Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

October 12, 2:24 AM

Air feels like heaven. The cold, rancid air of Gotham harbor feels like a warm meal given to a starving man, it feels like hot showers after staying in the snow for too long when it enters Dick’s lungs. From the noise Jason - the noise Robin - makes against his chest, he must feel the same.

“Fuck,” the kid says. “Fuck.”

“Language.”

Jason gives him a stare. “Don’t you dare. I heard you when you’re talking with B.”

Dick snorts. Talking is a big word. He doesn’t think he’s had one non-vigilantism related conversation with Bruce that didn’t end in an argument since… since.

“Are you okay?” he asks instead of thinking about B. He can’t think about him right now. Right now, it’s easier to focus on keeping Jason safe and swimming to the shore.

“Yeah, thanks to you. I learned to swim but this is totally different from the pool we have.”

Dick nods. He had learned how to swim way younger than Jason, on a lake, in Croatia. His parents had told him it was a good skill to have and congratulated him on the broken breaststroke. Most of the places he’s swam in since haven’t been as nice as the sunny lake, with a shore full of grass and his parents laughing with him.

They’re almost to another shore, one made of concrete and lies and disappointment, when Jason says, “Shit.”

“Language,” Dick replies, not without a smile. “What is it?”

“There’s blood.” Jason sounds like he’s panicking. “There’s blood in the water, where is it coming from?”

Oh. That. “Guys got a lucky shot in the back of my right shoulder.” And when Jason’s face twists, he adds, “Relax, the suit took most of it, it’s not deep.” At least, he hopes so. He didn’t have time to check what was happening, but he felt the impact just as he was diving in the sea, after he realized Jason wasn’t going to be able to keep himself above water for long. “And, hey, not a word to B. It will be our secret.”

Jason looks suspicious, but he nods. He probably knows better than to argue with the person pulling him to dry land.

And of course, B is there when they reach said dry land, in all his Batman glory. Dick can’t help but wonder why he didn’t jump into the water. Is it because he trusts Dick, despite everything, or is it because Jason isn’t that important to him after all?

Robin was never meant to be expendable. And yet...

He chases the thoughts away as he helps Jason on the dock and pulls himself up. It looks like he was right. The bullet hit the back of his shoulder, but he still can move his arm fine, so it probably didn’t do much damage. He hopes that in the dark, and given that he’s covered in water, B won’t see a thing.

But maybe he shouldn’t have worried, because B takes Jason under his cape, like he used to with Dick, in a gesture that is so Batman and Robin it makes something in Dick’s heart ache. He suddenly feels very cold, in a way that has little to do with the fact that he just jumped into the harbor, and he feels like running away. Like he needs to get out of here now.

“Did you get all the men?” he asks Batman, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible.

“Yes,” Batman replies. A one worded answer, clear.

Dick feels a buzzing in his head. “Okay,” he says. “Then I don’t have anything left to do here.” But he does. He was here for something. Except, right now, in front of Bruce, he can’t remember what it was.

“Nightwing,” Batman says, almost like an insult. “You went into the harbor. Do you want to come home with us?”

Home. Dick almost snorts. He doesn’t have a home in the manor or in the cave anymore, if he even had one in the first place.

“I’m fine,” he articulates. “Thank you.”

Just as he starts walking toward his bike, Jason untangles himself from Batman’s cape to sprint toward him. “You saved me,” he says. “Thank you.”

He ruffles the kid’s hair. His problem isn’t with him; he actually likes the kid, and maybe it would be easier if he didn’t. “Don’t mention it,” he says. “You’ll do the same one day.” And with that, he’s gone.  

October 12, 4:02 AM

The ride back to his apartment is a blur. He makes more turns in Gotham than he needed to, just clearing his head from the night by riding. He knows he should go back to his place: treat the minor bullet wound on his shoulder, get warm, get some sleep, and fuck it’s Monday. He has to go to work tomorrow (today, this morning), somehow.      

Finally, when the streets of Gotham have done their work, he gets back. He takes the fire exit, even if no one in his building would probably care if they saw Nightwing entering by the front door - that is, if they even know who Nightwing is in the first place. He closes the window behind him. His place is not big, and it’s not exactly fancy, but he can afford the rent, and it’s owned neither by Wayne Real Estate or by a mafia family, so he takes it as a win.

He removes his uniform, he will have to clean it or change it, he thinks he still has a spare somewhere, and ow, his shoulder really hurts now. Not as bad as it could be, but it’s an annoying ache.

He gets into the shower, and warm water makes him feel good until it doesn’t. Until he finally remembers what he was planning to do tonight. He needed information on Gregory Frye, a former Black Mask employee, if he can call him that, who is trying to make a name for himself in the business. Batman doesn’t see him, doesn’t realize how dangerous he can be. How fragile the situation in Gotham is. And even if Dick explained it to him, he wouldn’t believe him anyway. That kind of trust hadn’t really been built between them, even if Dick thought, foolishly, that it could have been. He pushes his head on the shower wall. He wants to scream. Why did he blank? Why did the sole sight of Batman makes him forget why he was there in the first place? Now it would take forever to get the info, and that was time he couldn’t afford to lose, time potential victims couldn’t afford to lose.

October 12, 4:52 AM

The water has long run cold when he gets his head back together, and he shivers when he gets out of the shower. So much for warming up. The clock on his night table shows that it’s almost 5 AM. He needs to leave for work in about two hours. He can do this. Now, he needs to… He needs to clean up his shoulder.

The wound is awkwardly placed, and the bullet is still in there. Not too deep, but still in there. For a second, he thinks maybe he should call the Titans. Wally can be here in less than a minute, and they all learned first aid. It wouldn’t be Alfred’s professional work, but… But, no. Wally has his own things to do, his own life, and Dick can’t call him every time he gets a boo-boo. Not to mention he would probably worry, and what if he…

Realistically, Dick knows none of his friends would ask him to give up vigilantism, and none of them have the power to force him to do anything, but the possibility sends shivers to his spine. He wanted to be an adult, right? He can be an adult. Responsible adults remove the bullets from their back shoulder on their own.

He twists himself in front of the mirror to get as clear of a view as he can while he works. Then, he takes tweezers, bites on a cloth, thinking idly that the neighbors might not mind one more or one less scream, given how often the guy next door just yells for no reason, and gets to work.

He’s quick. Not as quick as he wishes he was, but he’s quick. He’s used to it by now. He removes the bullet, cleans up the wound to the best of his capability, and bandages it. He washes his face to hide all traces of tear tracks and thinks idly that he should probably wear makeup to keep people from staring at him. He hopes the bandages will be enough to keep him from bleeding through his clothes at work, at least. The kids of Gotham see enough every day. They don’t need to see that.

Speaking of which, it’s almost time to go to the school. He tries to remember which classes he has in the morning. He applies light makeup, just enough to hide all traces of the night, and plasters a smile on his smile. He can be the nice and cool gym sub today. And even if he doesn’t feel like an adult, even if he has a hole in his back shoulder, even if he’s running on less hours of sleep than would be optimal, even for him… he can do that. The kids of Gotham deserve that.

October 12, 12:06 PM

The kids of Gotham, he thinks after four periods, don’t deserve shit. They keep mocking his exercises, doing dangerous things, and he caught seven of them trying to skip and three more smoking in the restroom. He hates teenagers, he thinks, even if he’s not much older than a teenager himself.

Except he doesn’t actually hate them, and when he explained to them the danger of cigarettes, one of them mocked him and it should have made him angry, maybe he should have increased the detention time, but it just made him think of Jason. Jason, who probably hid in the bathroom to smoke as well and thought he was hiding it so well, but the smell can’t be hidden. Not from Batman, not from Nightwing, and certainly not from Alfred. Jason, who he saved from drowning yesterday, so maybe his night wasn’t that much of a failure after all.  

He should text Jason. He should text Barbara as well; she might have info on Gregory Frye, and it’s always less mortifying to ask her than it is to ask Batman. But for now, he sends a quick text to Jason, asking him if he’s ok. Maybe he got to skip school. There had been some instances, after traumatic patrols, where Dick had been allowed to skip school. Would almost drowning in the harbor be considered traumatic enough to grant that? For Dick, it wouldn’t have been, but Bruce treats Jason differently. But maybe he was allowed to skip school and decided to go anyway, Dick thinks, remembering that, unlike him, Jason actually likes school.

On cue, Jason replies that he’s at school. “I’m good” the message says. “Got hot cocoa from Alfred just after getting back.”

Dick feels something he can’t quite put a name to in his chest. He was the one who declined Bruce’s offer of going to the manor. He can’t feel jealous about the warm hot cocoa.

“What about you, got home alright?”

Yes, later than he should have been, and then he fished a bullet out of his shoulder by himself. But he doesn’t say that. “I’m good,” he types instead. “I’m at school too.”

“And you’re texting in class, mister gym teacher? That is bad, you know. You deserve a detention.”

