Chapter Text
You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mr. In-between
- Accentuate the Positive by Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, Vic Shoen & His Orchestra
When Dick Grayson wakes, it’s to a click and a gush of cool air.
“Good morning, Master Grayson.”
His body feels like stone, stiff and chill. It shouldn’t be painful to move his limbs, but it is. Prickles shoot down his arms and into his palms. Needles strike his legs.
“How was your sleep?”
A dry chuckle claws its way from his throat. “Slept hard as a rock, Alfred. Are you sure that was only a few hours? It felt like years-–”
Dick blinks, his vision clears, and the illusion falls.
~*~
It has been four weeks and five days since Dick’s awakening, and he has been trying his hardest not to lose his mind since.
First, let’s just get this out in the air: he’s still not totally certain how “a quick nap in this disinfection pod, if you please” turned into a two-hundred-and-eleven-year cryogenically induced sleep, so… he’s not super cool with that. Luckily, Tim is here, and he’s not super cool with that either.
Actually, from what Dick can tell from the underlying vibe going on in Vault 86, no one’s entirely thrilled with the situation. There are a lot of familiar faces here, mostly a mix of Gotham’s elite and a few well-off politicians, as well as Oswald Cobblepot. Knowing that ol’ Penguin is just as miserable, if not more so, than Dick eases the atmosphere just a little bit.
Life in the vault is both exactly what Dick expected and yet not at all. Despite this idea of “freedom” (from what, he’s not too sure), the vault feels just as stuffy and fake as a Gotham gala. The space is clean, artificial, manicured. People who used to wear fur coats in the streets now don semi-flattering blue and yellow striped jumpsuits, all plastered with a ripe number 86 on the back. Everyone smiles too much. It’s forced, certainly, but Dick can respect the effort to make the most of a less-than-desirable situation.
They were told they would camp out in the vault until the bombs had passed and the air was safe to breathe again. The “disinfection pod” was supposed to be just that: a quick cleanse to rid oneself of any lingering radioactive pathogens before the underground vacation began.
No one, not even Bruce, had anticipated the sudden cryogenically induced time skip. Their vault Overseer, some guy by the name of “Steve,” assured them it was all a mistake.
“Like hell,” Tim had muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Dick to hear. Bruce had stuck out an elbow, jabbing Tim in the side.
Shortly after everyone’s untimely waking, “Steve” had called for a mandatory meeting in an attempt to calm the wealthy and frazzled. This is when Dick realized he had never seen “Steve” before in his life.
“This is surely just an internal computer mishap,” Steve claimed, eyes wide and palms up in a sign of obligatory apology. “I’m going to connect with our neighboring vaults and see if anyone can give us a clue as to what’s going on.”
“As if there’s anyone out there to bloody talk to!” Penguin shouted.
An elderly woman in the third row began to sob.
“In the meantime,” Steve started, ignoring the reactions erupting from the crowd. “Please, everyone, I encourage you to continue as usual. Marcy here has some tasks she can assign anyone who would like to help us in this transition!”
A kind-looking woman, who Dick has also never seen before, raised a hand and offered a wave. Bruce had pushed Dick and Tim along with him to get in line behind the minority of willing rich, and thus Dick’s life in the vault began.
He can’t say it’s all too bad. He has a bed to sleep in, a door that locks, a shower and warm water. His vault apartment that he shares with Tim has a small TV and a phonograph with a few discs to choose from. They have a kitchen, and food – a small mimicry of their life in the mansion, but surely a place one can comfortably call home.
Bruce’s vault apartment is right next door. He lives with the baby Damian and the robo-butler Pennyworth. Both are new developments.
Prior to the bombs dropping, Bruce’s estranged ex, Thalia, showed up on the manor doorstep one evening with Damian in hand. She requested to speak with Bruce and the two vanished into the library for three full hours before Thalia snuck out of the house like the assassin she was, Damian no longer in tow.
At breakfast the next morning, Bruce confirmed Dick and Tim’s eavesdropping suspicions with, “Damian is my son.”
