Chapter Text
The worn wood of the bar top shines by the time he’s done polishing it.
Patrons come and go, the murmur of conversation flowing and receding past him like the sea brushing the shore. Always coming, always going.
That’s Richard Grayson to the core. Always coming and always going. Never staying.
The town is called Haven, because for most, that’s what it is. A small gathering of cabins nestled in the crook of the coldest mountains in the West. A single strip called Main Street, where the saloon is, and the rest is winding country roads and gravel paths to the farms and ranches in the hills.
He’d come from the far west — from farther than that, really. He had come from the ocean.
As he scrubs away rings left by tankards of ale, he scrubs away his past. He is here now, for better or worse. When the shadow falls across the entrance and the hulking man swings open the saloon doors, spurs clinking with each step, he thinks, maybe I haven’t escaped the ocean at all.
---
Ask anyone in Haven, and they’ll tell you Bruce Wayne would sooner sell his own son for a better batch of feed than make do with anything less than quality. Everyone said that, really, before his son died, and now they all keep quiet when he shows his face in town.
It doesn’t bother him much. He always enjoyed the sound of silence.
He wouldn’t have bothered to come to town, except he’s out of liquor, and Haven’s only saloon gets its order from the city every Tuesday like clockwork. Aside from the growth of his foals and the rise and fall of his feed stores, Tuesdays are how he counts the time go by.
“What can I get you?” pulls him out of his reverie. He does not recognize the man tending bar today.
“Where’s Bill?” he grunts. They don’t get newcomers often in Haven, but the dryness tickling the back of his throat overtakes what little curiosity he might have once had. He kicks the snow off his boots and stares at him.
The stranger smiles nervously. “He’s out today, wife is sick with —”
“Get me three bottles of whiskey from the back.”
His blue eyes widen. Unusual for this part of the country and the color of his skin. Most people have unremarkable, tired brown eyes set in unremarkable, sun-weathered faces. “Uh, sir, we don’t have any—”
“Yes, you do,” Bruce corrects him. Is the boy serious? “Bill gets a delivery every—”
“It’s illegal,” he says flatly.
“Look,” Bruce says, in what he thinks is a calm voice. His skin is getting tighter by the moment. “I can tell you’re not from around here.”
The man’s brows furrow angrily. They almost disappear under his thick, curly black hair. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything, sir.”
“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious,” Bruce snaps. There isn’t a single farm in these mountains that doesn’t make its own alcohol. He would, if he could, but all his land goes to his horses. Everything he has goes to his horses. They’re all he has left.
“Are you going to be trouble?” he asks.
Bruce is gearing up to tell him what’s what when a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. He rolls his eyes when he turns around. “Can’t you tell we’re having a private conversation, Gene?”
Gene Haversham is a red-haired redneck from the east, yet another transplant looking to make his way in the ranching business. He works on his uncle’s farm to the east of Haven, but he doesn’t know a thing about raising horses. Now, the liquor itch is making Bruce’s hands shake, so he jabs a finger into his chest and tells him to back off.
Gene’s chin juts out like a broken fence post. “Everyone in this town is willing to let you be an ass, but not me,” he declares.
Bruce huffs. He turns back to the bartender. “Kid, you got a liquor delivery today. I can buy it now, or I can come back tomorrow when Bill’s back. I’ll be sure to tell him all about your stellar service.”
“Bill won’t be back till next week,” the man grits out. “I told you, his wife is sick—”
“Then I’ll come back every day until he does,” he growls. “Do you know who I am?”
Gene bristles. “You’re a man who’s about to be seen to if you don’t get your ass —”
Later, he won’t remember what exactly upset him enough to throw the first punch — whether it was Gene’s posturing or the bartender’s embarrassed pity or the other guests carefully avoiding any sight of him — but he does, and it knocks Gene backward five paces, one hand going to his jaw.
“Oh!” comes the bartender’s girlish cry of surprise.
“You drunk son of a bitch!” Gene sneers, then he charges at him.
Bruce dodges a fist and slings two of his own, the second one catching Gene across the shoulder. Gene uppercuts him hard enough to smash his teeth into his bottom lip. Table legs shatter and wood chips get in his mouth. He hefts a beer bottle to crack across Gene’s cheekbone when he sees the bartender vault over the bar out of the corner of his eye, and before he can pull back, he’s cracking it over his head instead. The man drops like a stone.
As the dust and glass shards settle, he notices the saloon is now empty, except for a grizzled old ranger in the back smoking a pipe with a bowl the size of his fist. He tips the brim of his hat down low and ignores them.
Gene works his jaw back and forth. Bruce is pleased to see he’s sporting a bloody nose and a chipped tooth. Bruce’s back aches, and his fingers twitch. A fight can only slake his thirst for so long.