“I’m on break, but should you be texting?”

“You’re going to rat me out? No one would ever believe you, teachers love me.”

Dick shakes his head fondly. He needs to hurry if he wants the coffee he desperately needs before his next period.

But when he enters the teachers’ lounge, he can distinctly hear the voice of Andy Evans, the math teacher.

“No,” she says, apparently on the phone with someone. “I don’t want to go to the police, this is getting out of proportion, I never wanted this… I know, but it’s not-” She stops talking when she spots him. “Look, I need to go, talk to you later.”

“Is something wrong?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s nothing. Everything is fine.”

She’s a pretty bad liar. She looks about as fine as his current relationship with Bruce is. “You know you can tell me if something is wrong, right? I mean, I don’t know how much I can help, but I can always try.”

She sighs. “You’re very kind, but I don’t think I need a young man to help me, it would only make things more complicated. Besides, don’t you have your own life to worry about?”

He does, but it’s easier to help others than it is to take care of himself. But he doesn’t have time to tell her that, because the bell rings at that moment. He didn’t text Babs, and he didn’t have a coffee. Great. “I’ll be here if you ever change your mind. I might be young, but I’m resourceful!” He gives her what he hopes is a winning smile before going back to his classes.

October 12, 5:16 PM

He breathes in, breathes out a few times in his car once the classes are over. He’s exhausted, and his shoulder hurt a bit more than he thought it would. His shift at the bar will start soon, but he needs to call Barbara. He drives a bit away from the school to reach somewhere he’s sure no one will overhear him and gets his phone out.

Babs replies to the call, but she’s less enthusiastic about his calls than she used to be. He can understand why, and it’s his fault. Nowadays, he mostly calls her when he needs info. His fall out with Bruce means she ended up in a complicated situation, forced to pick a side. 

“Any chance you have info on Gregory Frye?” he asks, and he can practically see her disappointed face, despite not actually seeing her. Once again, this is not a social call.

“I don’t exactly have access to the Batcomputer, but I don’t think B has a longer file on him than on any other Black Mask lieutenants. Same for the GCPD. I know you have your own sources, but do you really think that man is any more dangerous than any others? I mean, sounds to me like you’re starting to become a bit obsessive.”

He doesn’t have time for her judgment. “I’m not. I know what I’m doing.” He’s not becoming obsessive. He’s not like Bruce. He knows there’s something up with that man.

She sighs like she doesn’t really believe him. “I’ll let you know if I ever come across something, either as Batgirl or as Barbara Gordon. I need to go, I have a class to be in… Take care of yourself.”

He listens to the phone tone for a few seconds after she hangs up. The words resonate in his head. Right. She has a class to go to. Because she’s in college. Another point he and B have been fighting about, which, in Dick’s opinion, Bruce is being a hypocrite about, as a drop out himself. He was good in school. He didn’t especially like sitting in class all day, but he had good grades. He liked to learn, even if he didn’t like the setting he was learning in. Maybe Bruce was right. Maybe he would have done well in college. Maybe, just like Barbara did, he would have been able to balance studies, a part time job, and vigilantism. But he wasn’t Barbara and he needed to get independent, fast. He needed to get away from Bruce in a way Barbara doesn’t. And if that means working two jobs while figuring out who Nightwing is and trying to save as many people as possible in the process, then so be it.

Speaking of which, he starts his car again, toward the bar, this time. This bartending job helps him get info both on things happening in the underworld and also some police cases Babs doesn’t have access to. It’s a useful tool for Nightwing, as well as a way to help him pay the bills.

There’s a trust fund somewhere he has access to. A gift from Bruce, maybe as a weird way to apologize for firing him and basically kicking him out. He knows that if he uses it, he could quit one of his jobs, but he refuses to open it. He knows he should start giving the money to charities, if only not to let it sit there uselessly. But part of him fears that if he starts touching it, Bruce will see it as proof that he can’t take care of himself on his own.

So, he tries not to think too much about everything and gets ready for his shift in the bar. Besides, he can’t see himself leaving either job. The bar gives Nightwing precious info and the school allows Dick Grayson to hopefully help a kid or two have a better time there than he did. He pushes away the voice telling him it’s also a way to keep himself busy and keep himself from thinking too much. Thinking about what it means for Jason to take over Robin, thinking about his relationship with Jason in the first place and where he currently stands with Bruce. Thinking about how he’s nothing to Bruce, now – not his ward and not his partner anymore - but the man still has so much power over him and can still make him feel like a little child.

October 12, 10:32 PM

“Yeah, terrible. I knew them well, I used to go to the gym with Charles. Him and the kids are still missing, too.”

Dick stops near the table, pretending to clean up something. What is it about children missing?

“You think the dad - Charles, right? You think he could have done it?”

This is the question Dick is also asking himself. He will have to dig up some police files tonight.

“I don’t know,” says the man at the table, “They seemed like nice folks, Luz had her own business, it was going well, he was a graphic designer, they planned to move to Metropolis… Y’know, better school for the kids, they said.”

Dick almost snorts. Yeah, as a teacher in Gotham who was hired with little to no experience, maybe a school in Metropolis would have been better. He will do his best to make sure they can see school. Be it in Gotham, Metropolis, or anywhere else.

“Their marriage was pretty standard, you know, I’ve been to their house a few times, but you never know what happens behind closed doors. God, I am so stupid. I saw him, you know, I saw Charles as some kind of mentor. But if someone like him, good job, no precedents, good marriage and all, if someone like him can snaps and what? Fucking murder his wife and kidnap his kids, what hope is left for the rest of us?”  

The other man at the table calls him and he takes their orders. “To Luz,” he says when Dick brings their drinks.

“To Luz,” the other man replies. “And I’m not often on the side of cops, but I really hope they find the kids. If I was a bit braver, I would go to my contacts but… that’s going to get me a bullet in the head.”

You won’t have to, Dick thinks. Nightwing will be brave for him and find them.

 October 13, 1:26 AM

There is still nothing more than there was the day before about Gregory Frye in the GCPD cases, but he does find a Charles and Luz Prelatte case. She’d been hit in the head with a heavy object and was dead by the time the cops came in after a neighbor complained of the noise; kids and husband are nowhere to be seen. There were no traces of forced entry. The husband is a primary suspect, obviously. The question is: where is he? Where could he and the children be hiding? The police already questioned his friends and checked a bunch of possible locations, without success.

They need someone with a different approach. They need Nightwing. And Nightwing they will have.

 October 13, 2:05 AM

The first thing he notices upon entering the crime scene is that he’s not the first one who’s been here. The first person is good, he gives them that, but he’s better.

He follows their tracks to a big desk in the corner, which both Luz and Charles apparently shared. Did the idiot go back to get his computer or something? But, no, the tracks don’t go to what he assumes is Charles’ side of the desk, with color palettes and logo samples printed. Instead, he finds himself opening Luz’s drawers, looking for something missing. There are tons of documents about her company, plans of getting bigger, hiring, new clients… and it looks like it was really going well for her.

He does a double take when he finds a video cassette. Luz was the founder and CEO of a tech company. It seems uncharacteristic that she would use a cassette tape, especially for something work related. He pockets it and hopes he remembers to put it back if it’s nothing.

October 13, 2:35 AM

It appears very quicky, as he watches it, that the video cassette is a major clue. It shows someone with a mask, as well as Charles and the two kids, all tied up in chairs, with gags in their mouths.

“Since you need a little more encouragement,” the person in the mask says, their voice artificially distorted. They hit Charles in the face. “You know what to do.”

So, this is a ransom call. The police are looking in the wrong direction. Charles is innocent, and a victim, at that. Something in Dick is relieved at the thought. He thinks of the guy at the bar, and thinks there is hope for him, despite whatever was in his past. He thinks that despite everything, the kids will still have a parent.

But that doesn’t help him much in finding them. They look like they are on the docks, in one of the warehouses like there are so many. Looking at them all will take time the kids might not have if whoever has them doesn’t realize Luz is dead and starts to get impatient. He watches the video a few times, tries to increase the background sound, but he finds nothing that could identify the location. Time to try things differently.

The location of the cassette is an important parameter. It was with the documents about Luz’s company. Whoever this person wants is probably related to that, then. Luz had an associate, a woman named Luna McLeod. Maybe that’s where he should start.  

October 14, 2:58 AM

It doesn’t take long to find Luna McLeod’s flat. Despite the late hour, she’s still awake, playing a flashy video game on her computer with headphones. Her place is a long shot from Luz’s. Dick can see four cats, and there’s a mess of gadgets all around the place. Luna herself has blue hair and tattoos. He knocks on the window, and she jumps.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“I’m Nightwing,” he replies. “I’m here to talk about Luz Prelatte.”

And, from his experience, there are a few possible solutions here, depending on her involvement with the case. Either she is going to run, threaten him or… yeah. She starts crying loudly.

