to resist the urge to roll his eyes, because he’s still in full Brucie mode, champagne sloshing carelessly in his hand. Brice makes a dismissive gesture that Tim knows is his release, and he all but bolts out of the room, anxious to not have to explain to another person that no, actually, orphans probably should have the right to housing, even if they were born poor.
When Tim gets to the Cave, he’s expecting it to be Steph and Dick, if he’s lucky. What he’s not expecting is for it to be Steph, Dick, Jason, and Damian, all gathered around a video chat with Barbara, all of them screaming.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN TIM WAS BETTER AT AGITATING THAN ME,” Jason yells. “I WAS THE MOST ANNOYING ROBIN IN THE WORLD!”
“I think that we are TOTALLY defining agitating in different ways,” Dick is saying, banging an open palm on the desk for emphasis.
“Being ‘annoying’ and exploiting your foe’s ability to be distracted should not be interchangeable,” Damian says, oddly on edge, and Stephanie is shaking her head. “Barbara, as a FELLOW WOMAN-“
Off to the side, there’s a white board with all four of their handwritings scrawled across it. It looks like a bracket, but every single entry has been circled and annotated, punctuated by hundreds of questions marks. Tim tries to skim it, blocking out the sounds of the family squabble.
VERTICAL JUMP??
WHEN DID J ‘STOP’ BEING R?
DICK-UNFAIR ADVANTAGE BECAUSE OF GOOD PARENTING
OPPONENTS JAILED
OPPONENTS INSTITUTIONALIZED
OPPONENTS WHO MYSTERIOUSLY DIED
IS TIM ACTUALLY 170 LBS???? SEEMS UNLIKELY
Tim’s jaw drops. “You’re March Madness bracketing the Robins?”
They all turn to look at him.
“What’s March Madness?” Damian says, earning disappointed looks from everyone in the room.
“Hello, Tim,” Barbara says from the video chat. “I was just settling a tie—who was more annoying, you or Jason. I voted you.”
“Um, okay, what the fuck?” He says, hands up.
“Annoying being a term that I’ve determined is semantically inappropriate,” Dick says, talking like he’s some college professor.
“What we’re talking about is the ability to goad your opponent into being stupid,” Stephanie says. “So it’s not a bad thing.”
“It is inaccurate, though,” Jason says with a glare at the screen, “because I was way more annoying than you. And everything I learned about being annoying I learned from that guy,” he points at Dick, who beams, “so we should both be ahead of you.” He pauses. “I mean, you’re annoying as shit. I was just better at it strategically. You’re actually less annoying in uniform, somehow.”
Tim nods slowly, taking this in. He looks back at the board. “Okay, first off, I think I should get points for being involved in Wayne Enterprises. Second, I think I should get points for not fighting with B as much as literally any of you did.”
Stephanie sighs. “Oh, Tim,” she says, voice full of pity, “we’ve already accounted for both of those things. You got a lot of points docked for both.”
xxx
Before the gala, Bruce had urged all of his children to take the night off once they left, to give themselves a chance to rest. However, he knows them, which mean he knows that they all probably walked straight from the gala to the Cave, where they still are, unless they’ve already begun patrolling, which he had given them strict orders not to do. When he was in his 20s, he had violently resisted all of Alfred’s urgings to rest and recover when necessary. Now, as he wrangles all his adult children and Damian, he finally appreciates the hell he put Alfred through.
When the door to the Cave opens, though, he is surprised to hear the din of laughter. There’s everyone’s laughter—Damian’s polite snickering, Stephanie’s hyena shriek, Tim’s wheezing fit, Dick’s booming laugh. There’s another laugh, too, which he realizes with a start is Jason’s raspy cackling, a sound Bruce can’t even remember hearing in the Cave in years.
They’re all gathered around a screen as two videos play, side by side, one of them security footage of Stephanie, as Robin, fighting three of Black Mask’s men, the other of security footage of Damian, only a few months ago, fighting three Two Face goons.
“See,” Stephanie yells delightedly through bouts of laughing, “I told you guys! I do a two person kick SO MUCH cleaner than Damian!”
“Your legs were longer!” Damian howls. “And I disarmed my men faster!”
“No one’s beat my disarming record though,” Dick says triumphantly, and they all groan.
“Dick, my man,” Jason says, “that footage was so grainy it could have been taken with an iPod nano. We’re not accepting it.”
Bruce leans against the wall, taking it in. He can’t remember the last time he saw them like this, or if he’s ever seen them like this at all. Stephanie with her feet in Jason’s lap, sharing a bowl of popcorn with Tim. Dick’s arm draped around Jason’s shoulders, his other hand tousling Damian’s hair while Damian tries to evade him. In the corner, there’s a whiteboard with a bracket, labeled, in Dick’s all caps block letters: “ROBIN G.O.A.T.???”
Bruce should say something, maybe. Interrupt them to insist that he has no favorites, that they all had individual strengths. But he watches Tim throw a piece of popcorn and Dick catch it in his mouth, listens as Damian says “play the footage we found of Drake falling off that building seven years ago,” listens to all of their laughter anew. He smiles. They don’t need him for any of this.
Before he returns upstairs, he takes one last look at the board. The board is covered with writing, handwriting styles and market colors layering on top of each other. The first round of the bracket—the entry level—is filled in with Stephanie’s cursive. All the other rounds remain blank.