Between them lies the bartender. Bruce nudges him with the toe of his boot. “Is he dead?”
The motion grants him a groan. Blood shines from a cut on his forehead, but the young man is alive. Bruce squats down next to him and dusts a bit of saw dust off his shoulder. From this angle, he looks like a younger version of Bruce, if not for the tone of his skin and the cherubic curls in his hair. “You’re all right. I’ll just check in the back for the whiskey and be on my way.”
“You can’t rob Bill’s —”
“Gene, if you don’t shut up —” Bruce steps towards him and tracks a full body flinch. It makes something squirm inside him. Gene is only a few years older than his son would be, and here he is, beating the shit out of him for trying to do the right thing. The other thing squirming inside him is his thirst for — he finds it in the third cupboard he searches, hidden away in the back of the pantry. A shipment of four bottles of whiskey. Feeling a bit subdued, he takes two, and leaves a thick fold of bills on the shelf.
Back in the bar, the bartender is on his hands-and-knees, retching a bit into a nearby spitoon. He must have hit him harder than he thought. Gene is long gone. Guess he’s not that good of a Samaritan. With his teeth, he pulls the cork out of one bottle and slugs down a third of it in greedy gulps, a dribble of it escaping down his unshaven chin. The smell is like fire and curing spices cooked in paint thinner, but it calms the beast inside him for now.
He squats down in front of the man again and holds the neck of the bottle out to him. “For the pain.”
“Fuck you,” the man spits. There’s a lump on his forehead the size of an egg, but his eyes burn brighter than the whiskey does. “Get out.”
The saloon doors swing shut behind him as he goes. “Welcome to Haven,” he calls over his shoulder, blinking in the bright light of a cold winter day. “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
---
Bill takes one look at the bruise on his forehead and nods sympathetically. His wife, red-nosed, huddles over a pot of tea on the charcoal stove in their small kitchen.
“If I had a steak, I’d give it to you.” He shakes his head. “I should have told you about Bruce Wayne and his damn liquor.”
After the crazy man left, the guests had returned to the saloon slowly, and the rest of the day had turned out fairly normal. Gene hadn’t come back inside. Dick met a few more chatty patrons, and learned a little more about the town, but he never mustered the nerve to ask anyone about the angry cowboy.
Bundled in a crochet blanket in Bill’s tiny cottage, he finally has the courage. “What is his problem?”
Bill winces. He glances at his wife, Mae. It’s short for something, but Dick doesn’t know what.
“Well, Bruce Wayne is…”
“That poor man,” Mae clucks. It sounds like that poor bad through her stuffy nose. “He’s had a hard go of it from the beginning.”
“He lost his son, what, maybe six years ago? He gets like this every year.”
Dick looks between them. “And the town just lets him? I didn’t take Haven to be a town of pushovers.”
“Oh, Dickie,” Mae shakes her head. “You really don’t know much, do you? The Waynes put Haven on the map. They’re the finest horse breeders this side of the Mississippi.”
“They were,” Bill corrects his wife.
“Yes, then he lost his son and things all went downhill from there.” Mae’s plush bottom lip wobbles. She pours Dick a small mug of tea before fixing one for herself. He breathes in the steam gratefully. The pounding in his forehead lessens.
“Nah, things were already tough with the Havershams moving in from the east and the Stolls from the south. There’s too much competition for Wayne horses to stand out anymore. His stallions haven’t sired a single winner in ten years.”
“Now Bill, you know as much as I do that there’s more to horse rearing than winning races,” she scolds him. “He sells horses to the Pinkertons and the city watchmen! He’s a good man.”
“He smashed a beer bottle over my new bartender’s head today.” Bill shakes his head. “If I thought I could get away with banning him from the saloon, I’d do it. But you saw him. There isn’t a man in town that could beat him in a fight.”
“He’s a brute,” Dick agrees. “But not a special one. I can handle him.”
“Uh huh.” Bill squints an eye at him. “Say, how many fingers am I holding up?”
---
The following Tuesday comes and goes, and despite the nervousness stiffening his limbs that day, Bruce Wayne doesn’t show. The townsfolk don’t seem surprised. A few weeks into this job, Dick is now a lot better at surreptitiously eavesdropping on their conversations.
“He’s hiding after his poor showing at the Equestrian Fair last May,” one patron whispers to another. “If a Wayne horse doesn’t win first place this year, his ranch is sunk for sure.”
“You’ve been saying that for the last five years, Carl,” his companion says, bottom lip full of tobacco leaf. “Wayne must have a deal with the devil to keep his ranch afloat this long.”
“Or a lot more cash than any of us have ever seen.” Carl heaves a sigh. Then he leans forward. “I heard he’s been up in the mountains running after wild horses.”