A week later, the bombs dropped. The baby is an entity that no one quite knows how to deal with. Bruce can’t seem to wrap his mind around the fact that this strange child is his. Dick and Tim don’t know how to handle either of them.
Alfred knew best, but the poor late butler isn’t here, and this robo-monstrosity is here in his place. Pennyworth the bot is a levitating six-limbed hunk of metal that tends to Damian when Bruce can’t seem to wake from his stupor. Pennyworth the bot was presumably bought by the Wayne Tech board to ensure that Bruce and his family felt more comfortable in the vault. Pennyworth the bot couldn’t pass as Alfred no matter how hard it tried, even if Dick closed his eyes and pretended he was back in the manor, tucked safely between its walls.
There’s something buried there, about the Wayne Tech board and their involvement in this mess, but Dick honestly hasn’t cared enough to pry out of Bruce and Tim hasn't had any success so far in solving this absurd mystery.
So, Dick plays his part. He gets dressed in his vault suit every morning, slides on that chunky Pip-Boy, and reports to Marcy to fulfill his task of the day.
Four weeks and five days, with endless time to come.
~*~
Four weeks and six days in, Dick is assigned field duty for the day.
It’s not his favorite task, but he enjoys the mindlessness of it. There’s a large greenhouse room with a domed ceiling and bright lights and blue-painted walls on the main floor of the vault, where the ex-Gothamite vault dwellers plant and harvest bioengineered crops.
Well, harvesting is the idea. They haven’t been down here long enough yet to have much of anything to harvest, but watering the crops and monitoring the room temperature sure takes a lot of work. Or, at least it would, if Vault-Tec hadn’t so kindly installed an irrigation system and advanced temperature controls that would automatically cater to the plants in the room.
As a result, Dick spends his time wandering up and down the aisles of crops, almost as though he’s waiting for a plant to bloom.
His companion for the day, Serena, watches him from a few aisles over. When he glances up and catches her eye, she smiles and drops her gaze.
DIck swallows against the tide of wrongness in his throat and forces a smile.
The worst part about being a mid-twenty-something eligible bachelor in a vault? Everything. They’re living in the future and half of the vault inhabitants are fifty or greater. No one knows what the world outside looks like, whether people survived and the human race is thriving. It could be up to them to repopulate the earth when time comes for that great vault door to open, and Dick would be expected to play his part.
Serena is not a bad woman. She’s conventionally attractive and has a pretty smile. If it were pre-vault, pre-bombs, yeah, he may hit. And who knows? Maybe he will down the line. But right now? The last thing he’s thinking about is settling down and starting a life down here.
Not that he hasn’t already, but…
He’s had a hard time doing much of anything for himself lately. Thinking, mostly. Sometime between waking up and the current moment, Dick turned his brain off and has yet to turn it back on. Which has been aggravating for Tim beyond belief, who’s itching to talk and scheme, but Dick… just hasn’t felt it in him.
He can’t possibly be the only one going crazy down here. They’ve been in this blue-tinted hole in the ground for over a month and everyone’s pretending everything is all hunky-dorey.
Dick is alive, and Alfred is not. Alfred was at home when the bombs dropped. Dick, Tim, Bruce, Damian– they were all at a Wayne Tech gala in downtown Gotham. The sky turned red and they were herded in the direction of the emergency walkway downstairs that led them through tunnel upon tunnel to the vault doors.
Dick is alive, and Babs is not. His best friend and maybe girlfriend is long gone, lost to the two hundred years of time between them.
Dick is alive, and Jason is not. Hasn’t been for a while, but now his memory is destroyed and Dick has nothing of his with him, buried further into the earth than Jason ever will be.
Dick is alive– Dick, whose parents are dead, who has escaped death one too many times– and ninety-five percent of Gotham is gone, lit aflame, and left to burn.
So, no, he doesn’t very much feel like getting into pretty Serena’s jumpsuit. The next time he feels her stare on him, he pretends he doesn’t, preferring to lose himself to the growing stalks of corn.
~*~
“There’s something wrong with you,” Tim says, one morning at breakfast.
Dick sets down his Vault-Tec mug of lukewarm coffee and the old magazine he’s flipped through countless times, and levels Tim with a stare.