“I’m sorry,” she says, opening the window. “I know who you are,” and despite the situation, he can’t help but feel a bit of pride blossom in his heart. She knows who Nightwing is. “I… Luz was my best friend. The police came already. You think Charles did it? Him and I, we didn’t really get along that well, but I thought he was good for Luz, I never saw anything, I… I feel so stupid.”

Dick put his hand on her shoulder, ignoring how much his own shoulder screams at him. “You’re not stupid. And I don’t think Charles is the culprit.” He knows he’s taking a risk, telling her that, but she’s not the person in the mask - she’s way shorter and not as muscular as they are. Besides, on top of her tears, which seem genuine, her behavior isn’t that of someone who has people kidnapped. Her guard isn’t up, and she opened the window for him with a bit of apprehension, but not more than the situation would grant for. Besides, the mess, and the video game… He knows this behavior. She’s keeping herself busy, numbing herself. She’s in grief.

“I think her murder was related to your company.”

Luna gasps. “I…” She looks around, her eyes lingering a bit on her cats. If he had to guess, he would say they are the most precious thing to her, now that Luz is gone. “Do you think I’m in danger too?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. What can you tell me about Cichlid Tech?”

She takes a deep breath. Sits down. “Do you want tea?” she suddenly asks. “I didn’t offer tea, I should have offered tea, I’m sorry.”

“I’m good, thank you.” She’s a mess, and by the way the idea of tea immediately fills him with a longing for the manor, for Alfred’s teapot and cups and for home, he might be too. “What can you tell me about your company? I don’t need any trade secrets or anything, but… would someone be upset enough with your progress to resort to drastic actions?”

She sobs a bit more. “It wasn’t my company. I mean, it was, but Luz was the one carrying everythin., I’m just… I mean, look at me! I’m just a geek, I’m a loser, I can’t go on without her…”

He kneels down and wipes her tears. “You can. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re stronger than you think you are, I know it. And I need you to be very strong and tell me anything that comes to your mind about anyone who would have wanted something only she could have given them.”

“I… I don’t think Andrew…”

“Who is Andrew?”

“Andrew Willis. He created the company with us, back when we were students. He wanted to sell it a few years in, but we disagreed. Luz and I we… We really believed in our work. We believed… Luz believed we would be the new Wayne Tech. I know it sounds stupid, but-”

“It doesn’t,” he says, smiling at her. “And, hey. Between you and me, Wayne Tech is not that good.” It is. And he misses the gadgets every day. He misses everything, really.

“So, we bought his part, and he went on to do his own thing. But now that we are, that we were growing, thinking of moving to Metropolis and hiring more people and all, he came back and tried to buy his share back. We refused, because he didn’t do the work to get Cichlid Tech where it is, and it’s too easy to come back just as things are getting brighter. But… Andrew is our friend. It’s true that we had a falling out, but he wouldn’t do that.”

That’s still something. He can work with that. He thanks Luna, and, with a few words of comfort to her, he leaves.

He makes sure to stick a tracker on her on the way out, though. One can never be too careful.

October 14, 3:51 AM

Andrew Willis is easy to find. Dick doesn’t have an easy way of figuring out which warehouse is the one where Charles and the kids are, but at least Andrew Willis is sleeping in his own apartment. Dick doesn’t really know how to proceed. He can see a camera on a desk, but he doubts the video will still be in it. There are also tools that could have been used to enter the crime scene.

He could terrorize him - shake him and force him to confess. But that is the Batman way. He needs to do things differently. He needs to do this like Nightwing would.

That still involves scarring the guy. He gets inside as quietly as possible, and climbs on the ceiling, knowing full well his body is not at a natural angle.

“Where are Charles Prelatte and his children?” he asks when he sees the man stirring, and Andrew just jumps.

“Did Luz send you?” he asks, and Dick didn’t expect a confession so fast. “She must really be determined to not give me what is mine. I guess she cares about that company more than she cares about her family, I’m sure Charles will be happy to-”

“Luz Prelatte is dead. That’s why I’m here.”

Andrew swallows compulsively. “What? No. I just… I hit her, but she was just asleep.”

He seems so distressed, part of Dick almost wants to comfort him. But another part remembers he holds a man and two children hostage in a warehouse.

“You will not get what you want. Not from Luz, not from anyone. It’s over, Andrew. Tell me where they are.”

“Well, if Luz can’t help, I need to go find-”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Dick quickly falls from the ceiling and gets the man’s hands behind his back. Andrew fights a bit, but nothing Dick can’t handle. Once he safely secures him to his bed, he starts searching the place for any indication of the man and kids’ location.

It takes him a bit of work - he has to rummage through the entire apartment - but he eventually gets his hands on a key, with a warehouse number. The whole time, Andrew is yelling at him about his rights and how Nightwing is in so much trouble with his lawyers.

Dick doesn’t really think he’s in trouble, but the screams make his head hurt. He’s happy when he’s finally flying on the Gotham skies, coursing through the night. This is the kind of moment where he can forget everything and just be free.

October 14, 5:02 AM

He hates Gotham Harbor and its endless rows of warehouses. He hates even more that he constantly has to look over his shoulder, afraid to see Batman or Robin. He’s too tired to deal with Bruce now. He doesn’t need to hear that Gordon got his call about Andrew or how he could have done things differently, how he could have been better.

What he really needs, he thinks as he opens the door of the warehouse, is a win. He really, really needs a win.

He lets out a breath when he sees the three chairs, and in them, a man and two kids.

He runs toward them, untying them as fast as he can.

“Hey, hey, I’m here to help you,” he whispers. “Are you hurt?”

The kids shake their heads. They are terrified, but hopefully nothing worse. “We’re okay,” Charles says. “But… What about my wife? She was injured.”

Dick looks at them. This part never gets easier, and there’s no right way to say it, especially in front of the kids. From the way his face breaks, Charles seems to understand.

“I’m sorry,” Dick says. He should probably call the police. He should probably tell them that the family, or what’s left of it, have been found. But he remembers going away in a police car, that night at the circus, away from everything and everyone he loved. He remembers the long hours he spent waiting for Bruce or Alfred to get him after a kidnapping, so he asks, “Is there anywhere safe you could go?”   

“To Aunt Luna’s,” says the older of the two kids, a girl with curly hair and big glasses.

For a second, Dick looks at Charles. He remembers what Luna said about the two not being exactly friendly. But he sighs, and says, “Yeah, let’s go to Aunt Luna’s.”

Charles looks utterly defeated, but he doesn’t cry. Neither do the kids, who maybe don’t quite understand yet that they will never see their mother again. They are also very tired, and the walk is long. At some point, Charles takes the youngest in his arms.

“Do you want to hop in?” Dick asks, looking at the older girl, holding his own out to her.

Despite the situation, she smiles when he takes her in his arms. She’s asleep within minutes.

October 14, 6:47 AM

The arrival to Luna’s place is quiet, and they go in by the front door, something Dick isn’t used to doing as Nightwing. It’s only once the kids are safely in the bedroom, the cats sleeping protectively around them, that Luna talks.

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” she says. She’s a bit calmer than when Dick saw her, but she looks like she hasn’t slept all night.

Charles offers her a sad smile. “I never really gave you a reason to appreciate me, I’m the one who should be sorry. But I… The kids are going to need you.”

“I’m going to need you guys too, I… I don’t know what to do now.”

“Me neither. I wish I… Me neither.”

Dick looks at them from the corner of the room. The road ahead is long and painful, but they have each other.

“Look,” Luna says. “The sun is rising.”

Dick looks at the window. The sun is rising. This night is over. 

Shit. The sun is rising.

October 14, 7:39 AM

Dick is welcomed by groans of disappointment. “Mr. Grayson, why did you have to come?” Why indeed. “You know if you’re ten minutes late, we’re legally allowed to skip!”

He doesn’t think this is true, but he keeps a smile on his face as he says, “Well, I’m here now, so let’s start warming up!” He keeps up the cheery façade, even if the two all-nighters in a row start to take a toll on him. He’s met with another concert of groans for his troubles. “Because today we’re playing dodgeball!”

That gets him some cheers. Good. The dodgeball strategy tends to work. Maybe his fellow teachers would scold him for that, but it’s not like he was mentored much anyway. So, if the kids are happy with dodgeball, dodgeball they will have. He owes them that, for being almost ten minutes late.

His back shoulder aches when he shows them the warming up moves. He hasn’t had time to check it properly; he just took a quick shower and changed the bandages. But it wasn’t bad yesterday, so he assumes it’s just the sting of healing, combined with his exertion of the night. He’s fine. He got this.

October 14, 12:12 PM

“Dick?”

He wants to groan or grunt or yell. He doesn’t need anyone else needing him, the kids already exhausted him enough. But he’s not like that, he’s better than that. He’s better than Bruce. So, he says, “Yes?”

“Um, did I catch you at a bad time?” It’s Miranda Joy, the English teacher.

“No, not at all,” he says with a smile, hoping he doesn’t look as tired as he feels.

