Here’s a late birthday ficlet for batmanmonroe
“Don’t worry, Miles. You can be my Robin,” Bass told him as if he was under the impression that it was anywhere on Miles’ list of many concerns. Nevertheless, it got to him.
It got to him enough that he came to a screeching halt that almost immediately stopped the rest of the group.
“You think that you’d be the Batman over me?” He asked in disbelief. “Wow. You really are delusional.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I’d be Batman,” Bass argued. “Batman’s an orphan, remember?”
“You do remember that my parents are dead now too, right?” Miles challenged. “And I’m pretty sure Bruce Wayne’s parents didn’t die when he was already a grown ass man.”
“Yeah, well, Batman’s in charge,” Bass pointed out.
“Which is exactly why I should be Batman,” Miles insisted.
Charlie wasn’t entirely sure what they were arguing about, but she was starting to wonder how the hell Monroe had gotten under her uncle’s skin so much so easily. She glanced over at her mother for answers, but she just looked beyond exasperated with the whole argument.
“Which one of us was president again?” Bass questioned as if that was a shining show of leadership and he wasn’t bragging about the biggest shit-show of his life.
“Which one of us thought someone needed to do something, again? Because I seem to remember that you wanted to run away and claimed that it wasn’t our problem. Didn’t you, Mr. President?” Miles snapped back.
It went pin drop silent as the realization of what he had just revealed in front of his family, in some twisted attempt at maintaining his pride, sunk in. He peeked over at Charlie, who looked surprised but not angry, then chanced a glance in Rachel’s direction. She looked disgusted with the new information, and even more disgusted with him, as she refused to meet his gaze.
Bass noticed the look on Miles’ face and felt a pang of guilt of his own, despite his satisfaction at having created a rift between Miles and Rachel. He half-cleared his throat and then, maybe a little too loudly, insisted, “That’s different. You wanted to save Jeremy’s life from a couple of two-bit thugs and I wanted to walk away. I’m still the big, bad president of the Monroe Republic, okay? You’re Batman and I may as well be the Joker.”
Miles turned to look at him in surprise as he silently wondered whether Bass really believed that or not. He wasn’t entirely sure of why Bass was defending him instead of rubbing his nose in the fact that he’d admitted to the whole militia thing being his damn idea, but he felt strangely grateful for the other man’s actions.
There was a long silence as Bass watched Miles shoot him a thankful look.
Sure, he was already the bad guy, so why not pile some more blame on? Besides, Miles wasn’t the one who had gone crazy. Miles wasn’t the one who had driven the republic into the ground. Bass had done that. The guilt should be on him, not on Miles, and it was worth owning up to that just for the look that his friend was giving him now. Maybe he would never have a chance of getting the kind of relationship that he truly wanted to have with Miles, or even a chance of getting back to the kind that he’d had with him before. But, for the time being at least, he was more than happy to stick around for whatever he could get out of his old friend.
The spell was broken, and so was the silence, as Miles finally tore his gaze away from Bass’s and turned to look over at his niece as he commented, “Come on, Robin.”
They began to move again and Charlie picked up her pace to walk alongside her uncle as she turned her gaze on him and questioned, “Hold on, I’m confused. Is being Robin a good thing or a bad thing?”