“Tim, I don’t know what you want with me,” Dick warns. “I don’t know how to process this.” He waves a hand into the still air.
Tim blinks at him like he’s an idiot. “Dick, you’re my brother, and I love you, but you’ve got to leave this ‘woe is me’ angst behind you.”
“What?”
“This–-” Tim jabs a fingertip into the table. “-- is the here and now. This is our reality. It’s been, like, a month and a half. You’ve got to get with the program.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Okay, yes, it sucks. Something got screwed up and we’re living in the future now. Gotham’s gone! You need to accept this. I need you to accept this. Bruce isn’t himself, either, and I feel like I’m the only one trying to figure this place out.”
Dick slumps in his chair. “What is there to figure out? This is just a metal prison that we live in.”
“Steve and Marcy don’t weird you out?”
Shrugging, Dick sighs. “They do.”
“Okay, and?” Tim asks.
“And what? What am I supposed to do about it? I can’t pull out the Nightwing costume and knock them out. The lights are always on in this place, stealth is useless.”
“You’re missing the point,” Tim groans. “You’ve lost it, both of you.” He gets up and wanders off, muttering under his breath about something Dick doesn’t care to decipher.
With Tim’s absence, the silence returns, and Dick closes his eyes and daydreams about the past, even if just for a moment.
He thinks about the manor during the winter. He thinks about the flickering fire and hot cocoa as a kid, bundling up in blankets and watching the snow fall. Thinks about the smell of fresh sugar cookies and fudge. Thinks about the holiday music, the small smile he used to see on Bruce’s face, the presents he and Jason would shake before opening–-
Ding.
Dick frowns. He’s never heard that noise before. Maybe it’s one of Tim’s oddball gadgets? There’s a pile of them in the corner of Tim’s room, scraps of metal accumulating every time Tim takes advantage of a shift change to go wandering into the vault's storage.
Ding, ding.
Straightening up, Dick glances down at his Pip-Boy, which now has a flickering orange light just below the screen. He lifts his arm and the screen comes to life, with a small message box taking up the upper right corner of the screen.
One new notification.
… What?
Color him interested. Dick adjusts the knob on his Pip-Boy until the message box is highlighted and selects it. A new screen appears, with the message appearing in something like a mailbox.
New Message: Login Successful.
Your credentials have successfully been used to login to WAYNE TECH device no. 6709321. Please confirm this is you by verifying the location of your login. [XX.XXX, XX.XXX]
If this is not you, please reset your WAYNE TECH password at your earliest convenience and report to a WAYNE TECH representative for further assistance.
At the bottom of the screen, there is a button that asks Dick to “VERIFY LOCATION.”
“Wait a minute,” he mutters, swiftly clicking the verify location button. His Pip-Boy takes a moment to buffer the world’s grainiest 8-bit map, dual-toned black and green. On the screen, Dick’s current location is represented with a square. A moment later, a small dot appears about 6 miles southeast of him.
He stares at the screen. Blinks, then continues to stare. Waits for his brain to buffer like the 8-bit map in front of him.
So, if, say, this were current Gotham, DIck suspects Vault 86 would be somewhere underneath Gotham Central Bank. The Wayne Tech gala was held at the art gallery a couple blocks down for some sort of auction for the war efforts. It hadn’t taken that long to walk to the vault, though part of that was due to the frenzy surrounding the evacuation that occurred.
If Dick had to guess what was roughly 6 miles southeast of his current location, as someone who knows the city relatively well? The Wayne Tech headquarters.
The first observation: if someone found the technology, that means someone on the surface is alive. Which means, to an extent, that some part of the country survived the downfall, long enough to see two hundred years into the future.
The next observation: if someone was able to use his credentials to log in to a device at Wayne Tech, that either meant that Wayne Tech was still standing, or some of the technology survived the blast.
The final observation: this magic someone had to have either a strong enough device to hack into Dick’s credentials, or knew enough about him to know the login information. Considering Bruce and his paranoia, it is nigh impossible that even an advanced hacker would be able to access Dick’s encrypted account. Hence, only someone who knew the information would be able to get in. There are three people, Dick included, who know how to access his Wayne Tech credentials. One lives next door to him and hasn’t seen the sun in two hundred years. The other was buried in an early grave.