Spit hits the spittoon with a ping that startles Dick. He almost betrays that he’s listening, but he stills himself in time.
“Shee-it. He must be desperate.”
“Maybe he’s on to something. All the horses around here are related to each other in some way, somehow, right? The only new blood can be found in the wild.”
“Oh, please. Horses don’t belong in the wild. They belong in a stable.”
“Well, I reckon he agrees,” he says, shrugging. “Or he wouldn’t be hunting around in the mountains for a new one, right?”
---
Winter’s cold shroud lightens, and the snow banks in town slowly become puddles of slush. The pale blue heads of snowdrops poke out of the ground. The faintest wisp of birdsong filters in through the tall trees behind Bill’s cabin. The sun rises earlier and sets the slightest bit later.
By the end of January, Dick has enough money to move on, but for once, he doesn’t feel like it. Haven has long, tapering winters. Spring comes late in the mountains, but when it does arrive, it arrives beautifully, and he figures, what could be the harm in staying to see it? He’s been running for so long. All this traveling, and he's never had the chance to do any sightseeing until now.
Bruce Wayne hasn’t returned to the saloon once, and by now, the town is aflutter with rumor and gossip. Is he dead, is he stuck in the mountains, is he still planning on showing any horses at the Equestrian fair, the town cannot stop speculating. Dick doesn’t participate, and nobody asks him for his opinion, either. The town is nice, but he’s still an outsider. They can sense the gap between him and them, the disparate past that has made him into what he is. But they’re kind to him.
When it’s not too cold, he goes for long walks. The terrain is dangerous, between the steep slopes and the ice and the snow, but he trusts his body to catch him if he falls. In the cradle of the snow-covered forest, he finds a kind of peace he didn’t know existed. But the yawning gape in the center of his chest, the hollow at the pit of his heart, yearns for the sea. Night after night, when his head touches his single borrowed pillow, he dreams of the motion of the waves as they carry him away from the shore.
The biggest body of water nearby is a glacial lake, a good three hour’s hike away from town. When he first discovers it, he doesn’t have his sealskin pelt with him, and so he sits on its pebbled beach and watches the ripples in the water until the sun is well past the horizon. When he returns to the house, he finds Mae frantic with worry. Bill had taken an oil lamp and gone to search for him in the woods. Dick doesn’t know what to say to either of them, except that he’s alright, and he hadn’t gotten lost.
He doesn't go back for a week. He can’t risk the town’s scrutiny.
---
Every chance he gets, every time the itch under his skin gets to be too much, he makes his excuses and finds his way back to the lake. Even so far away from his home, he can’t resist the pull of the water.
In February, Haven is sunny at midday, but everything freezes again at night. The lake sits at the bottom of a crescent-shaped valley, surrounded by craggy stones and boulders and ringed by gravelly, sparse soil. On the horizon, he can see the shapes of the other mountains in the range, huge and distant, like giants watching over him. At one point of the crescent, where he stands, is the entrance from the forest. At the other, maybe a hundred yards away, is a steep slope downward into a beautiful grassy plain studded with pale pink and yellow flowers. There, the lake drains into a thin, babbling brook that passes through the meadow and off into the thick, wild forest again.
The frosty wind tears at his naked skin. The water laps at his knobby toes. It feels colder than ice, colder than cold itself. He leaves his clothes on the beach and wraps his speckled grey pelt around himself, and when he opens his eyes underwater his vision is crisp and perfect, exactly as he remembers. He swims the length of the lake twice over, chittering with glee, the fat on his body keeping his body warm and his path straight and true, then he slows, nosing his bristled muzzle through the lichen and the trails of underwater plants that lie in the lake’s depths. At its bottom, somewhere in the exact middle, he finds a treasure trove of memories uncovered by the current — a locket, a wooden figurine, and what looks like a diamond ring.
The water hides so much, he thinks, and then with that thought, he propels himself to the surface and takes in his first lungful of air.
In this body, he isn’t cold. Near the meadow at the other end of the lake, he lounges in the shallow water, eyes closed as he basks in the thin winter sunlight. He keeps his ears pricked, but even among the animals in the forest, he’s all alone.
It starts as a slow, steady thudding that builds so gradually he doesn’t notice it. Then he hears a beastly trumpeting and a black horse the size of a moose crashes out of the forest into the meadow.
Its coat is flecked white with foam, eyes rolling back into its head, nostrils wide and terrified. In a heartbeat, he is on his feet, pelt forgotten in the lake.
The wind pulls at the lakewater sluicing down his body, making him shiver; his toes squelch through cold mud as he slides down the hill into the meadow. Pebbles skip and scatter, knocked loose in his haste.
