Curate, connect, and discover
Okay but imagine for a second
You’re Bruce Wayne, Batman
The richest, smartest man in every room you have walked into since you turned 20
Every bit of information is at the tip of your fingertips money, brawn and brains are no object
And then you take in a child
Named Dick Grayson
From the circus, who has the most flimsy proof of his existence you’ve ever seen with a birth certificate that looks too worn to properly make out the parents named without knowing them before.
No passport despite traveling all over the globe
No form of identification
So you give the kid an ID and everything is fine
He becomes Robin
Joins a team
Becomes nightwing
Runs all the teams
Becomes Batman
Runs himself into the ground
And then Dicks in his 20s and he’s sick
Really sick
It’s not viral, fungal, parasitic or bacterial
No one else you know has this
And he’s getting sicker
He can’t walk without help and spends all his days wrapped up in blankets fighting off never ending shivers.
He mixes up his brothers names and sometimes outright forgets some of the kids
He didn’t recognize Kori a few weeks ago and hasn’t remembered her since
So Everytime he blearily asks “who are you again?” They All answer with the knowledge that this might be the him decaying blue eyes don’t spark with recognition
The first time it happened it was horror and tears “an Oh my god! I’m so sorry I love you you’re my brother” over time it’s devolved into an “oh right…hi Jason”
And the doctors ask for his family history
Maybe. Maybe there is something that could save him, bring him back or stop this descent… this fall from happening to the most untouchable man that’s ever lived.
(Tim threw up after he saw Dick burst into tears, head resting on Alfred’s shoulder when he realized he couldn’t walk without help- they need to stop this)
So they dig
And dig
And dig
And nothing
There’s no evidence of the Graysons before John, the Lloyd’s before Mary.
Neither had been to a doctor anytime in the states at least
Bruce had redone all of Dicks vaccines once he acquired guardianship of him.
There was nothing
Nothing on his aunts or the uncle that was his namesake
There’s just nothing
Bruce realizes he doesn’t even know Dicks ethnic background. 1000s of tests he’s ran and he doesn’t even know if Dick has ever been to his parents home countries
They do every test they can come up with to try and fake a comprehensive family history
Mary Grayson was a fake name
So way John
They don’t know the real ones
Bruce finds out the mother of his son is Syrian and Romani and the boys first father is Afghani and Italian.
He finds out Mary’s father fled from Syria during the 60s and settled in Germany
He finds out that John Grayson and his brother were orphans together
He can’t even tell you which one of them gave Dick his blood type.
He knows everything
He’s the smartest man in every room he’s ever walked into
And he won’t be able to save his son
Because the boy who holds Bruce Wayne’s very heart in his hands knows that the best way to stay in the shadows is simply to show so little everyone will fill in blank spots with jarring inaccuracies so seamlessly they won’t even notice they did it.
They’ve called everyone
And Dick just keeps getting sicker