So who on earth is this?
Dick’s Wayne Tech credentials are closely linked to his alter-ego records, which Bruce and Babs kept buried deep within the Wayne Enterprise servers, encrypted to hell and back. It was less incriminating to bury Batman’s secrets within Wayne Tech, a known supporter of the caped crusader, than on Bruce Wayne’s personal computer files. Dick’s Wayne Tech credentials, at the surface level, only served to get him into the building and to Bruce’s floor. The common security scan would show him as ranking with basic clearance.
Bruce knows them because he created them. Jason knows them because Dick had given them to him before Bruce scolded him, telling him that the credentials are attached to the person, not to the mantle. Unlike, of course, Robin.
No one else should have knowledge of this. He never wrote it down, never breathed a word of it to anyone other than Jason or Bruce. Not even Babs would know. And Babs is dead.
Dick stares at the screen for so long that his map refreshes and the blip hasn’t moved. What’s it matter? Whatever they find in Dick’s files is no longer relevant by two hundred years. Out of curiosity, he selects the “CONFIRM” button prompted on his screen and verifies the stranger’s location.
The map blips and a vault boy with his thumbs up appears on the screen. A speech bubble pops up with “Thank you!” written inside.
Before Dick can think on it further, Tim reemerges from his room with a stack of old books in hand. The first book on the stack is set aside, as is the second. Tim grabs the third and pushes it toward Dick.
“Read this, and then get back to me.”
Then he’s up, his stack of books left behind him on the kitchen table, wandering off back into the dark confines of his room. Dick grabs the book he left behind and huffs a laugh.
Common Courtesy: Unspoken Rules and Regulations of a Vault
~*~
Five weeks and one day have passed while Dick has been awake in the vault.
He ends this thirty-sixth day with a hot shower, body feeling gross and grimy after another day on field duty. He ended up paired with Serena and Tim this time, with all three of them set on the “weeding” task. Few weeds had sprouted since Dick was present last, so it took all of ten minutes to wrap up the task for the day.
Instead of wandering up and down the rows of crops as he was prone to do, Dick was cornered by Tim in the field office, who thrust the rule book at him once more.
“You’re not going to do anything here today, so you may as well read it.”
“Tim,” Dick tried.
“Just. Can you look at it, please? You might not find anything, but.” Tim cut himself off and slumped against the command center. Behind him, a small screen flickered with the irrigation system status.
The book is anything but tempting, but Dick acquiesced and took the thin book from Tim’s hands. “Fine,” he agreed. Then, with a glance at their third party, added, “Only if you keep Serena off my back.”
Tim frowned at him. “Sure, fine, whatever.” He pushed himself upright and stood. “I’ll go mingle, I guess.”
“Thanks, Tim.”
If only to appease Tim, Dick did spend the majority of his time reading (skimming) the Vault-Tec rule book. He didn’t spot anything totally amiss at first, but he was partially distracted by his lack of willingness to do anything and, as a result, he probably didn’t absorb as much as he could have.
He pledged to Tim that he’d do some more “bedtime reading” once their shift and the vault-wide dinner ended for the day. This is how Dick ends up taking a forty-minute shower. He’s ready to go for gold and make it an hour until a semi-familiar noise interrupts his brooding thoughts.
Ding.
Dick blinks, brows furrowing. He pulls back the glass shower door and peers around the corner at his Pip-Boy, resting atop his pile of pajamas on the toilet lid. The screen is on. The blinking orange light is back.
Fumbling, he dries his arm and face off, and without even stepping out of the shower, he lifts his Pip-Boy and reads the notification.
One new message.
It’s the same as last time. Someone has used his credentials, at the same location as before. The coordinates are a digit off. Dick stares at the map.
This can’t possibly be a fluke. Maybe he dismissed the first instance too easily. For a moment there, he thought that the first time was the remnant of a dream. Things have been pretty hazy, lately.
He verifies the location once again and begins to ponder.
~*~
“Hey, Tim.”
