Disclaimer: Any characters you recognize are the property of DC Comics, and are therefore not mine. This story is not for profit.

Notes: This story takes place in the Batman Beyond universe. However, a great deal of the ‘historical’ stuff will be pulled from the comics rather than the Batman animated series. For the sake of argument, assume that Terry is in his senior year of high school. Set a month after the events of ‘BB:ROTJ’.

Summary: Why didn’t Terry ever take Commissioner Gordon up on her suggestion of tracking down Nightwing?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Unhide the truth, rattle the bones,
This time I should have left the past alone...”
Mistake of Youth -- A. Ashmore

Gotham City, November 2049

It was just another typical night of patrol. Up to that point, the mean streets of Gotham had offered up two armed robberies, one attempted homicide, and one attempted rape. Nothing that Batman couldn’t handle. As far as Terry McGinnis -- the teenager inside the bat-suit -- was concerned, this was a good thing.

“It’s almost one a.m. and it’s been quiet for the past hour,” Terry said softly, knowing that the microphone concealed within the mask he wore would relay his quiet words. “I’ve got mid-terms tomorrow, so if it’s alright with you, I think I’ll call it a night.”

“Alright,” the voice of Bruce Wayne replied. Along with the microphone, the current version of the Batsuit was also equipped with a transceiver to allow two-way communication between the former and present incarnations of Batman. “Good luck tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Terry replied. With the ease of long practice, the youth turned in mid-flight, heading back to the warehouse rooftop where his civilian clothes were safely hidden. “I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“Have you been neglecting your studies?” Wayne gruffly questioned, his voice practically dripping with disapproval.

“No! I haven’t!” Terry quickly defended. “It’s just that tomorrow is Trig and History -- two of my least favourite subjects.”

“I’ll remember you said that the next time you try either pushing the flight capabilities of that suit past the design limitations...”

“Hey, I don’t do it *that* often,” Terry interrupted in his own defense.

“...or the next time you try to track down one of your...predecessors without my knowledge or consent.”

The com-channel was silent for a few painfully long moments. Terry was almost grateful when the warehouse that was his destination came into sight. He waited until he set down upon the rooftop before replying to the accusation the older man had thrown at him.

“So you know about that, huh?”

“That you spent four hours yesterday searching the net for information on Dick Grayson?”

Terry swallowed audibly. There were times he really resented the old man’s almost omniscient knowledge. It was that resentment that finally managed to turn the icy-sensation of fear that had been present in his gut since Bruce’s revelation into the burn of anger.

“How could you know that?” Terry practically growled. Reaching into a crevasse between two central air conditioning units, he pulled out his backpack with a great deal more force than was necessary. “What, do you have cameras on me at school now or something?”

“Don’t get melodramatic, McGinnis,” Bruce answered coldly. “In your searches, you tapped into protected WaynePowers files -- twice. WaynePowers security has long standing orders to inform me personally of any such breaches, in case of any potential kidnapping plots. Imagine my surprise when I learned that, this time, they’d traced the source of the inquiries to a terminal in Hamilton Hill High. ”

Terry did not imagine the censure in the old man’s tone. He’d been sloppy and had been caught. Looking back, Terry knew that he should have waited for Max, as her computer skills far exceeded his own. But Max had been unavailable, too busy studying for her exams to lend a hand on a search for data on a matter that was not life- threatening. Once again, Terry’s own impatience had come back to bite him in the ass, and it was time for him to brace for the teeth marks.

“I’m sorry,” the teen apologized. “I know I should have come to you first, but whenever I ask you about any of your former...team, you always cut me off.”

“That’s not...”

“That’s not what?” Terry quickly interjected. “True? Oh sure, you drop their ‘Bat-names’ occasionally when you mention old cases, but you never talk about the *people* they were. Hell, if it hadn’t of been for the Joker coming back, I probably never would have known what happened to Tim Drake, and even then, I had to practically drag the information out of Commissioner Gordon because you refused to tell me.”

“We’ve discussed this before, Terry,” Bruce defended, “about the need for...”

“...secrecy -- yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” the teenager countered. Reaching into his backpack, he withdrew his jeans and t-shirt. “I’m in the masked vigilante club now, too, remember?”

“How could I forget?” the old man answered wryly.

“I understand your wanting to protect their privacy, but I’ve met with Mr. Drake a couple of times in the past few weeks. He actually seems to enjoy talking about his adventures as Robin now that he’s out from under the Joker’s influence. He mentions Grayson’s name a lot. Hell, even Commissioner Gordon said that I should look up Nightwing someday. He’s the only member of your Bat-clan I haven’t met yet. Can you blame me for being curious?”

“I suppose not,” Bruce reluctantly conceded. “But that doesn’t mean you should continue searching for him.”

“And why would that be?” Terry pointedly wondered aloud. “I have to admit what I did find only raised my curiosity. According to the Bludhaven Police records, Officer Richard Grayson disappeared without a trace over twenty years ago. Since the file is still open, it’s pretty safe to say that he was never found. Funny, but according the newspaper accounts, Bludhaven’s resident cowl-and-tight guy stopped making appearances around the same time, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it -- so many people go missing in Bludhaven, nobody ever made the connection between the disappearance of Dick Grayson and Nightwing.”

