Chapter Text
⤧⤧⤧
an unspecified moment in the past
The night’s finally winding down. The whacky demon freak of the week has been sealed away, and Dick’s plenty pleased with how it all went down; not a single person ended up cursed or possessed, and nothing got set on fire. For a demon summoning case in Gotham, that’s solid A+ work.
Though, he guesses he can’t chalk it all up to his and Bruce’s efforts. They did have to call in some outside help.
Then again, convincing Bruce that they need help is also solid A+ work, so Dick thinks he still deserves a pat or two on the back.
Speaking of said help, Dick hears footsteps approaching. He looks up to see John Constantine picking his way through the various puddles of demon slime towards where he’s sitting. Dick’s pretty sure he’s found the only part of ground in this building that isn’t covered in the stuff, but to make up for it, he’s covered in the stuff. He’s been trying to work out this bit of slime from between the ridges of the sole of his shoes for like four minutes now, to no avail.
When Constantine gets closer, Dick nods at him to acknowledge that he’s been seen, and goes back to working at his boots. Real professional-like . Bruce has been telling him he needs to conduct himself in a more dignified manner, after all. Dick looks out the corner of his eye to see if Bruce has been paying attention, but it looks like he’s still talking to the owner of the tarot store.
“So, Robin,” Constantine says, squatting down in front of him.
Dick eyes him suspiciously, feeling somewhat patronized. He’s not about to get patronized by a guy who looks like he’s barely out of college under the scruffy beard and the raggedy trenchcoat.
“So, Constantine,” he replies.
Dick watches as Constantine takes something out of his pocket. A flask. He unscrews the cap and doesn’t take a drink, surprisingly. No. He pours some liquid on his shoes, similarly covered in demon goo.
Dick gapes as he watches the goo dissolve.
Constantine grins at him, catching the expression. He holds out the flask.
Dick narrows his eyes. “Is that alcohol?”
With a snort, Constantine replies, “Different flask, kid. This is holy water.”
Ohhh. That does make more sense. Newly enlightened, he accepts the flask and carefully pours some water over his boots, watching in delight as the slime disappears.
“Thanks,” he says when he’s done. He passes the flask back to Constantine, who’s still squatting there, looking vaguely amused. Dick’s in a more generous mood now that he’s gotten rid of some of the goo, so he doesn’t feel the need to be hostile anymore, even with vague smugness.
“No problem,” Constantine says, screwing the cap back on the flask. “Good work out there today.”
Dick stands up, brushing the dirt off of his knees. “Thanks,” he chirps, putting out a hand to help Constantine up as well. Nevermind that he’s half his height. That’s irrelevant. Dick lifts, alright? “You too!”
Looking much more notably amused now, Constantine accepts his outstretched hand.
When they’re both standing, Constantine looks down at him contemplatively. Dick raises his eyebrows.
“You know, kid,” Constantine starts, “you’d make a good exorcist.” He taps his chin. “You have any magic?”
“Not a drop!” Dick replies cheerfully. “Is this a recruitment speech? ‘Cause, I kinda already have a full-time gig.” He gestures to the Robin logo and wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully.
Constantine doesn’t roll his eyes, but Dick can read people; he knows that the guy wants to. Maybe he’s holding himself back. He looks like the kind of person who has absolutely no idea how to interact with children.
Not that Dick is a child. Kinda. Sorta.
Almost. Anyway.
Constantine waves a hand, shaking his head. “Not recruitment. God forbid I invoke tall dark and brooding’s wrath over here,” he says, jerking a thumb at Bruce. “I’m just informing you. It’s good to have a backup plan, you know. Some advice for you.”
He looks inordinately pleased that he’s managed to impart some advice. Dick doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s got backup plans B-Z in the case that vigilantism doesn’t work out. B-Y being the ones Bruce laid out for him. Z being his own concoction.
Still, it does sound a little fun. Dick asks, “Even if I don’t have magic?”
He could have like, a plan Z and then a plan Z.1.
Constantine snorts. “You don’t need magic for this gig.” Bruce has finished up talking with the owner now, and is walking towards Dick and Constantine with a frown on his face. Constantine, noting the approaching danger, gives Dick one last grin. “All you need to be an exorcist is attitude.”
With that, he walks off. Bruce arrives seconds later.
“What did he want?” Bruce asks, doing that eyebrow thing.
Dick shrugs. “Nothing. Just helped me get some of this stuff off my shoes.”
Bruce peers after Constantine.