The apartment door drops to a close behind Tim and he glances up at Dick. His vault suit is covered in dirt. Dick doesn’t even want to know.
“Is it possible to send messages through a Pip-Boy?”
Tim squints at him. “We’ve been down here for a month and a half and you’re just now wondering?”
“Well, I wasn’t trying before–”
“You can’t,” Tim interrupts, already fed up for some reason. “Not intentionally. You can get, like, an alert or something, but you can’t call or message. Otherwise, don’t you think I would have by now?”
It’s a solid point. Dick hums, staring absentmindedly into the TV. The laugh track of an old show fills the momentary quiet.
“Why?”
Dick sneaks a glance at Tim out of the corner of his eye. He should probably tell him, but Tim’s already paranoid as all hell. He doesn’t want to make it worse, because he’s not quite sure what to do about this strange phenomenon, if anything at all.
“No reason,” Dick lies, letting himself sink further into the sofa. He stares unblinkingly into the grain of the television. “I guess my Pip-Boy had an alert the other day and I was just wondering.”
Tim doesn’t believe him. “Right,” he says. “How’s that book treating you, Dick?”
He’s made no progress. “I’m working on it.”
Tim curses under his breath and storms off to his room.
~*~
Bruce is no better off than Dick is. On Thursday, they meet for the unofficial private family dinner. This consists of Tim and Dick going next door to eat whatever Pennyworth the robot has stewed up for them.
“Today, Masters Grayson and Drake, our dinner is stew,” the robot greets as they enter. Bruce sits at the kitchen table with baby Damian in a chair beside him. “It will be ready in just a few!”
Tim throws himself into the seat across from baby Damian and groans. “I miss the rain.”
Bruce grunts. Damian babbles. Dick tries to do Tim a favor by breaking the silence. “Maybe, if you stand in the field dome at the right time, you can catch the overhead irrigation.”
“It’s not the same,” Tim grumbles. “And it would be a mess. I think I’d get some frowns for tracking mud through the place.”
Dick shrugs. He tried. Baby Damian kicks a leg out in Tim’s direction.
“How was work today, Bruce?” Dick attempts.
Bruce straightens himself with a deep inhale. “It was fine,” he says, voice rough. “Overseer Steve has a few of us working on repairing one of the reactors. Given my experience with Wayne Tech, they thought I’d be well suited to assist with the task.” He heaves a sigh, the corner of his mouth twitching with thinly veiled distaste. “It will take us time to repair. It’s been out of use for so long.”
“And how was Overseer Steve today?” Tim asks.
Dick sucks in a breath, already bracing himself. Tim doesn’t bring this up around Bruce often, and Dick’s not really ready to engage another bout of paranoia. “Tim–-”
“Surprisingly absent,” Bruce reports. He leans back in his seat and glances back at Pennyworth the robot. “But very supportive.” When he turns back to face them, he catches Tim’s eye and glances toward the bathroom.
Tim, ever the actor, stands and stretches. “Well, excuse me for a moment, I’ll be right back.” In his haste to reach the bathroom, he nearly sideswipes Pennyworth the robot. Pennyworth carries a tray of bowls and swerves just gracefully enough around Tim that not a drop of stew is spilled.
“Dinner is served, sirs,” Pennyworth the robot says, setting down the tray. “I presume you’ll be waiting for Master Drake to return?”
“No, that’s alright, Pennyworth.” Bruce dismisses the robot with a lackluster wave. There is pain in his voice. “Actually, go ahead and rest for the night. We’ll take care of this.”
“If you wish, sir,” Pennyworth says, his levitating body ducking just enough to mimic a bow. He floats off in the direction of his charging port. Bruce watches the hunk of metal dispassionately before turning to feed Damian a scoop of baby food.
It’s not until Pennyworth has powered down that Tim returns from the bathroom, looking especially determined.
“I knew it,” Tim gushes. “I knew it, B, I fu–”
“Language.”
“--reaking knew it.” Tim’s so eager to retake his seat that he nearly topples over into Dick. The baby Damian laughs. “So, this was on purpose. Did you know about it?”