“Leave it alone, Terry...”

“My first suspicion was that something might have happened,” the youth speculated. “After all, Grayson must have had a *lot* of enemies from both his day and night jobs.

“McGinnis, I said drop this,” Bruce growled, a dangerous edge creeping into to his tone of voice.

“But then I thought about the couple of times that both the Commissioner and Mr. Drake have talked about him. Both of them talk about him in the present tense, which I doubt they would do unless they knew for certain that Grayson is still alive somewhere.”

“Enough!” The roar of the voice in his ear was enough to momentarily deafen Terry, but that was not what left the teenager reeling. What shocked the young vigilante to the very core of his being was the fact that, for the first time in over eighteen months of working together, this was the first time Terry had ever heard the old man completely lose control of his emotions.

‘Whoa!’ the teenager thought to himself, opting for the smart choice of remaining silent for the time being. Judging by the ominous lack of sound coming through the receiver next to his ear, Terry could only assume that his mentor also opted for a verbal ‘time out’. Neither of them would ever know whether it was minutes or hours that passed before the older man finally recovered himself enough to speak.

“I...,” Bruce began in a tired voice. “What... happened with Nightwing...it...was...in the past.”

Damn! For a minute there, Terry foolishly thought that his mentor was about to give in, to tell the story the teenager was desperate to hear. Of course not, Terry fumed. Oh, how he hated how the old man and his secrets! Wayne’s silence always left Terry frustrated, but this time, he didn’t know whether to scream or to put his batsuit- enhanced gauntlets through the nearest wall. What angered the teenager more, however, was the fact that Bruce knew *exactly* how annoyed Terry must have been at that moment.

“Mc...*Terry*,” the older man amended. His voice was softer, missing that iron-will quality Bruce often used to emotionally distance himself when forced to talk about anything that approached a personal subject. “I’m...asking you, please, just let it go.”

“If I promise to drop this,” the teenager blurted, his curiosity overwhelming his better judgement. “Will you at least answer one question for me?”

For once, Terry took the old man’s silence as permission to continue.

“Nightwing’s leaving...was that your decision or his?”

Only moments ago, Terry had considered Bruce’s silence as an ally. However with each eternally long second that passed, the teenager could feel his mentor’s emotional shields rising. Just when Terry thought that he had pushed too far, too fast; he received a hell of a surprise.

“Dick Grayson is my son. Anything else isn’t important,” Bruce finally answered in an odd tone of voice, but seconds later, it returned to its normal, gruff manner. “Check in before you start your patrol tomorrow.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Terry replied, his voice sounding just as distracted as his thoughts.

The soft hissing sound of the open channel ceased, letting Terry know that his mentor had signed off for the night, leaving the youth alone with his thoughts.

Well, that was weird, the teenager mused silently. While Bruce’s admission had fallen vastly short of what Terry had been hoping for, it was, nevertheless, more than he would have normally expected from the old man. That Bruce had said anything at all on the subject was a glaring indication of just how important the Grayson guy was to Bruce Wayne.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Terry had to quit investigating altogether. He could lay low for a while, wait it out until the extra security the old man was sure to have installed around Grayson’s record was lowered his guard again. Hell, he could even ask Max to get on it right after exams.

After all, part and parcel of accepting the Mantle of the Bat was an abhorrence of leaving a mystery unsolved. The original Batman had long been considered by many to be the ‘World’s Greatest Detective’, a skill which the original caped crusader had instilled and honed in all of his proteges, including Terry. And, at that moment, it was that training that clashed with the teenager’s instinct that his mentor would be *very* displeased if Terry were to continue his search for Nightwing. Not that Bruce’s displeasure ever stopped Terry from a chosen course of action in the past.

Unfortunately, there was one additional factor in this internal battle, one that not even the threat of Bruce Wayne’s ire could overcome -- Terry’s own curiosity. And that was a factor that could cost the young man the war in this clash of wills with his mentor.

But Bruce had *asked* Terry to let the subject drop. That alone was enough to make the teenager pause. He stood there for a moment, trying and failing to recall any other occasion that the old man had ever *asked* him to do anything. Ordered him? Yes. Commanded him? That was a daily occurrence. Bullied him? That happened more often than Terry wanted to admit. But making a *request* of Terry? That was something utterly new and foreign to the teenager.

And it was also a big, fat indicator of just how badly Bruce wanted Terry to stop nosing around the twin subjects of Nightwing and Dick Grayson. To his credit, Terry actual gave Bruce’s plea a few moments of genuine consideration. Could he do it? Could he leave the puzzle of Dick Grayson alone?

Dressed back in his street clothes, the teenaged vigilante hurriedly shoved the Batsuit into his backpack. If he hurried, he might still make home in time to get a few extra hours of cramming in before getting some sleep. Heading for the stairwell door that he had propped open earlier, the teen started the short walk back to his mother’s apartment.

He *asked*, Terry thought, finally reaching a decision on the matter. That’s enough for me...

...at least, for the time being...

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