“Hn,” he says. “Did you thank him?”
Along with lectures about how dignified his manner is, Bruce has also been impressing the need for manners and politeness, which Dick resents. Not because Bruce is wrong, or that he disagrees, but the lessons would be much more effective if Bruce could put them into practice himself.
“Did you?”
Bruce turns his narrowed gaze onto Dick, who stares back, eyebrows raised.
The corner of Bruce’s mouth turns upwards. Dick crosses his arms, grinning smugly.
“Go play nice, B,” Dick says. He can’t see past the eye lens, but he knows Bruce is rolling his eyes as he walks towards Constantine.
Attitude, huh.
That, Dick admits, he has in spades.
⤧⤧⤧
some unspecified point in the future
Vic clears his throat.
“Welcome everybody, and thank you for being here. I now declare this emergency Titans meeting in session. The main topic of discussion for today is the recent, possibly supernatural in nature, occurences in the Tower, and the best course of action moving forward. If anybody would like to speak, please raise your hand, and remember to enunciate so that I can properly log the ridiculous shit you guys are about to say. Any questions?”
Garfield raises his hand.
“Yes, Gar?” Donna, currently acting as leader, says. The chair that usually holds their illustrious leader is empty. Nobody has questioned it so far, including her. Dick texted her that he’d be late, and she trusts that he’s doing something important enoug to warrant the absence.
“Why are we taking minutes?” Garfield asks. “This is an emergency meeting about a ghost.”
“Or a demon,” Kori adds, very unhelpfully, but with great enthusiasm.
“If I may?” Vic says, glancing in Donna’s direction. He’s holding his pen very tightly.
Donna nods. Vic nods back. He turns to Gar. “Because this has been one of the worst weeks of my life, which, by the way, includes the one where I got turned into a cyborg, so I would like to be able to cling to whatever normalcy I can get. Thank you.”
Garfield blinks.
“Fair enough,” he replies.
Vic goes back to scribbling down in the minutes. The pen looks like it’s about to snap. Gently, Donna puts a hand on his wrist.
Sitting up straighter in her chair, she asks “Any more questions?”
“Yeah,” Wally says, putting up a hand. “Are we seriously going with ghosts as the working theory?”
“Or demons,” Roy adds, beating Kori to the punch. She and Roy high-five.
“Yes,” Donna replies. “Is there a problem with that?”
Wally opens his mouth to say more, but upon being glared at by every single other person on the table, he wisely shuts it again. He shakes his head.
Donna nods at him. She looks around the table. “Anything else?”
Roy puts up his hand. Without waiting for the all-clear, although it’s not like she was going to say no, he asks, “Why isn’t Raven here? Isn’t this her area of expertise?”
Donna looks at Vic, who flips to an earlier page in his notebook and reads out, “Raven respectfully declines from dealing with any of this, because if she meddles, a diplomatic incident of demonic nature may occur, and she’s sure that nobody wants that.”
Roy blinks. “Right,” he says, not looking very convinced. Donna can’t blame him. She’s also dubious about the validity of that statement.
“Anything else?” she says again, the slightest bit of strain in her voice.
Wally puts up his hand again. Donna bites back a sigh.
“Yes, Wally?” she says.
Marking the first useful question of the day, Wally asks, “Where’s Nightwing?”
As though on cue, the door swings open. The man of the moment steps through.
Every eye at the table turns to him. Obviously, this is nothing Dick’s not used to, being the leader of the Titans and otherwise arresting presence, but there must be something in their gazes, because he visibly pauses.
“Am I in trouble?” he asks, grinning.
Slumping in his chair, Gar says, “Man, we all are.”
Dick snorts, and then breaks into a soft version of his signature cackle that, even after all these years, Donna still finds a little charming.
At least she’s not alone in that thought; it seems like some tension drains out of everybody upon hearing it. Maybe if they just get Dick to smile at the ghost, it’ll find it within itself to pass peacefully onto the afterlife.
“No need for dramatics, guys,” Dick says, taking a seat. Donna and Roy make eye contact and raise their eyebrows at each other. Dick, because he’s Dick and he’s Batman’s protege, obviously notices this, but continues on regardless. “I have it covered.”
“You have the ghosts covered?” Gar asks, dubious. Before Kori or Roy can say anything, he adds, “Or demons.”
Dick nods, grinning. “I have any and all ghosts, or demons, covered. With this.”
