KMC Forums - Nightwing's Daughter [Drama>Nightwing>DC Comics>Rowan Lagenkamp]

Summary: Robyn Grayson is worried about her dad......

My father leads a double life. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a good thing and/or a bad thing. For the past fourteen years, he’s kept it a secret from me. Now that I know about it, I look back and wonder. Seriously, how the hell did he manage to keep it hidden from me? I’m pretty bright and observant of things, but not as well as I thought. It must have been so stressful for him, trying to balance two lives and to keep one of them a secret from me.

I live in a city that is about as bad as New York City was in the 1930s. Actually, take the conditions of NYC circa 1930, add today’s modern technology, and multiply it by ten. That’s how bad this city is. Filth in the streets, corruption in the police department (with the exception of a few good officers), buildings on their last leg before they collapse, literally. It’s real, real bad. My father has lived here since he was about twenty years old, so he’s seen the city at its best and worst. He’s almost forty, so I guess he knows what he’s talking about. He used to tell me stories about how bad this city was when he first moved here. That’s about the only truth that he told me for a long time.

I guess I began to suspect something wasn’t right when I was helping him get dressed one night. He’s a police officer with the city’s police department and often works the late shift. One night, and many more nights after that, he had to go in early and work late because they were going to be short that night. I loved helping my dad get dressed, and especially going through the little compartments on his belt, but I couldn’t and still can’t touch his gun. He asked me to lay out most of his uniform while he shaved, brushed his teeth, and changed in the bathroom, so I did. When he came out, shirtless, I looked at him with curiosity. I knew that he was a cop, and cops often got hurt, but he had weird scars on his upper arms and his chest that didn’t look like he got them from just being a cop. He caught me looking and asked what was wrong.

“When did you get hurt?” I asked him, pointing to a scar that looked recent on his upper left arm. He looked down, and then looked back at me.

“A long time ago,” he said, reaching for his shirt. “I was a rookie, and I was careless. A bad guy shot at me and my partner, and I didn’t move in time.” As he buttoned up his shirt, it hit me: he was lying to me. His tone of voice sounded a little off, and he wasn’t looking directly at me like he always did when we talked. I cocked my head to one side, thinking. He caught me, and asked, “What?”

“Why are you lying to me, Daddy?” I asked in all of my innocence. He looked at me as if I had just slapped him. I never forgot that look of surprise when I caught him lying to me for the first time. He just looked at me for the longest time. I wanted to drop my gaze and look at my feet, but a little voice in my head told me not to. He was the one who eventually broke our gaze. He looked over at the clock and realized that he was going to be late.

“I got to get going, hon,” he said, reaching past me and grabbing his belt. “We’ll finish this conversation later.” The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. It was my baby-sitter Megan, who lived a floor below us. Dad gave me a kiss on the top of my head and then he was gone. After I had my dinner, I went to my room and tried to go to sleep. I kept tossing and turning, trying to think of a reasonable excuse why Dad had lied about his scar. While thinking about it, I fell asleep. The next morning, Dad acted like nothing had happened between us the previous night and I forgot all about it. I was ten years old at the time. We didn’t finish our “conversation” for another four years.

* * *

In four years, a lot can happen. Dad got promoted to sergeant, which resulted in a raise in pay for him and a somewhat new apartment for the two of us. My Uncle Bruce (he’s really my grandfather, but I can’t make myself call him “Grampa”, so he’s Uncle) semi-retired from his CEO position of his company, which he’s headed for a long time, long before my dad was even born. I started high school, which was an adventure (let’s just say that much), and tried to find my rightful place in the high school population. That was also the year that Dad and I finished our “conversation”, the one we had started four years before, but had never finished.

Dad said that he had to go to work early and work late again, and I was kind of upset, because he had promised that he would take the night off. He hadn’t had a night off in weeks, and it was starting to show, particularly on his face.

“Yeah, but why do you have to go in?” I whined, knowing that it wasn’t going to help things.

“Because I’m the one who’s on call during the night shift,” he said, adjusting his belt. He was getting skinnier, I noticed. No matter how much he ate, he kept losing weight.

“Well, then have them call someone else in. You need a night off, Pop,” I said. “They’re running you ragged. I can see it in your face.” He frowned at me.

“Robyn, I’m in no mood for an argument right now, okay?” he said flatly.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight with you, Richard,” I said. I saw the brief surprise on his face when I used his first name. “I’m just worried about you. I don’t want you to burn out. That’s all.” He gave me a weak smile and came over and kissed my forehead.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “Listen, I’ll leave a message for the chief to ask for some time off next week, okay?” He put on his coat. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad,” I said. He turned and left. I could hear him lock the door behind him, then his fading footfalls in the hallway. I exhaled sharply through my nose. “That’s the same thing you said last week,” I said to no one in particular. I was used to his broken promises, but his lies still hit a nerve within me. I really hated him lying to me. It was as if he didn’t trust me or something. I picked at my dinner, but gave up on it; I had lost my appetite.

I walked to my room, catching a glance at Mom’s photograph on the table. I stopped and stared at the photo. She stared back at me with her beautiful green eyes. It seems all I got from her was the X chromosome. I don’t look like her at all. Well....okay, maybe during the summer my hair goes to her strawberry blonde, but most of the time, my hair’s as black as Dad’s. That’s it. I’ve been told that, as I get older, I’m my dad’s clone, with the exception of being female. I think I act like her sometimes, but I’m definitely my father’s daughter.

Patricia Joan Murray Grayson.

Dad met her the first few weeks after he moved here to Bludhaven, and fell in love with her. She was manager of a small restaurant near the bar he first worked at, and he stopped in there one night to get something to eat. They met, and I guess it was love at first sight. She was as tough as my dad and could argue him down, which is a feat in and of itself. She had worked hard all of her life, and it showed, apparently.