“It’s about Andy. I know it’s none of my business, but I also know you offered your help, and I think she needs it.”    

“She said I could complicate things…”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know what I know. Her ex is in town. This is… you know how it is. Yesterday, I offered her to go to my place for the night; I don’t know why I did that, instinct, I think - I didn’t want her to be alone, and all that. Anyway as I was picking her up, I saw him. I think he’s stalking her, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want her to panic, and she doesn’t want to involve the police, but if… I don’t know, you’re young, you’re fit, I’m not asking you to beat him up or anything but, you know where she lives, you were invited to the barbecue this summer, right? I would keep vigil, but I’m too scared… But if you could scare him into getting out of Gotham and staying away? She and I would be grateful.”

She looks at him for a second before saying, “I know I’m asking for a lot.”

“You’re not,” he immediately says. “I don’t know how much I can help, I’m not very intimidating.” Except, he is; or at least, Nightwing is. “But I can check on her tonight.”

She looks so relieved at that, it almost makes him forget it adds one more thing to his schedule.

Almost.

October 14, 3:10 PM

“Sabrina isn’t here today?” he asks the team as the girls warm up. “Or is she late?” It’s weird. She’s usually the first one on the track, missing practices for nothing.

“She said she wasn’t feeling well and she went home,” one of the girls says. He ums. She seemed fine yesterday, but he’s going to trust her if she says she’s not feeling up to practice. He makes a mental note to check on her before saying, “Send her well wishes from me. And, hey, any of you guys interested in joining the circus art program I’m trying to start?”

That got them to laugh and tell him to stop it. “But you’ll always be our track and field coach, right? You’re the best one we had so far!”  

He smiles. “I’ll try! You guys are a good team, too. It would be a shame to not be the one who sees you get to the top.” They have a meet soon and they are pretty excited for it. Since the beginning of the school year, he’s seen them improving their confidence and skills around him. See, he can be a mentor. Even if it’s just to a bunch of girls who like running. “Now, on the track you go! There is only one way to go to the top, and it’s not by talking!”

Wednesday, October 15, 0:46 AM

“Ok, sir, you’ve had enough.” And Dick’s shift is almost over, so he would rather not have to take care of a drunk man for hours, that would be great.

The man throws up on the sidewalk once they’re outside. “It’s my night off,” he complains. “I don’t drink when I work, I swear.”

“And I believe you. Is there anyone I can call to come pick you up?” His shoulder aches where he’s holding the man up.  

“My wife, my… her number is on my phone. Oh, fuck, she’s gonna kill me. Doesn’t matter, I’m dead anyway. But I didn’t have a choice.”

“Okay,” Dick says, “I’m going to look in your pockets for your phone, now, alright?”

The man nods and he starts looking for a phone. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you have a choice? Maybe I can help?”

The man laughs. “Unless you can dismantle Gotham’s gangs, I don’t think you can, no.” Dick almost smiles. He would be surprised.

“I’m not going to work tomorrow, nor the day after,” the man whispers very fast. “I’m a security guard on the docks, and I’m not going to work tomorrow, or the day after. I’ve been paid a lot to make it look as if I clocked in, and then go away. I couldn’t refuse, I don’t know what they would have done to me if I said no! But I can’t lose my job now, not with the baby!”

“Paid? By whom?”

The man looks at him, him, and puts his hand up to speak conspiratorially, which works fantastically with his loud slur of a whisper. “Trust me, kid. It’s better if you don’t know.” Dick isn’t sure about that, but he nods, and calls the man’s wife. She curses and says she’s on her way. Once he sees a car pull out in front of the bar and a very pregnant woman gets out, he knows it’s her. She thanks him and gets her husband in the car, not without yelling at him a lot. Dick doesn’t understand everything, but he clearly makes out, “…and drinking on your own when you know I can’t drink? Unfair.”

His shift is almost over, but he has important information. He knows there’s something going on at the docks tomorrow and the day after. Where exactly, and by whom, he doesn’t know, but he plans on figuring it out. But first, he needs to check on Andy.

Wednesday, October 15, 1:30 AM

“And look who’s there? Looking in a lady’s window late at night?”

The man looks up. “That is none of your-” He stops when he can’t see anyone. “Who’s there?”

Dick loves that trick. “Someone who wants to know why you’re watching a woman in her own home. After she had… um… she had a restraining order against you, didn’t she?”  

The man still looks around. “Are you a cop?”

Dick taps on his shoulder once and then disappears. He laughs. “Oh, no, honey, I’m much worse than that. And if you don’t get away from her and get out of Gotham soon, I’ll show you just how much worse I can be.”

“You can’t… You… You’re bluffing!”

So he’s going to have to do it, hmm? He braces himself. Won’t be fun with the still-injured shoulder. He drops down silently, takes the guy under his arms, and then pulls the both of them up. The man screams.

“Shhh, you’re going to wake her up.”  

“Let me go!”

“Are you sure?”

“No, put me down! I’ll leave, just put me down!”

“That’s more like it.”

That was fast, thankfully. He gets the both of them down, and puts himself in front of a streetlight, hoping it will make him look taller than he is. “Leave this city,” he says, “and never come back.”

The man looks like he’s ready to pee himself, so he considers this a success. He will have to check if he’s really gone, but for now, he hopes he won’t bother Andy anymore.

October 15, 2:18 AM

“Let me go, you motherfucker! Help!”

He turns down the alley he hears the screams coming from. He finds a young woman with what seems to be a much older, much stronger man.

“I think she sad no,” he says as he rushes to them.

The man just slowly turns his head to look at him. “And why would you care? This is Gotham. No one cares about people like her.”

“I do,” Dick says. “Get away from her.”

The man grunts, goes to punch him. Too slow. Dick moves fast to avoid getting hit and gets behind him, zip tying the man’s wrists in a few seconds.

“Are you okay?” he asks the woman. “I’m going to call the police.”

“I don’t want to call the police, I just want to go home.”

Dick winces internally. Without her testimony, there is no way the man will be charged. But still, he can’t go against her will, so he just walks her home.

October 15, 2:44 AM

On his way back, just after calling Gordon to give him the location of the man, and hearing confirmation that he can’t be charged without a testimony and that Nightwing doesn’t count as a witness, he makes the mistake to look up.

And that’s when he sees them.  

Robin’s colors are bright in the sky, Batman like a shadow next to him. They’re probably on their way back; tomorrow is a school day, after all.

He suddenly remembers the words from the man he caught. No one cares about people like her.

Batman and Robin fly too high, he realizes as he turns into his street. They see the big picture, but they don’t look enough at the corners. At the details. The details that could change a life.

Dick does. He tries to. He’s not Batman, he’s not Robin. He’s something else.

And something else might be what Gotham needs.

But for now, and if he wants to do good, he needs to sleep.

October 15, 6:30 AM

Maybe sleeping was a bad idea because he somehow feels worse when his alarm rings than he did last night. Still, he has to go to work. He’s glad the team isn’t training this afternoon, despite what he said to them yesterday. At least he might be able to catch some more sleep and maybe look up what’s happening tonight during that time. For now, he just gets ready for a long day ahead of him.

October 15, 12:04 PM

“Dick?”

He smiles. “Andy, hey, how are you?”

She let out a small laugh. “I heard Julian - my ex - I heard he left Gotham this morning. And Miranda confessed she talked to you. I don’t know what you did, or even if you did something… I don’t want to know. But, if you were the one who made him leave, thank you. I can sleep better knowing he’s away.”

Before he can answer, she smiles and says, “I told you, I don’t want to know. I’m leaving you to your break.”

And just like that, she’s gone. But it means he helped. With Luz’s family. With Andy. With the woman yesterday. He helped them. Nightwing can do good. He’s got this.

October 15, 3:01 PM

“Sabrina?” he calls out as he sees her in the corridor. “Are you okay? You weren’t at practice yesterday. Are you feeling better?”

She looks embarrassed. “I think I’m going to stop being part of the running team,” she says, her eyes on the ground.

“Really? Why? You seemed really enthusiastic about it.”

She let out a badly concealed sob.

“Sabrina, what’s going on? Talk to me.”

She finally looks at him, eyes filled with tears. “My dad says if I don’t get better at math, I’ll have to stop being part of the team because it’s taking too much time. I don’t know what to do, I get stressed when I don’t run and when I get stressed, I can’t focus on numbers and stuff!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. We will talk to you father, and how about we talk with Mrs. Evans, as well, and see what she can do to help you understand math?”

She nods. “I have homework for tomorrow and I can’t understand a thing and Mrs. Evans has already gone home,” she says.

He sighs internally. There goes his nap. “I could help you, if you want.”

She looks at him with big eyes. “But you’re the gym teacher.”   

He raises an eyebrow. “And? I’m still pretty good at math.”

She looks like she’s still suspicious of his skills, but it’s not like she has a choice, so she finally agrees, and the two of them make their way to the library.

