Work Text:
“You used to tell me things,” Donna says to him one day, after a lull in the conversation that Dick can’t even remember the content of now.
Dick blinks at her. He thinks he knows what she’s talking about, except he doesn’t want to talk about it; not like this. Not right now.
That, he then realizes, is probably her entire point.
He means to say something lighthearted and soft, to play it off, to brush it aside, but what rolls off of his unsteady tongue is this: “I used to be louder. When I was younger.”
That seems to surprise Donna.
It surprises him too. He didn’t know he had that welling up inside him. It seems obvious now, because it’s simply the truth; he did used to be louder when he was younger. He’s just never said it until now.
Again, case in point.
Donna gives him a sad smile. “You can be loud now, you know,” she tells him. “It hasn’t gone away,”
He opens his mouth to reply, something like i can’t quite remember how or i don’t want to be or something else strangely honest and strangely deceptive, but then Garth comes back in the room and then Wally and then more and then that’s it. The moment breaks. It will remain forever unsalvaged.
❅
❅
❅
He doesn’t remember where it started. Maybe he’s not quite sure where the start is, whether it was somewhere in the stretches of darkness while in Gotham or the pound and the hum of New York or the blur of the before in the circus.
Or maybe he does.
Maybe it starts in France.
Dick is eight years old and the world from where he sees it is golden through and through. France is great. His parents tell him that it’s a wonderful country with terrible people, and it is wonderful. He hasn’t met enough people to tell the other part. His parents say that about everywhere, though; it’s always lovely place but don’t stray too far or i love this lake there’s nobody around or don’t talk to anybody but you can explore the streets, and Dick is starting to think that his parents think that everybody outside of the circus kinda sucks.
Even within the circus, there’s the few that they don’t get along with, but they’re still family of some sort. Dick can’t imagine what the rest of the world is like, if this circus with the family of some sort is the only good place. Maybe everywhere in the world is a lot gorgeous, but to make up for it, every person is a little awful.
He tells his parents about this theory, and they laugh and ruffle his hair. As long as you don’t become one of them, his father says, as if that’s ever going to happen. Dick’s better than that. He tells them that much.
It is a shame, though. Dick likes people. He thinks he’d like to expand his boundaries beyond the circus, because even though he loves the circus dearly, they’re still just one group of people, and there has to be other decent and fun people outside of them. He wants to meet people who don’t live the same life he does, so they can compare and contrast; he’s pretty sure he’ll win the competition if there is one, but it’s still interesting to know. He wants to know. He wants to know the whole world. He wants to see everything. He wants to speak to everyone.
Then one day they’re travelling through the countryside. Dick’s been lucky enough to snag the passenger seat in the caravan, and he’s up on his knees staring through the window. He watches as the green rolls past endlessly, those fields dotted with red and yellow and brown. The sun’s out in full force today, and everything feels larger than he can hold in his tiny, eight-year-old heart.
The world rushes past, and he wants to run out there and rush with it. Green and gold and green again, he stares and stares, and finds that for the first time in his life he doesn’t have anything he wants to say about this. Something large and unspeakable settles in his chest at the sight of the world outisde.
He catches this feeling, keeps it close, hides it away.
❅
❅
❅
So that’s the start. It hadn’t been a bad thing when it started; it was just a new experience to add to the constant new experiences in his life. Dick Grayson hits the ground running and stays running and for most of his life, it’s not a bad thing. He’s happy to run. He’s happy to keep moving, to never let life rush past him, to instead rush with it. He doesn’t know exactly when he slows down, or why. He doesn’t know if it had been a choice or if he’d been forced into it, pushed into corners and tripped up at every turn. He just knows that once, he ran with the sun and the wind and the rain. Now, he stagnates.
Now, despite his best efforts, he is still, and he is quiet.
His apartment in New York is surprisingly lonely, though why he’s surprised when he lives alone and he doesn’t catch his neighbours often because his hours are ridiculous, as is his lifestyle, is a wonder.
He still hasn’t fully unpacked; he gets the feeling that he’s just waiting for the day that the Tower opens up or Gotham sends out a call and he can go oh, well, goodbye lonely apartment, our time was short but sweet.
It hasn’t even been that long since he’s moved in anyway. He has an excuse for the boxes. Everything takes time.
