Chapter Text
Dick was adopted by Bruce Wayne at the tender age of 13. At that point of his life, the most he knew about the underworld was that it existed and that his supposed guardian was considered king. The underworld was Gotham’s worst and best kept secret, worst because everyone in Gotham knew yet chose to turn a blind eye and best because no one outside of Gotham would ever accuse such a thing till they lived there for over a month. The Wayne family was a legend in the underworld. They had been the first family to publicly support different mafias and when those mafias had turned on them, the Wayne’s had created their own to defend themselves.
Al Capone? He had been one of the Wayne family’s lieutenants at the time, before he had been sent to Auschwitz. The Genovese crime family? They were second cousins to the Wayne family and had pledged their loyalties to them. The Wayne mafia was passed down to the first child of the Wayne family for years, and those to lead it spent most of their teenagehood to adulthood preparing to receive it when they turned 30, as was tradition.
Bruce Thomas Wayne, however, received it at the age of 10 when his parents were shot down in a fit of mob rivalry. The mob played it off as a robbery gone wrong to the media but everyone knew the truth and the world waited with abated breath to see what would happen with the Wayne Legend.
For 8 years afterwards, the Wayne mafia was quiet, and the underworld watched it slowly disband. Before the entire mob could dissolve, however, the last Wayne appeared out of nowhere. Thought dead, Bruce Wayne surprised the whole of Gotham when he returned with a vengeance. He took Gotham into his hands and ran his mob ferociously, though not unkindly. After-all, it was a well-known fact that 70% of the income the mob made was used to pay for shelters, orphanages and hospitals and that the boss had a secret bleeding heart. But this bleeding heart didn’t cause for any mistakes to go unpunished, the first month Bruce took over there was a revolt of massive proportions. It was put down silently and quickly. All those who were active leaders were immediately executed and the rest were put through extensive retraining and schooling. The Wayne Legend began to have another name attached to it; Gotham’s Bat. A moniker used to call the mafia’s young leader, created after the red tattoos all of the men in the mob began to wear as a sign of their loyalty.
Now, Dick hated his social worker with a passion but even he had to agree with her that a man like Bruce Wayne had no business adopting orphans. But when the offer was placed in front of him, Dick still found himself saying yes because at that point he’d go with the devil if it meant getting away from the hellhole that was Gotham Juvie.
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Dick at age 14, found himself more familiar with the ghosts of Wayne Manor than the owner of it. Mr. Wayne was much too busy of a man to take care of Dick or even spend as much time to say “Hello, Good morning” to him. At first, he had resented the man, and spent much of his free-time plotting to run away but eventually, Dick became indifferent towards him. With Alfred the-all-knowing-butler/cook/guard/chauffeur/grandfather/god, who needed an overgrown, playboy, baby mob boss; not Dick, that’s for sure.
Alfred was Dick’s favorite (and probably only) friend. He woke Dick up in the mornings, made breakfast for him, dropped him off and picked him up from school. He snuck Dick snacks like cookies and cakes despite Mr. Wayne’s disapproval and supported Dick in everything he did. But best of all, he was willing to listen and talk to Dick. Living in the manor as an only child was boring and without Alfred he was pretty sure the silence would’ve drove him mad. The butler was also Dick’s confidant and many a times he had listen to the teenager complain about his guardian’s lack of presence with a heavy look of resignation.
Each time the topic came up, the older man would lay a hand on his shoulder and tell Dick that it wasn’t that Mr. Wayne hated him but that Bruce didn’t know how to handle people or even how to interact them. Dick would raise his eyebrows and his thoughts would bring him back to the magazine covers of Wayne leering at the camera, surrounded by women and he would push Alfred off claiming the gray-haired man delusional in his old age before changing the topic.
(But then there would be these moments, moments that made Dick really question if he was right in his perception of Bruce Wayne.
Moments like the day after a huge Drug shipment came in and Bruce had been away for days managing it, Dick found him in the kitchen in the morning asleep on the counter, with an empty cup of coffee in his hand, a piece of toast in the coffee machine’s pot and half evaporated coffee spilt all over the toaster.
Or the time Bruce found him crying in the corner of the library one day because his crush had rejected him and the older man had awkwardly attempted to comfort him before quitting and just sitting beside Dick until he wore himself out. The girl wasn’t in class the next day or the next and later on Dick found out that the girl had moved because her father had lost his job at Wayne enterprises, the legal side of the Wayne’s fortune.
Or the time he had come across the man drugged to the gills in morphine after being shot in a mob rivalry fight. The man had admitted to him that the rival mob boss had been Dick’s parent’s killer and that the whole rivalry had been a farce to get close to the leader and kill him to get justice for Dick. Then the older man had proceeded to grab Dick into hug where they both cried their eyes out. Neither of them mentioned this moment again.
Yes, sometimes Dick sat down and would rethink everything he knew about the man)