As she explains her issues and questions, he wonders if Jason is struggling the same way. He and Sabrina are about the same age, they must have a similar curriculum. Gotham Academy is stricter than the school he works in, and Jason was a bit late on his studies. He told Dick, one day, that he liked school, but maybe he still has some troubles with classes. And he seemed more like an English kid than a math kid. Maybe Dick would have been able to help him, like he’s helping Sabrina, even if the numbers dance before his eyes as he does.

Maybe, if things had been different, Dick would have been able to be as there as he wishes he was for Jason. But he can’t look at Jason without thinking about Bruce’s betrayal. About him giving Robin to another kid without consulting Dick first.

But Jason seems happy, and he repeats over and over that Robin saved him, almost the same way Robin saved Dick, too, so he can’t blame the kid. Can’t hate him. He tries to connect with him, he does. They exchanged numbers, they talk, Jason even asked if he could come to his place a few weeks ago. Dick hasn’t answered yet.

“Woah,” says Sabrina. “You’re really good at math, and really good at explaining it. I wasn’t expecting that from you.”

“What, do I look stupid?”

She turns red. “No, that wasn’t what I meant, it’s just-”

He smiles. “Relax, you’re not in trouble. I’m glad I could help.” He is. Even if the prospect of a night at the bar, followed by patrol, makes him want to hit his head on the desk.

October 15, 10:22 PM

The tray shakes in his right hand, and Dick has to bring his left arm to stabilize it. Maybe scooping up Andy’s ex worsened his shoulder more than he thought it would. That, plus carrying the kid the night before.

He will look into it tonight, check if anything is wrong with the wound. But first, he has to figure out where the drunk man from the night before was working and how dangerous the event that will take place tonight will become. Then, depending on the situation, he might take a day off. He’s not working at the bar tomorrow, he can rest for the night.

Batman, Robin, and Batgirl have the city covered, after all. If he’s as useless as Bruce seems to think he is, he can spend one night resting and recovering.

“Are these beers coming today or tomorrow?! Move, boy!” he hears someone yell and he realizes he was spacing out. He must be even more tired than he thinks he is. He hurries to the men and gives them their drinks, hoping no one else noticed. The last thing he needs is to get yelled at by his boss.

October 16, 1:12 AM

He finds the man he saw the night before in the databases of Gotham’s employees and he’s grateful for online databases. All it takes now is a bit of hacking. When he was a kid, he had sneaked into official buildings on multiple occasions to get important documents. It was actually one of the first things Bruce trusted him to do on his own, he thinks fondly, before the memory gets tainted by bitter nostalgia he probably shouldn’t have.

He’s okay. He’s the one who chose to leave, or at least he thinks so. It was complicated.

It’s better thos way. He has to think that way, especially in moments like this, where he’s hurting and tired. He has to think like this, otherwise he’ll just crumble, and he can’t crumble. Not now. He needs to figure out what’s going on in this part of the docks.

Thursday, October 16, 2:53 AM

“I’m sure all of you are wondering what’s going on, and why I’ve gathered you here.”

Dick is wondering that, too. He’s been waiting for over an hour, just watching people gather ‘round - some faces he knew as goons of Gotham, some he didn’t. That is, until a man in a suit showed up. He can’t see his face very well, but his silhouette is somewhat familiar.

He shivers. Fall had been kind so far, with milder temperatures than normal, but he guesses there is only so much Gotham can offer in October… And he had been static for a while. He wants to move, he does, but he has to listen to whatever this person has to say.

“Cut the drama,” someone yells in the small crowd. “We know you have a job for us!”

Dick hears a small laugh from the man. “I do, yes. I’ve gathered you here because I have a very simple job for the ones who are willing to take it. Tomorrow, at 1 AM, a boat will sail into this dock. I need you to unload it and put the contents in a truck. No questions. $200 each tomorrow at the beginning, $400 more when the job is done.”

Someone whistles in the crowd. “Not that I’m saying no to a night at six hundred bucks, but I have to ask… Any chance of the Bat showing up?”

“He has shown no sign that he knows or cares about our operations. If you are fast enough, which I believe you will be, you have nothing to worry about, from him or from us.”

Dick smiles. Maybe Batman isn’t on to them, but he is. And these guys have no idea what’s going to happen to them. Tomorrow at 1AM? Good thing he’s not at the bar then, he thinks, before remembering he had planned on giving the information to Batgirl and not taking care of the case by himself.

“And who is ‘us’ exactly? I’m not working for anyone!” says a tall woman in the group. He knows her, she’s been with Two-Face for a while, but he guesses it didn’t work out, or maybe she wanted to be paid a bit more than $222 a night.    

“That is a good question,” the man in a suit replies, and Dick agrees. He wants to know, too. “You, ladies and gentlemen, will have the honor to work for the rising man of the underworld, the next big name of Gotham.”

“Stop it with the monologue! We’re freezing our asses out here! We want a name!” Once again, Dick agrees with a bad guy.

“You’ll have the privilege of working for Gregory Frye.”   

Dick ears buzz. Thus far, his plan had been to gather information, then call Barbara and let her report to the Bat if necessary. Now, he doesn’t know what he’s going to say.

“Hey, remember the guy I told you might be a big deal but you guys told me he wasn’t and I was being obsessive? Turns out he is a big deal, but I’m a bit tired and my shoulder hurts, so could you handle that please? Thank you.”

Yeah. No fucking way.

It’s his case, Frye is his prey, and he’s going to handle this himself. Besides, if it’s just the goons that are gathered there, he can take them on his own. At least on a good day.     

He’s an adult. He’s a solo vigilante. And he’s capable.

He will show them. He will show him.

October 16, 6:30 AM

Dick is still cold when he wakes up. He is also, he realizes, still in his Nightwing uniform. He probably crashed as soon as he got home, when the adrenaline receded. He changes quickly, remembering from the deep ache that he had meant to look at his shoulder.

He doesn’t really have time now, so he washes it and changes the bandage, barely bothering to look at it when he throws it away. He puts his aching head on the wall. Tonight, he stops whatever Gregory Frye is planning, and then, he will take a well-deserved rest. He feels like crap.

And maybe he should look into his heater, or maybe his insulation, he thinks as he shivers again. It’s not normal that his apartment is so cold, he should really do something about that before winter sets in. But for now, he should just go to school and hope it’s a quiet day.     

October 16, 8:45 AM

The kid screams and Dick has to stop himself from wincing. If only because if he does, the child will see it as proof that his foot is actually badly injured and panic even more. Dick is pretty sure he’s screaming more out of fear than pain, or maybe to not lose face, or maybe because he thinks if he doesn’t, Dick will force him to go back to run the mile.

“It’s just a mild sprain; here, let me bandage it.”

The kid doesn’t have appropriate running shoes. He had told the parents about the importance of good shoes, but some of them don’t have the means to buy a new pair of shoes for their kids, and some outright don’t care about their children’s wellbeing.

His hands shake around the bandage. He’s fine. It’s nothing. He can do this.

And to say he wanted a quiet, easy day.

“Do you want to go to the nurse’s office?” The kid nods. “Okay,” Dick says. “Everyone else be quiet while I walk him. I will know if you behave badly.” And to the laughs, he replies, “Don’t think I won’t.”

As he starts walking, supporting the injured teen with his left shoulder, he hears the class start talking loudly. He rolls his eyes. As long as it’s just chatting, it’s fine.

October 16, 8:51 AM

“Alright, you’re all set,” he says once the kid is on a cot. “The nurse should be here any minute now. Do you need me to stay, or can I go back to class?”

The kid smiles. “I’ll be fine. Thank you, Mr. Grayson.”

And for a second, Dick doesn’t regret forcing himself out of bed this morning. 

October 16, 2:18 PM

“Mr. Grayson!”

Yeah, they don’t need to call him, he already saw, and he’s already running toward where two kids had apparently decided his class was a good place to start a fight.

“Stop it!” he screams, putting himself between the two boys. “What’s going on?!”

The other kids had gathered themselves around the two fighters, which doesn’t help him in his task. One of the teens moves, and hits him in the back shoulder, and…

He sees stars for a second. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, and the students have stopped fighting. Every single one of them is looking at him with horror.

“Sir? Are you okay?” a girl asks shyly, somewhere in the group.

“I barely touched him, he just fell,” says the boy who apparently pushed him. Dick blinks. Grits his teeth.

“You two,” he says to the fighters. “Principal’s office. The rest of you, go back to running.” And to the chorus of protests, he yells, “Now!”

He sees disappointment in their faces, and he can’t help some guilt from blossoming in his heart. He had never wanted to be the kind of teacher who yells at students when tired or frustrated. But he can’t help it. Right now, he is both, and hurting on top of that.

Was that how Bruce felt? Was that why he was screaming? Is he becoming like Bruce? He shakes his head. No need to think about that now. He just needs to get through the day. Finish his classes, and then find out what’s happening with the ship tonight.