In lieu of an unpacked and furnished apartment that feels like home, Dick throws himself into the swing of life. It’s odd only doing university part-time, and even more odd that he’s no longer doing business, but it’s cutting, almost refreshing, every time he opens his calendar and sees those blocks of classes cordoned off.
He likes university now that it’s a way to move forward, and not something holding him back. It adds to the motion in his life, which is always a good thing because even though he’s somehow stilled it doesn’t mean he has to like it. And anyway, all of that stillness is internal. It’s a feeling kept close and hidden away since childhood and allowed to bloom so large and unruly that it’s taken over everything. An overgrown, sprawling garden of a heart. That’s what sits in his chest. Vines wrap and twist through his veins and cut off his bloodflow, but that’s still only on the inside.
On the outside, he keeps himself moving.
He goes to campus in the afternoons with the tepid New York sun bearing down on him. He’s a rubbish note-taker, but he got invited to contribute to a shared folder of notes that some students in his class are compiling, so he skims through them when he needs a refresher on the content. Otherwise, he sits in class and answers questions, and tries not to get distracted by the way the boy sitting at the table one row ahead and one column to his left watches anime on his phone underneath his desk. Most of the time he gets distracted anyway, and then the semester ends and he’s watched approximately 36.7 episodes of Naruto. He hasn’t made any friends in his class. He still hasn’t unpacked.
He fancies that he might never at all. Just to spite the concept of settling.
❅
❅
❅
On top of a part-time university degree in art history and costume design, his vigilante activities, and all the time he dedicates to walking around the city and hating the coffee they make here, he’s a museum intern. It’s a small place, actually a joint museum and art gallery, that’s connected to his campus. Ceres, his favourite professor, invites him to work there after two months in her class, and it fast becomes his favourite place in the city.
The coffee is still terrible, but he makes do.
Today, with rain drizzling outside and all of his hair damp, Dick carries two cups to his boss-slash-professor’s office. He sets down one for her and takes a sip of his own, failing not to make a face when he does.
Ceres looks up and laughs at him. “Still not used to it?” she asks, before taking a sip of her own.
No reaction. Dick wonders if she’s a metahuman. This coffee is awful.
“The day I do, I’m quitting,” he jokes.
She makes an aggravated sound in the back of her throat. “Don’t even joke about that,” she says, pushing her chair back from her desk. “This place would fall apart without you,”
Dick grins at her. It’s absolutely not true, because this museum has existed long before Dick ever stepped foot inside, and will exist long after, but it’s nice to hear anyway. The acknowledgement lodges strangely in his chest, but it is nice.
Three days ago, one of the supervisors at the community centre he volunteers at told him that he was the most hardworking person she’s met. It’s the same sort of feeling: a little too big, a little ill-fitting, a balloon blown up in his chest and pushing out everything else. He’s never thought of himself as particularly hardworking. He works hard, he knows he does, he makes sure he does, but it’s never struck him as anything particularly special. Side effect of being surrounded by overachievers all of his life, he supposes.
“So,” he says, hopping up on the desk, “what’s on the menu for today?”
Ceres pushes a folder of paper towards him. “Transcribing,” she says cheerfully.
Dick fakes a groan as he accepts the folder, but he doesn’t mind transcribing that much, actually. It’s slow to start, but Dick finds that once he settles into a rhythm that the work flies by. He basically goes on autopilot, but it’s engrossing enough that it doesn’t let his thoughts wonder. Kind of ideal, honestly. Thinking without having to think.
With his work for the day sorted, Dick goes to find some quiet corner of the museum to work in and leaves Ceres be. He likes actually being inside the galleries and exhibits more than he does sitting at the study tables nearby when he’s working, even if it ends up with him getting distracted a lot. It’s something about the quiet feeling of being a part of something without having to try.
As he gets stuck into the work on his laptop, people drift around him, looking at the displays, taking in the information. Some sort of belonging. Nobody questions what other people are doing in a museum. It’s connection in the most silent way possible, and sometimes Dick thinks he wants to live the rest of his life like this. Maybe he doesn’t need to be loud. Maybe it’s fine.
Then, he gets on the bus home and disassociates while listening to his music. He misses his stop and the next two stops after that.
He finally gets off three stops later in a neighbourhood he doesn’t recognize. It’s still drizzling, and Dick’s umbrella is sitting in his other backpack that’s sitting in his apartment, and his phone is on 23% charge.
Dick breathes out.
