So I have an idea for a very specific kind of apprentice arc for Dick in the yj universe
Season 2 while Bruce and the others are on Rimbor, let’s assume Alfred has been retired for many years and lives in England. He’s more of a doting grandfather who only sees the family a couple times a year.
Let’s also assume that Tim still lives with his parents, and so Dick is really Bruce’s only (living) child at the time. So when Bruce goes to Rimbor, he asks those who stayed behind to keep an eye on his kid.
The others assume they mean Tim, since he’s Bruce’s latest and newest protege. They don’t even consider Dick, because they’re only thinking in the context of the JL and the Team and training.
Let’s also make Dick only like 15. The batboys all have way smaller age gaps. Jason’s only been dead for like a year maybe. Dick is 15, Jason would’ve been 14, and Tim is 13.
While Kaldur is undercover, they decide he needs backup. Artemis refuses to come back. This leaves Dick with his only other option. Go in himself.
And now we get into the actual plot.
Slade takes Dick on as his apprentice. He’s in on the whole plan, because Slade does in fact not want his planet overrun by aliens, so he goes along with it on the condition that Dick take his training and his role as Deathstroke’s Apprentice seriously. Dick is still Nightwing, he still fills in as Batman when need be, he still runs the team. He’s just moonlighting as Renegade, so to speak.
But he’s also still in high school.
And maybe the teachers and staff at Gotham Academy start noticing that Dick is retreating into himself a lot. They assume it’s grief from Jason dying in a plane crash the year prior (the cover story they went with).
Then they see him getting picked up from school by an older man. They see this older man all the time. Bruce Wayne is thought to be on some world tour for Wayne Enterprises, and no one knows who’s watching his kid.
They think Dick is being groomed. And they’re not entirely wrong.
When everything comes out at about the undercover op, with everyone blaming Dick, with everyone being so angry at him, Dick just shuts down. He’s so stressed out. He’s so tired. His nerves are shot and he’s depressed and he’s exhausted.
Bruce isn’t back yet, maybe. Bruce hasn’t had a chance to talk to his son yet.
And by the time he does, Dick is gone. He’s nowhere to be found. Bruce has an email inbox and voicemails full of concerned messages from Dick’s teachers, from the headmaster.
Bruce is terrified. He asks the JL members who stayed behind what was going on with Dick, why no one ever spoke with his teachers, why no one knew what was happening with his fifteen year old son.
He finds out that no one checked in with Dick the entire time. That he’d been in his own. The entire time.
He finds surveillance footage from the school and from around Gotham of Slade Wilson sinking his claws into his child, and he feels his heart stop.
Then Renegade is spotted with Deathstroke. After everything is over, when Dick should be long done with his undercover role as Deathstroke’s Apprentice.
And now the entire JL has to deal with the fact that one of the kids they were responsible for was being groomed by a mercenary right under their noses, and they did nothing to stop it, nothing to help him, they never even noticed.
Bruce is furious. He’s heartbroken. He feels like a failure of a parent all over again, but in such a different way than how he felt like he failed with Jason.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to get his son back.