He sets down a backpack on the table. It’s big. Bulky. Very worn. Donna’s never seen it before, and glances exchanged with the other original Titans confirm that they’ve never seen it either, which raises some alarm bells. It’s been over a decade, after all. One would think that Dick would eventually run out of secrets to be keeping, but apparently not.
There’s a moment of silence, with everybody switching between looking at Dick, and looking at his mysterious backpack. Dick, despite the scrutiny and mild confusion from everybody, maintains his proud smile.
The moment drags out. And out.
Then, Wally, brave, impulsive, intensely familiar with Dick’s bullshit, sighs and bites the bullet.
“And what, dare I ask, is this?” he asks, rolling his eyes at the rest of the table.
Dick beams at him. “I’m so glad you asked!” he chirps, running a hand lovingly over the bag. “This is… my exorcist’s kit!”
Total silence.
Hold it for one beat, then two, then—
“What?” Wally asks.
Kori claps her hands together. “Brilliant!”
“What?” Roy echoes.
Gar says, “I am in awe of everything you do, dude,”
Vic puts his pen down and gently closes the minutes book. He pushes it away from him.
“Given up on the normalcy?” Donna asks, because at this point, she refuses to address anything else that’s going on in the room.
Vic sighs. “I don’t know why I was even trying,”
“What?” Wally asks again.
⤧⤧⤧
a different unspecified moment in the past
The thing is that, between getting fired as Robin—which, by the way, was bullshit, and the next time Dick and Bruce talk, if they ever will, Dick is going to fucking rip into him for that—and then hanging around the Manor like a sad abandoned puppy dog for a few months, and then finally getting sick of it and coming to Metropolis to live with Clark, the thought of becoming an exorcist had not come across Dick’s mind.
At no point did he sit down, look himself in the mirror and think, I’m going to diversify my capabilities by learning how to exorcise things. The diversifying capabilities proposition definitely did happen, but he had always thought more along the lines of like, new fighting styles, investigative reporting skills, or different cooking recipes, and not banishing demons and ghosts.
The idea of becoming an exorcist doesn’t even occur to him when he walks out of Clark’s guest bedroom into the kitchen to see Zatanna and Clark chatting by the counter; he’s too busy feeling mildly panicked at the idea that somehow, Bruce has decided to track him down and bring him back.
Even though that’s just. Obviously not going to happen. Bruce seemed to make it pretty clear that he didn’t want Dick around anymore.
Still, he freezes like a deer in headlights when he sees her. His mind immediately begins to run the logistics: Zatanna Zatara, sorceress, known contact and close acquaintance of Bruce Wayne, dangerous, but with key weaknesses— before he realizes that this is Bruce’s brand of ridiculousness, not his own, and he needs to snap out of it.
With that in mind, Dick’s personal brand of ridiculousness kicks in. He walks into the kitchen, because he came to get a glass of water and he’s going to get one, regardless of the known contact and close acquaintance of Bruce Wayne standing a metre away.
He says, “Hi, Zatanna. Nice of you to drop in,”
Clark’s eyebrows go up. Zatanna laughs, holding her hand over her mouth.
“Thanks, Dick. I didn’t realize you were the proprietor of this place.”
Zatanna, meet personal brand of ridiculousness. Dick nods. “Easy mistake to make,” he says, turning the tap on decisively. “Especially with all the freeloading that Clark here does,”
“I resent that, young man,” Clark says, grinning. With just as much decisiveness, Dick turns the tap off. He takes a sip of his water.
He turns to Zatanna. “I’m joking,” he says, with a genial smile. “Clark isn’t a freeloader. After all, I don’t believe in rent.”
Zatanna laughs again. “If only everyone shared your sentiments,” she says, reaching out her glass of orange juice. Dick clinks his water against it. “I guess this means the rumours are true, then.”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “The rumours?” he says, trying to keep his tone casual. Rumours. Of course. He doesn’t know what he expected. Many things fall under the superhero community’s brand of ridiculousness, and those many things change often, but gossipy remains a stalwart trait.
Zatanna grins at him, picking something up from the counter. It’s a piece of pizza.
“The rumours that Superman enjoys pineapple on pizza,” she elaborates, motioning to the incriminating yellow rectangles, and then plucking them off. “I didn’t want to believe it myself, but I can’t deny the evidence now.”
Caught off guard, Dick laughs. Zatanna’s smile grows larger.
Dick eases back into the conversation, and mentally smacks himself in the head; sure, there probably are rumours flying around about what happened between Batman and Robin, but he should trust that people have good intentions. It’s the superhero community, after all. Good intentions is another pretty consistent trait.