He breathes back in.
He thinks, very clearly, I wish I could scream right now.
❅
❅
❅
Okay, so Dick’s seventeen years old and Donna is the last best thing he’s got going; he’s fourteen and Donna is the first good thing he knows; he’s twenty and Donna is the only vestige of sanity he has left. This is how it’s been for all of his life minus the circus years, which sometime feel so shockingly far away that he’s not sure that they were his life anymore. Maybe just a dream. Nothing about them feels tangible; the only things that Dick really knows nowadays is darkness and Donna and skyscrapers, none of which fit into his recollection of life when he was in the circus.
Except maybe Donna. Donna would’ve been amazing in the circus. Not just because of the Amazonian thing, but that would’ve definitely been a plus; otherwise, Donna’s just that kind of person. Genuine enough to stand on the stage and bright enough to not be swallowed up by the lights. Or maybe she could’ve started the camera department of Haly’s and filmed all of their performances. They could’ve made it a whole thing: have a website, release behind-the-scenes clips, hold stupid photoshoots. Dick doesn’t really like thinking about the what ifs, but this one is pretty nice.
That’s not Dick’s life anymore, however. Right now Dick’s life is standing at the bus stop in the rain, wondering whether it’s better to wait 45 minutes for the next bus to take him three stops to his apartment, or whether to walk. His battery has dropped down to 20%.
Both options kinda suck. He doesn’t want to be here, cold and alone, for 45 minutes just so that he can ride the bus for 1.4 kilometres. He doesn’t want to have to walk 1.4 kilometres without an umbrella.
He sees his phone dying either way. He weighs it up.
It’s more likely that it’ll die in the 45 minute wait than during the walk. However if he walks, there’s a slim possibility of it getting drenched, since there’s a high possibility of him getting drenched.
Again, he thinks it, crisp lines on parchment, drawn figures on fog: I wish I could scream right now. And that settles it really, because waiting means staying still, and walking means not. He has to do something with all of this newfound energy, and if he can’t release it by screaming out his lungs then he’ll settle for a trek home.
He puts his headphones in. He pulls his hoodie strings tight.
It’s exactly as miserable as he thought it would be. Sometimes always being right is such a curse.
At least he’s a fast walker, fuelled by his own sense of torment and years of being an athlete. He ends up doing some weird half-jog, because he’s not going to take his leisurely fucking time but it’s not like he can make a run for it when the ground is slippery and he’s in his nice I-work-in-a-museum shoes.
He turns his music up high. It’s some alt rock band that Roy had suggested to him several years ago, and Dick’s only just gotten around to listening to the albums he’d downloaded. They’re good. The music fits with the atmosphere so well that it honestly feels a little cliché, and Dick lets himself get distracted from his misery by imagining himself in some terrible, low-budget indie movie.
Donna loves those. Dick does as well, but he’s just as likely to watch some highly polished and incomprehensible arthouse film as he is some gritty and down-to-earth indie film as he is some glitzy action-drama film, so it’s less of a thing for him, and more that he just likes films. He likes to disappear into another world for a little while. He likes to know that there are people behind the camera, showing him what they see.
This would probably be the climax of the film, he thinks. Moments before the denouement; maybe in this film, there would be somebody waiting for him at home. Somebody who he thought he would never see again, standing at his doorstep, wondering where he is. If he’s okay. The warmth of the scene, with orange lighting and closeups on trembling hands, would contrast perfectly with the rain and cold outside. He’d forget all about his aches, and his worries, and his troubles, and fall into the arms of the person he’s been missing the most.
He ponders camera angles and the trials of filming in the rain so deeply—he’s a little surprised at how much he managed to retain from Donna’s rants about cinematography—that he almost misses it when he turns onto his street. He doesn’t need to worry, though. He’s walked this route so many times that his feet take him where he needs to go automatically. The chill has sunken so deeply into his bones that he’s almost used to it by now.
Finally, finally, he pushes open the door and leaves the rain behind. There is no warmth to be found in the lobby of his apartment building, but it’s still infinitely better than what’s outside.
He shakes himself off. Eyes the elevator for a few seconds, before making up his mind and heading towards the stairwell. Four flights isn’t that much to climb, and besides, it’ll probably warm him up a little.