October 16, 4:26 PM

“Coach? Do you want to stop the practice now?”

He blinks. Raises his head. He sat on the bench for a second and maybe spaced out for a bit. Now that there is a little sun, he feels so hot, where he couldn’t help feeling cold the night before. The girls seemed fine running, though, so he let them.

“Hm? What’s the matter, Sabrina? Aren’t you excited to be back?”

She looks uncertain. “I am, but you don’t seem well. And a friend told me you fell today.”

He does his best to smile. Even his makeup skills have their limits, it seems. “I’m okay. And I’m not the one running, so if you guys are up to it, we can start the next exercise.”

Thankfully, she lets the subject drop.  

October 17, 0:32 AM

He’s had better days coursing the Gotham harbor, but he manages to find the boat fairly quickly, shortly before it docks. He climbs on it.

It doesn’t take him long to locate the crates the men had been hired to unload. He expects heroin or cocaine in it.

It’s not.

It’s Venom, he realizes with horror. Gallons of it.

Gregory Frye deals with Bane. That means Bane, who, to his knowledge, hasn’t made anyone talk about him in months, is up to something.

And if Bane is involved, he needs to let Batman know. He can do things on his own, but he won’t withhold information like this.   

But for now, he needs to make sure these containers never touch shore. He could sink the ship. It would be easy enough, but not without risks for the people working on it. He studies the way the crates are tied to the ship’s wall, all while staying out of view.

He can make them fall in the water. Given their weight, recovering them would be impossible before the authorities are involved. Dick doesn’t need to fight, doesn’t want to fight. But he can slow down the operation until Gordon has been notified and a police force dispatched in the area. The crooks will run or be arrested. The Venom will be recovered and put to safety. And whatever alliance Gregory Frye thinks he can have with Bane will be weakened. For tonight, he will count that as a win.

Dick places his charges. Hides. Places some more charges. Hides again as the ship docks. Then, he jumps back into the small boat he “borrowed” from the harbor security, dashes to the shore and grapples to the top of a building. Good.

He detonates his charges. There are some screams. He watches with satisfaction as the crates move, slide, and finally drop to the bottom of the ocean.

He smiles. Now, he just has to notify Gordon, and he will be able to go home and rest. The men will look for him, he can’t stay here, but he plans to be gone long before they get to his location.

“He’s here!” Someone screams from just under him. “It’s the Bat’s little dog!”

What?

There were more people. Frye hired goons to make a security perimeter. He didn’t think of that, and he probably should have.

One look, and he realizes this is too many people to take on his own. His plan doesn’t change. So, he’s spotted. And so, what? He can outrun them on the rooftops of Gotham any day.

He starts flying and they move with him. It soon becomes apparent that there are more pursuers after him than he first expected.

That doesn’t change anything. He was grappling on these rooftops since he was eight. Between Batman, Batgirl, and him, he always was the fastest. He’s faster than these guys. On a good day, he’s faster than Gotham’s crows, even.

Today is not a good day.

Today is not a good day, and when his right arm decides it’s done with him, suddenly and catastrophically, he barely has time to catch himself on a building with his left one.

He climbs the rest of the way. He still can get away. He’s still faster than them. He still can get away. He’s still-

There is a gun pointed at him when he reaches the rooftop. He rolls and the bullet buries itself on the roof’s concrete. The woman holding the gun curses as she reloads, and Dick thinks for a second that he will be able to grapple away from her.

That is, until something hits him in the back of the head. He didn’t see what happened, didn’t even notice another goon. Over the blur in his eyes, over the ringing in his ears, he notices the woman aiming again.       

He rolls. His back is met with a void.

There is a split second when time stops. When he realizes he was at the edge of the building and the only thing that awaits him is a short trip in emptiness followed by Gotham’s asphalt.

He’s falling.

He doesn’t have time to shoot his grapple again, doesn’t have time to stop himself, but somehow, he still has time to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t have rolled.

What is better? Death by gunshot or death by falling?

Who had it worse? Bruce’s parents, or his?

He doesn’t find out. Gotham’s streets don’t welcome him to crash on them. There is an impact, because a fall this fast would lead to an impact, but after it passes, he realizes he’s still alive.

He didn’t crash. Or, at least, he didn’t crash on the streets.

Something falls on him and it takes him a few seconds to realize it’s a trash bag.

A trash bag falls on him, then another, and another, and he realizes he’s disturbed a precarious equilibrium by falling on this garbage container.

“Where is he?” he hears someone ask and he holds his breath and keeps as steady as possible.

“Must have run away.” Good. The bags are hiding him. “I’m not paid enough for this…”

He lets out a breath when he hears the steps moving away. He’s not comfortable, not by a long shot, but his best chance might be to wait until the goons are gone before leaving. He closes his eyes. He’s probably concussed, not to mention whatever other injuries he could have gotten in the fall, and not to mention whatever is happening with his shoulder. But he’s alive. There was a garbage container to cushion his fall. Gotham had been kind to him.

But because it’s Gotham, and Gotham is never kind two times in a row, this is when big, heavy raindrops start falling from the sky.

He’s still buried in trash, and for an unknown amount of time, he just contemplates his situation, unable to do much more.

It’s raining.

The water droplets are making a repetitive, soothing noise against the container, and he understands why some people listen to rain to fall asleep. The sound is closer to the sound rain made on the manor’s window than it is to the one it made on the fabric of their circus tent. He liked this sound. It was so loud. He always liked to scream with the rain.

His feet, he realizes, are covered in water. The container is filling, and little pieces of trash are floating around him. Maybe he broke some bags when he fell, or maybe people put bagless trash in the container. Possibly both.

The container is filling with water. It will become like the pool in the manor, or like that lake in Croatia. Like Gotham Harbor, where Jason almost drowned what seems like an eternity ago.

The water is still rising. From where he is, half lying down in a mountain of trash, he can see his knees standing out, but he also feels the water on his belly. It’s cold, it’s so cold, and maybe he should have taken Bruce’s offer to go home, even if the situation wasn’t the same and even if home doesn’t exist anymore.

He will drown, he realizes, detached from reality. If he stays here, the water will rise, and then he will drown and die.       

He doesn’t want to die. He knows that. He doesn’t know a lot, he’s still lost most of the time, he doesn’t know how to be an adult, he doesn’t know who he is and who he should be, but he knows he doesn’t want to die.

If he dies, who will jump after Jason next time he falls in the harbor? Who will help him with his math homework?

The thought surprises him. He never helped Jason with math homework, doesn’t even know if the kid needs help. He helped Sabrina, but that’s another thing.

The water is rising. He doesn’t want to die.

He needs to do something. He can’t hear a thing, so he assumes the people who were after him are long gone.

He needs to move.

He forces his body to follow his commands, but when it finally answers, he can barely push himself more than half a foot. His entire right arm is useless, and despite the pain in his head, he can still feel a stabbing agony in his shoulder. This is stupid. The wound was so small, he knows the bullet was mainly stopped by his suit. When he removed it, it had barely gone in. He should not be in that much pain.

Stupid or not, he’s not getting out of this container on his own. Time to face it. He needs help.

He pushes his left hand into the water, that is now almost at his chest, to get his communicator. Alfred gave it to him, and he did some modifications of his own. With a shaking hand, he removes the mechanism that prevents the thing from sharing his location and now…

He looks at the small screen. He needs to find Batgirl. Barbara will tease him gently, and maybe she’ll make that weird face she makes, now, when she’s remined that things aren’t the same as they have been, but she’ll help him out of the container and maybe get him to the clinic or something. She won’t judge him. She will understand, or maybe she won’t, not exactly, but she won’t judge him.

His finger moves until he gets to the right name. Batgirl. And then, he presses call. As soon as he sees the little green dot that shows the person on the other end has picked up, he says, “Hey, so um… I need help. You should be able to see my location. This is…” The water is still rising, his entire back is submerged, now. “This is pretty urgent, actually.”   

“Affirmative, we see your location. We’re close. What’s your status?”

He feels his heart drop. This is not Batgirl. He didn’t call Batgirl. He was so sure of himself, but then again, the names look alike, the screen is small, and letters were dancing in front of his eyes even before he got hit in the head.

“I’m in a garbage container,” he says. He can’t help it - it’s a reflex, intuition. Batman asks a question, and he answers. “I can’t move. Water is filling it.”

He hears a sharp breath on the other end of the line. “How long until you’re under water?”

Dick looks at the water. How long? He doesn’t know, doesn’t want to think about it. But he can’t say that to Bruce, he can’t say that to Batman, and the longer he waits to answer, the more he can feel the disappointment leaking from the comm. Maybe Batman won’t come. Maybe he will leave him here. He didn’t jump after Jason, did he?

The water is rising, just his face is above it now, and maybe there are tears running down his face, but he’s not sure. He’s not sure of much, he’s hot and cold at the same time, half-awake and half-asleep, perhaps half-dead already.