“No, but it appears my board did.” Bruce’s voice is calm, even, and yet it’s the most excited Dick has seen him in forever. “It was not a mistake.”
“How’d you find out?”
“An encrypted file on the overseer’s terminal,” Bruce explains. “There are some saved files addressing what to do in case of an emergency that mentioned Wayne Tech’s buy-in.”
Dick is beyond lost. He slumps back into his seat, feeling once again like his world has been shrunk to fit within the tight, metal confines of this vault.
He longs to fly again. The ceilings here are too short, the air is too still.
So he takes another bite of his stew, tongue numb to the flavor, and fiddles with his Pip-Boy while Tim and Bruce talk.
“Did it say anything else?” Tim asks.
Bruce takes a bite of his own stew, mulling the question over. “I couldn’t look for long. I didn’t see anything incriminating, but there were files I missed. I’ll need to check again next time I get a chance.”
“No names, no codes, nothing?”
“Some codes. None I could distinguish, other than the vault code.”
Dick pauses in his aimless scrolling, suddenly interested. “The vault code?”
“Yes,” Bruce says, pausing to regard Dick for a moment. “I would advise against whatever you’re thinking, Dick.”
“I can’t stay down here forever.” He hadn’t said it aloud before, but now that it’s out in the open, everything that follows is hard to reign in. “Bruce, I can’t do this. I can’t stay in this– this–” Dick flings his arm up, gesturing at the apartment walls. “-- this metal cage!”
Tim rounds on him, eyes ablaze. “Dick, you don’t know what’s out there. There’s a reason we’re in this vault to begin with! The world won’t be the same as we remember it. Would you rather die out there than help us?”
“‘Help you?’ With what? Neither of you have clued me into a damn thing!”
“That’s because you’ve been floating around like a ghost of a person since we woke up!” Tim exclaims. “I’ve tried, Dick. I’ve tried getting your attention, and looping you in, but in case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t exactly a safe space for me to say it so clearly!”
Of course, at this moment, Dick’s Pip-Boy decides to go off with a telltale ding. Dick freezes. Bruce’s gaze narrows, detective gears likely churning.
“What,” Tim begins, “was that?”
“Nothing,” Dick excuses. The Pip-Boy dings again.
“This–- is this why you were asking me about messages, the other day? Who’s messaging you?” Tim reaches for Dick’s arm and Dick yanks it out of the way, lurching back as far as the chair will allow.
“No one,” Dick bites back. “It’s nothing. Just an update.”
“Like hell,” Tim utters. He’s about to get up when Bruce lifts a hand.
“Boys,” he warns, then, “Dick, care to explain?” Baby Damian babbles in support.
Dick shoots one last glare at Tim before straightening himself in his seat. He pushes the bowl of stew forward, appetite lost. Then, “Someone has been using my credentials to log into Wayne Tech devices on the surface. Every time it happens, my Pip-Boy asks me to verify my identity.”
Tim gapes. “ What?!”
Bruce, however, does not appear as surprised as Dick expects him to be. “And do you verify it?”
“Yes,” Dick says.
“And you act like I’m the crazy one,” Tim complains. He sinks back into his chair, arms crossed.
“There’s someone up there, Bruce. Someone survived . And I– I don’t know what the world looks like, none of us do, but if I have the option, if I can be up there, I’d rather that than be stuck down here–-” He’s rambling, trying so hard to defend his case, and Bruce continues to look at him like he’s a mystery needing to be solved. Dick sucks in a shaky breath. “-- so if you have the vault code, I would like to leave. Please.”
Bruce blinks at him, face a perfect mask. Then, he says, “You think it’s Jason.”
Dick’s gut drops. He stammers. “No, I–I know that he’s dead, I just–-”
“No one else would be able to use your credentials,” Bruce says, verifying Dick’s initial line of thought, making his bewildered instinct feel more real.
“But he’s dead,” Tim joins in. “It’s been over two hundred years since he died.”
Bruce takes this moment to feed a scoop of baby food into Damian’s mouth. When he’s finished, he turns back to his two older sons and says something that uproots Dick's understanding of everything.
“Jason’s not dead.”