“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve been trying to convince him otherwise, but it’s just not sticking,”
Clark, laughing, says, “Oi, the both of you hush. Dick, if you’re joining us for dinner, wash your hands and grab a stool.”
Dick does join them for dinner, after washing his hands and grabbing a stool. It’s the first extended amount of time he’s spent around somebody who isn’t Clark in a few days—he’s been sulking, sue him—and the most amount of talking he’s done with somebody who isn’t Clark and isn’t the cute boy at the café two streets down, and it’s like he forgot how much he enjoyed this. Being around people, and talking to them, and being otherwise genuinely lovely.
At this point during the night, being a social worker, a bartender, and a primary school teacher have all crossed his mind as alternate occupations, but exorcist still remains firmly outside of his consideration. Dinner is a lovely affair, and Clark and Zatanna are both frankly too wonderful to be associating with Bruce as closely as they do, though Dick knows that that’s mostly just his bitterness talking, and any notions of the occult don’t cross his mind until he’s walking Zatanna to her car.
Clark has jetted off to save somebody on the other side of the city, and even though Zatanna is an incredibly powerful and acclaimed sorceress, she accepts Dick’s company regardless.
“Seriously, though,” she asks once they’ve gotten outside, “are you doing okay?”
Dick smiles, tilting his head slightly. “I’m okay,” he says, because it’s the truth. “Everything’s pretty messy at the moment, but… I’m okay.”
She nods at him, smiling. “I’m glad,” she says. “I have no idea what happened, but just for the record, I’m on your side. I have absolute faith that it was Bruce’s fault.”
Dick laughs, his breath fogging up in the night as he does. “Well,” he says, dropping off meaningfully. Zatanna bursts into laughter. Very gratifying.
When they’re both calmer, she says, “So, what do you have lined up? At risk of sounding like an elderly relative at the family gathering,”
Dick snorts. “Not sure yet. I kinda want to get right back into it, but it’d be nice to branch out a little as well. I’ve never really done anything else, and the whole world’s out there, you know?”
Zatanna nods. “I getcha,” she says, looking out into the city. “The whole world is out there. What were you thinking?”
“At the moment, the only thing on my list is signing myself up for a cooking class, so if you have any suggestions…”
They both break into laughter again.
“This one’s mine,” Zatanna says, motioning to a car parked along the sidewalk. They stop in front of it, and she leans against it, arms crossed. With a considering look sent Dick’s way, she taps a finger on her chin.
Inexplicably, a sense of deja vu overtakes Dick.
“Have you ever considered being an exorcist?” she asks.
Now explicated, the deja vu hits even harder. Dick laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Would it surprise you if I said you weren’t the first person to ask me that?”
Zatanna smiles. “Not at all. You can always tell when somebody has the touch for it.”
“You know I don’t have magic,” Dick says, his eyebrows raised. “Though, the other guy did say I didn’t need it.” He bites back a laugh at the memory, suddenly unearthed after all these years. “Said all I needed was attitude.”
Zatanna raises her eyebrows. “That guy probably has no idea what he’s doing.”
Dick grins at her. “I’m pretty sure that guy is your ex.”
Her eyebrows go up higher. “Constantine told you that?” she says, making a face when Dick nods. “Make that defnitely has no idea what he’s doing.”
Dick snickers.
Shaking her head, Zatanna pulls open her car door and pulls out a backpack. She hands it to Dick. Then, she goes back in and grabs a book and several other assorted items from her glove compartment, placing them on top of the backpack.
When she’s satisfied with her haul, large enough to make Dick strain a little to hold it all, she straightens up.
“Now,” she says, picking out some of the things from the pile and brandishing them meaningfully at Dick, “the key to being an exorcist isn’t attitude. What you need most to be an exorcist is preparation, alright? Listen carefully, Dick. This, here, is...”
⤧⤧⤧
that same unspecified point in the future, five minutes later
“And that,” Dick says, “is how the exorcist’s kit came to be.”
Donna stares at him. Actually, everybody is staring at him.
“Wait,” Roy says, his tone dripping with malice. “What the fuck do you mean he fired you from Robin?”
Donna is glad they’re on the same page.
“Yeah,” Wally adds, crossing his arms. “Wanna explain how that was apparently the second fucking time as well?”
Donna is so, so glad they're on the same page.
“I just feel like you guys are seriously missing the point here,” Gar says.