"I don't know," Dick admitted. He didn't want to admit what he was thinking--that he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of faking his death if he planned on returning anytime soon--but nor did he want to be dishonest. Carrie deserved better than that. "I think he thinks he's going to stay away longer than he really is," he said finally. "He'll come home. Or he'll make too many mistakes to be an accident. Or he'll finally give up trying to be anything other than... Bruce Wayne."
Bruce's biggest blind spot had always been his relationship with Bruce Wayne. He liked to imagine that it was an image, a mask he wore during the daytime so that he still had resources for the Mission, so that he could help people in ways that Batman couldn't, so that he could get up the nose of his high society acquaintances that he didn't really like. But Dick knew better. He'd seen what Bruce had become in a world that didn't need Batman, and it was that man. Charming and friendly, generous and thoughtlessly caring. There was a part of him that still wanted to be Bruce, that wanted to just have family dinners and Thanksgiving football games and all that kitschy Americana that no one believed in outside the Kent Farm. And that's what he was hiding from.