The horse wheels around and spots him. It rears back and stamps its hooves, ears pinned back against its skull. Its mane and tail are dreadfully tangled.
Dick crouches low and waits, arms held outward in a gesture of peace.
The horse quiets. It stares at him with one black button eye, watching him warily. It must know what he is. All animals know. It’s only people that can be deceived.
“I’m a friend,” he says in a low voice. “Be calm.”
Its sides heave as it waits. He approaches slowly, the meadow grass whipping in the wind and slicing his calves and ankles raw. It stamps its hoof again, impatient. Chase me, or ignore me. Don’t make me wait.
His hand reaches for its long, roman nose, and there’s a heady pause while the horse decides whether or not it will bite off his fingers. Then its muzzle pushes into his palm, and he strokes a hand down it, whispering sweet nothings in his native tongue. It shifts, muddied hooves making crescent prints in the mud. All four of them are unshod, but in sore need of a trim.
As he soothes it, he checks for injuries. Its hide is truly black — not a single spot of white anywhere, not even a sock or a blaze. Its hindquarters are unmarked. She is unmarked, he realizes. Wild.
“What’s upset you, honey?” he murmurs to her. She snuffles at his fingers, tail swishing anxiously.
A stick snaps at the edge of the woods. She dances away from him, struggling up the slope away from the meadow and toward the lake.
He turns and sees —
A face he hasn’t seen since the dead of winter. Bruce Wayne.
They stare at each other for what feels like an hour. Him, naked, soaking wet with mud up to his knees, and Wayne, rough from the road, stubble grown into a beard, ice in his hair and on the brim of his hat. He is wrapped in a black and yellow handwoven shawl, and a rope droops to the grass from his hands.
A lasso.
What’s the difference between a lasso and a noose? There isn’t one.
“You,” Dick spits. “Go away.”
Wayne blinks in surprise. “That horse is mine. I’ve tracked her for eight weeks.” Wayne looks at him, all of him, then he looks away. There is a hint of redness to his wind-chapped cheeks that Dick sees because he has been trained to see it.
“Of course a drunk like you would think he owns something just because he’s following it around.”
Wayne glowers at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but I do know you aren’t supposed to be. This is still my family’s land.”
The horse whinnies derisively. She canters up the mountainside even more. Wayne strides toward him, so he squares his shoulders and readies himself to fight, but Wayne only shoves past him. Dick crashes to the rocks. By the time he scrambles to his feet, the loop of Wayne’s lasso is airborne.
“Wait!”
“Easy, girl,” he hears Wayne call to the mare.
He scrabbles up the hill, battling sliding rocks and scratching up his soles and palms.
“Stop! You’ll hurt her!” His panting breath fogs the air in front of him. He makes it to the top just as the lasso settles around her withers. Lakewater laps at her hocks, she ran so far into the water to get away. Away from him.
Bruce bends and picks up a sodden wad of fur — his pelt. It feels more intimate than a caress on his naked body. “Stop—”
“Quit whining. Horses aren’t wild. They’re feral.” He points at her hooves with the same hand that holds his entire heritage, the only good thing left from his past. “Look. She needs to be trimmed and shod. They’ll grow until she can’t walk or graze anymore, and then she’ll starve.” The water is clear enough for him to see that he’s right.
Dick steels himself. “Put that down, and let her go.”
Finally Bruce turns to him, the brim of his hat askew from his run up the mountainside. “Or what?”
In the bright noon sun, Bruce looks worn and exhausted. If the townsfolk are right, then he’s been hunting this horse since he shattered a beer bottle over Dick’s head. His clothes are tattered. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot.
This horse is his ranch’s last hope. It would take a lot to convince him to let her go.
Dick cocks his hip to the side, like his mother taught him, like her mother taught her before. He clasps his hands shyly behind his back to hide the way they shake with rage.
“Let her go, and you can have me.”
The words hit Wayne hard. He looks, for a second, just as nervous and furious as the horse. The whites of his eyes flash. Then his cruel fingers curl into the sodden fur of the pelt, and the anger burning on his face cools into cold disgust.
“Put your clothes on and get off my land,” he growls. The mare paws at the ground anxiously, caught between the water and her captor. She quiets when she sees the sugar cubes in Bruce’s palm.
For the first time in a long, long time, Dick is forced to obey. He walks on shaking limbs around the pebbled edge of the lake until he reaches his bundle of clothes. As he buttons his tunic with cold, numb fingers and slips his aching feet into his shoes, he feels the tug of his pelt in the center of his chest. Over his heart.
When he finally steps back into the forest, he hears Bruce call out, “If I catch you here again, I won’t tell you to leave. I’ll just put a bullet in your head.”