There’s something burning in the back of his throat, and maybe this is tears and maybe this isn’t and he opens his mouth at the same time his stomach revolts.

October 17, Nighttime.

At least the vomit is already right where it belongs in the garbage container, he thinks grimly as he watches his pre patrol meal floating in the water. He’s still alive, and his head is still above water, so he must not have blacked out for long, but the comm is telling him to hold on, and that someone is almost at his location. That safety is almost at his location. That Batman will soon be there.

Except Batman doesn’t mean safety anymore. Batman hadn’t meant safety in a while, now. Why is there still part of him that holds on to that? Why is he still expecting Bruce to show up and fix everything, even if he knows it won’t be the case? Bruce can’t fix Bruce, unfortunately. Or maybe only Bruce can fix Bruce, but he won’t do it.

One of the bags moves and suddenly there is light and maybe it’s day, but it’s not. It can’t be. It’s just a streetlight, lighting up a yellow cape.

“He’s here,” someone screams above him, and this is not safety, this is something else. This is hope. This is what Robin is, what he always has been.

He smiles, because he should smile, because Jason deserves a smile, Jason can’t carry the burden of being hope all alone on his little shoulders.

Jason smiles back. “I found you,” he says, and Dick wants to reply something, but at that moment, a shadow stands next to Jason.

The shadow is not safety. It’s not hope, either. Right now, it’s nothing but shame.

He’s suddenly reminded of his own situation. He’s stuck in a garbage container, covered in waste, rainwater, and vomit. Even Jason, who he thought had lost all sense of disgust, seems to find him a bit disgusting.  

“Help me get him out,” Batman orders, and he plunges his arms in dirty water. One of them goes behind Dick’s neck, and it’s so gentle Dick almost forgets everything else. But then, Batman pulls him out and his head, his shoulder, his entire body explodes.

He screams, or he thinks he screams, maybe he throws up again. He can’t be sure.

October 17, Nighttime.

He blinks. He’s in the Batmobile. “Dick,” Batman says and names and who is driving the car? “I need to know what’s wrong with you.”

Dick almost laughs. What is wrong with him? He’s not up to the task. He’s not fulfilling Batman’s expectations. He wanted to be a hero on his own, he really did, but all he did was mess up. Being an adult is so hard. He’s all alone and he’s so lonely. He wants safety and he wants hope, but neither are accessible, so he tries to be both, for the kids at school, for Gotham’s citizens, for everyone, and somehow, there seems to be nothing left for him.

He doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know who he should be, who Nightwing should be, who Dick Grayson should be.

He doesn’t know where he stands with Barbara. He thinks they’re still friends - surely their bond can’t be broken so easily - but sometimes she looks at him with the kind of eyes that say she also wants to fix things, but doesn’t know how. He doesn’t even know where to start; he knows something is broken, but he can’t figure out what.

He wants to know Jason, he does, but Robin is in the way, and he doesn’t know how to stop feeling that way.

Sometimes he wants to run away from Bruce and never hear from him ever again, but sometimes all he wants is to be near him. He doesn’t want to go back to the way things were before, but the awful sting of nostalgia attacks him when he least expects it. He’s lost, he’s so lost, and so cold.

He can’t do this. He tries, he really tries, but his kingdom is a fortress made of cards and the slightest rustle of wind can make it fall to the ground. And the wind blew a little too strongly, and he fell, he fell in a garbage container, and he wanted someone to save him, he really did.

But now he’s out, and he still doesn’t feel better.

But this is not what Bruce is asking. Bruce doesn’t ask that kind of thing. It’s irrelevant to him. This is not the answer Bruce expects, and Dick is tired of not being what Bruce expects, so he tells him, “Concussion.”

Bruce makes a face, his lips a thin line. Dick thinks maybe he should laugh, but he doesn’t really want to.

“There has to be something else. Concussion wouldn’t give you a high fever. Are you at risk of going into septic shock?”  

Dick opens his mouth. Closes it. What is Bruce talking about?

“He was injured,” Jason says from the front seat and is Jason driving the car? “When he got me from the harbor, he got shot in the back shoulder, right side.”

Bruce moves him, and maybe Dick whines a little, but then his uniform is torn, and part of him remembers it’s his last one, part of him thinks it was ruined anyway and part of him wants to be upset with Bruce just because he can.

And then Bruce makes another face, like he, too, doesn’t know what to do when he sees Dick’s shoulder, and this time, Dick laughs.

“What’s the matter?” he says weakly, and his head lolls to the side. “Gonna fire me again?” He was injured in the right shoulder back then, too.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Batman orders, and Dick wants to reply something snarky about not taking orders from him, but he doesn’t think he does.

October 17, Nighttime.

“Why am I naked?”

Maybe this is not the most important question he should be asking, but it’s the one he asks. His Nightwing uniform is gone. He’s in the cave, probably, he thinks.

Robin is here.

Suddenly, a big wall of cold falls on him. Water, he realizes. He gasps and looks at Robin in a way he hopes will make it stop.

“Because you need a shower. We’ve been through this.”

Did they?    

“But why?”

Jason looks very done with this situation. “Because you’ve bathed in trash, and you need to be at least a bit clean before Alfred operates on you.”

Operates? What? He blinks. He’s in the shower of the cave.

“You know you can heat this water, right?”

“I know.”

“Then why is it so cold?”

“It’s not,” Jason bats away Dick’s left hand when he tries to reach for the thermostat. He can’t feel his right one, and maybe he should be more worried about this than he is. “Stop it. Alfred said to use lukewarm water.”

Dick gives him a look he hopes is scary. “Lukewarm, not straight out of a glacier in Alaska.”

Jason rolls his eyes. Apparently, his look is not scary. It might be related to the fact that he’s naked, sitting in a shower, shivering and unable to move. “Oh my god, you’re so dramatic. Lukewarm water. You’re feverish, it’s supposed to help. And it does, because this is the most coherent I’ve seen you since we’ve found you.”

Dick would love to agree, really. But the cave is slowly moving in front of his eyes, darkness creeping at the edge of his vision. He doesn’t want to fall asleep, doesn’t want to leave Jason alone, because Jason shouldn’t be the one who has to take care of him. He’s so young, still, and yet he has to be Robin.

Dick was Robin at younger age, says a voice in his head, but it wasn’t the same. When he was a kid, Robin was him. Nowadays, Robin is just a pile of expectations.

“I’m sorry, Jay.”

Jason clicks his tongue. “It’s not your fault. I don’t know why B said that.”

Dick wonders for a second what B did say, but the darkness creeps closer, his head grows heavier, and he says, “No. I’m sorry I’m gonna pass out.”

Jason’s eyes open, and maybe he says something like, “No, wait-” But Dick doesn’t wait.      

October 17, Nighttime?

In his dream, Batman is kind. In his dream, there is a hand on his forehead, gently pushing away strands of dirty hair, and he feels the leather on his skin, and it feels good.

In his dream, he’s a child again, hiding under the covers, and there is rain falling on the windows of the manor. It makes a repetitive sound, and it feels nice. He’s in the trailer with his parents.

There is a child giggling, and it takes him a second to realize it’s him, or maybe it’s Robin, but these two things haven’t been so different until not too long ago, have they?

He gets out in the corridor, and the walls of the manor shift and he’s falling between the tall buildings of Gotham’s streets. Above, or maybe it’s below him, someone holds their hand out to him, their face twisted in horror. It takes him a while to realize it’s his mother. Had her face always looked like this? Had he forgotten what she looked like?

He lands in a trash container, but maybe it’s a lake in Croatia, the sun beaming on strands of grass, and maybe it’s Gotham’s harbor.

He tries to swim to the shore, but the shore keeps getting away from him.

“Shh,” Batman says. “Relax, it’s okay. You’re okay.”

And then, Batman pushes his head under the water.

Above the sound of the water in his ears, Dick (if that’s still who he is) can hear him say that it’s for the best, that he never needed a partner in the first place.

He wants to ask what it means in regard to Jason, but Batman disappears before he can answer. Dick is left floating in a dark water that doesn’t look like the lake’s at all.

He’s so cold, and so alone.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, in the water. He’s not dead, but he’s not exactly alive, either. Above the surface, there is maybe the ceiling of the cave, and faces looking at him, but it’s all too indistinct.     

That is, until a voice calls him from below. He swims down, and down again, to see Robin. As he gets closer, he realizes this Robin is Jason. He screams his name, and Jason screams back. 

Jason can’t swim. He’s drowning. He needs to get to him, he needs to save Jason, and why is Batman staying at the surface of the water? Can’t he see that Jason needs help? Why wouldn’t he help Jason? Why wouldn’t he help Robin?

Batman fired Dick because he didn’t need a partner, a liability he wouldn’t be able to protect. What does that mean for Jason?

Jason screams for help, he screams over and over again, “Help me, help me, help me!” and Dick tries, he really does, but the water is so heavy, and he’s drowning, as well.