Four flights of stairs later, his knee is twinging and he regrets not taking the elevator. The combination of cold weather and upstairs walking is never great for old injuries, and Dick’s been getting injured since he could walk. Occupational hazard of before and after. He trudges down the hallway and grimaces as the twinge turns into an ache, but powers on regardless. He’ll have to wrap that knee tonight. Elevate it for a bit—maybe even ice it, but he firmly does not want to think of applying ice to any part of his body until he’s had a warm shower and is in dry clothes.
His fingers are frozen enough that it’s a chore to open the door. Dick really should buy some gloves. He should also buy another umbrella; it’s clear that one isn’t cutting it. He’ll keep the one in his backpack in there, and have another hanging at the door ready to go whenever he needs to grab it. Solid plan.
He opens the door. He goes inside. He drops his bag, plugs in his phone, opens his mouth, and screams.
❅
❅
❅
After a shower and a thorough session with his hairdryer, Dick finally feels defrosted enough to attempt being a human person. He starts by pushing all of his wet clothes into the laundry basket, and setting his wet shoes by the radiator. He turns on the oven and throws in the first thing he grabs out of the freezer: a margherita pizza that he bought maybe ten grocery trips ago. He takes his books out of his bag and sends a thanks up to every deity he can think of that they haven’t been utterly destroyed. He sets them by the radiator too.
He does a few more things, walking around his apartment and making sure that everything in his usual get-home routine has been completed. Keys in the designated spot, bag hung up on its rightful hook, doors locked and windows clasped.
Once he reaches the end of his list, he has no idea what to do next. There are a few things he should do, sure, but he doesn’t know what he wants to do.
Actually, he does.
What he wants to do is scream again, but he thinks once was pushing it. He has neighbours and these walls aren’t that thick and honestly his throat kinda hurts so he doesn’t want to push it, but he realizes there’s something bubbling under the surface of his skin that wants to get out.
Some need, one that he hasn’t felt in a long time, to be loud. He’s sick and tired of shaping words with his mouth and having them make no sound. He’s sick and tired of coming home to his quiet apartment and not knowing what he should do to fill the space.
His eyes stray to his phone sitting on the counter. A plan starts to half-form in his mind. Since half-formed is when his plans are at their best, he makes a move.
He picks up his phone. He dials a number.
He waits for two rings before Donna picks up.
“Dick,” she says, sounding a little confused. Dick finds himself wishing she was here. “Hi,”
“Hi, Donna,” he replies.
“You’re calling me,” says Donna.
“Brilliant observation,” replies Dick.
Donna laughs. Oh, Dick misses her.
“What’s up, Robin?” Donna says fondly, and hearing Robin makes something click inside Dick’s heart. The vines shift, and the leaves flutter, and it hurts like hell but he knows that this is maybe necessary.
“Are you somewhere comfortable?” Dick asks her. “Because I had the worst fucking day ever, and you’re about to hear all about it.”
Donna doesn’t reply for a few moments. Dick doesn’t feel scared, because it’s Donna and she will never ever scare him, but he feels… apprehensive. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do here.
He wonders if Donna knows. She’s his best fucking friend, and she knows him better than he knows himself sometimes.
Donna says, “Are you okay?”
Dick can’t help himself. He laughs, something that starts as a silly little snort and evolves into something fuller.
“I’m fine,” Dick replies, hoping Donna can hear the sincerity in his tone. She probably can, but they are talking over the phone; sometimes, it’s just that bit harder to tell. “I’m just. You know. Telling you things.”
Donna hums. “You remember that?” she asks, which is a silly question. Dick remembers everything. She knows this. “You know that’s not what I meant when I said that, right?”
Dick breathes out slowly. Tries to push his way through the foliage.
“I know,” he replies. “I’m… I’m working up to it,”
“Working up to it,” Donna repeats, sounding considering.
Dick waits and lets her think that over. The apprehension fades with every breath he takes, and every branch and bush he pushes past.
Then, Donna chuckles. “Alright, Dick Grayson,” she says, “tell me about your terrible fucking day,”
She sounds like Dick remembers her best: sunshine voice and sunshine eyes and sunshine smile. Dick’s always comfortable around her. Never afraid. If there’s anybody in the world that he can talk to, it has to be Donna Troy.
He wanders over to the radiator, and lies on the floor because he can. It’s warmer down here anyway, the floorboards heated by the exposure.
He breathes in, and breathes out. He opens his mouth and starts to speak.