That is, until a force pulls him out of the water. He extends his hand, tries to reach Jason, but he doesn’t know if he succeeds. He doesn’t think he does.

He’s in a white room, still drenched. “Why didn’t you save me?” someone asks, and Dick turns to see Jason, most of his bones broken, covered in blood, uniform torn. “Why didn’t you save me?” he repeats.

“Jason, I-”

“Who is Jason?” Robin asks, and he’s in front of a mirror. This Robin is taller, holding his bloodied right shoulder.

He looks so young. Not a child anymore, but not yet ready to be an adult.

“Why didn’t you save me?” Robin asks again. And Dick doesn’t know what the answer is.

October 17, Daytime

Dick wakes up covered in sweat. It’s not the dark water from his dream, he tries to remind himself. It’s sweat. Jason, and Batman before him, had said something about a fever.

His right arm is immobilized in a sling, and he feels some sort of relief when he realizes he can still move his fingers. There are bandages around his head and an IV line poking out of his left elbow. He’s in the room he used to sleep in when he lived in the manor. He carefully forms the idea in his mind. This is not his room. This is the room he used to sleep in when he lived in the manor.

The blinds have been closed, but he can still see a ray of sunlight coming in thought the window. It must be around midday. He’s in the manor.

He’s in the manor.

He slowly takes the covers off of his body and immediately shivers. The manor tends to be cold in fall, and his pajamas (he tries not to think too much about the fact that there were still pajamas his size here) don’t protect him much when they are this wet.

He sneezes. “Do you want to go home?” Batman had asked the last time he was like this, wet and cold. And he is, except it doesn’t feel like home, not really. It’s a mess of memories and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

He’s in the manor. Batman saved his life. He has to deal with the consequences now. He sneezes again and despite probably being on painkillers, it makes his head hurt. He sniffs. He probably looks miserable. And pathetic, a voice in his head reminds him. Not even able to take care of himself.

He bites his lip. He needs to get a grip on himself. He sniffs again. Okay. Right now, getting a grip on himself probably means getting some tissues. If he remembers well, and he hates that he remembers well, there should be some in the built-in bathroom. He just needs to stand up, walk in the bathroom, and get some tissues. He’s got this.

He slowly gets his foot out of the bed, still shivering in the cold. Maybe he should see if there are some other clothes he could put on, as well. Once he’s sitting up, he takes a deep breath. He can do this.

A voice in his head still tells him he’s pathetic. He stands up, using his left hand to hold the IV pole. It’s just a few steps. He takes one step, head swimming, legs shaking, but he can do this. He takes a second step, then another, then another, until he’s in the bathroom. Now, he just needs to bend down to retrieve the tissue box from the cupboard below the sink. He just needs to slowly bend his knees, and-

He barely has the time to grip himself to the sink so he can sit down instead of falling down. Then, he just stays there, shivering on the cold tiles, still with no tissues, watching as the tube of the fallen IV pole starts to fill up with his own blood. He’s pathetic, he’s pathetic, he’s-

“You’re pathetic.”

This isn’t a voice in his head. He looks up to see Jason next to the door, in civilian clothes, and part of him tries to remember if he’d ever seen Jason in anything other than a Robin uniform, but part of him tries to forget the bloody, broken Jason he saw in his dream.

It was just a nightmare, a vision of his anxiety born from infection and head trauma. It wasn’t- He never had prophetic dreams. Having occasional nightmares of your parents falling is a normal thing when your parents are defying gravity every night. And it never happened since.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” he asks instead of focusing on the vision.

Jason makes the lollipop in his mouth do a swirl. “Newsflash, Bird Brain. There’s no school on the weekend.”

Despite himself, Dick finds himself smirking. “Nice try, kid, but it’s Friday.”

Jason blinks. “It’s Saturday, Dick. You’ve been in and out an entire day and half.”

Dick wants to joke, to tell Jason he doesn’t fall for his bluff. But something on Jason’s face makes him think he’s saying the truth. Dick lost an entire day and half. Fuck.

October 17, October 18, 1:47 PM

“Does Alfred know you’re eating sweets in the middle of the day?” Dick asks instead of focusing on the day he doesn’t remember. He just wants the look on Jason’s face to be gone.

“Does Alfred know you’re on your bathroom’s floor, destroying all the nice work he did with that IV?” Jason asks in return.

Dick smiles. Mission accomplished. “Touché. Come on, kid, help me up,” he says before sneezing twice. Come to think of it, he still doesn’t have the tissues he came for in the first place.

Jason raises an eyebrow and makes no move to enter the room.

“Might be allergies,” Dick suggests. He doubts it. Between the school and the bar, he falls sick every time his body shows a little weakness, nowadays. Even without the infection, it was only a matter of time.

“I doubt it,” Jason says, echoing his thoughts as he finally enters the room. “Alfred had been cleaning this room almost every day. There is no trace of dust of any kind in here.”

Dick doesn’t know how he feels about that. Alfred had been cleaning this room, his old room, almost every day. For what? Dick knows he doesn’t show the same care for all the empty rooms in the manor, only cleaning them once in a while. He was gone. There was no need to clean this room, unless Alfred expected him to come back anytime.

Part of him wants to be upset, to see it as proof that Alfred didn’t trust him to manage on his own, but part of him sees it as the mark of affection it is. Whenever he needed a room, this one would be ready.

“I think,” Jason says as he puts the IV vertical again. “You’re an idiot who managed to catch a cold on top of it all.”

“Maybe,” Dick grunts as Jason helps him up and they start walking back toward the bed. “This wouldn’t have happened if someone hadn’t decided to give me a shower with ice cold water.”

Jason lets out a dramatic sigh as he puts him on the bed. “It was lukewarm. And, wait, you remember that!”

Dick puts the cover back on himself. He still needs to change out of this pajama. “Yeah, not much else, though.”

“You passed out on me! I had to call B to bring you back to the cave!”

Dick laughs a bit at how offended Jason looks. “Come on, it happens, I’m not the last person who will do that to you, and you’ll do it too, if you stay in the business.” The thought immediately sobers him up. Jason had been lucky, the other day, to be okay, after he fell in the harbor. He might not be as okay every day. Bruce is right on that point. What they do is dangerous. Being Robin is dangerous.

He sniffs again and feels a bit stupid. “Jay, sorry to interrupt the moment, but could you get some tissues from the bathroom?”

“I’m not your maid,” Jason replies immediately, but he gets up from where he’s sitting on the bed and a few seconds later, a box of tissues falls on Dick. He takes one and finally blows his nose.

“Do you want me to get Alfred?” Jason asks.

Dick blinks. “Maybe, did he ask to know if I’m awake?” He shivers again. “I need to change, maybe take a shower, and I don’t trust you to help me. I want warm water.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You are never going to let that go, are you?”

Dick smiles. “No,” he says.

Jason lets out a dramatic sigh. “I guess I should have known that signing up for a big brother was signing up for him to hold grudges,” he says before leaving, closing the door behind him.

Dick looks at the door for a long time. He had never thought of putting a name on his relationship with Jason. If the kid wants to call him his brother, then so be it. He doesn’t know what it means, he doesn’t know what it should mean. He’s too tired to figure it out.          

October 18, 3:11 PM

“Did Master Jason tell you what happened?” Alfred asks as he shines a penlight in his eyes. Dick is sitting on the bed in a clean, but similar to the previous ones, pairs of pajamas. He doesn’t ask Alfred why they still have clothes in his size, when he’s bigger than Alfred and Jason but smaller than Bruce. He guesses it’s for the same reason the room had been kept clean, and if he thinks about it too much, he’s never going to be able to leave. And he knows he has to leave. Alfred knows it too, and that’s probably why he doesn’t talk about it, either.

“Sort of,” he answers. “My shoulder got infected?”

Alfred nods. “Indeed. It seems like some bacteria from the harbor managed to get in. You are lucky Master Bruce and Jason found you when they did.”

Dick looks away in shame. “I cleaned it, I swear I did.”

Alfred puts back the penlight and runs a hand in his hair. “My dear boy, I have no doubt you did. But sometimes luck just isn’t on our side. Next time, maybe try to call for help before you’re one step away from septicemia.”

Dick is suddenly upset. There is a reason he didn’t immediately call for help when he started feeling bad, and Alfred knows it. He doesn’t like the way the butler talks like it’s all his fault, that of course, he should have known cleaning the wound wasn’t enough, that maybe he didn’t clean it properly in the first place.

But he doesn’t want to fight with Alfred. Fighting with Alfred is always harder than fighting with Bruce. So, he just lets himself fall back on the bed and asks, “Can I sleep for a bit? I’m really tired.”

Alfred makes a face that tells Dick he doesn’t fall for the lie, but he says, “Of course. You need all the rest you can get.” Then he gets up, closes the blinds back again, takes the leftovers from the food Dick barely managed to swallow, and leaves.

All alone, Dick looks at the door again, like he expects it to open. Jason came. Alfred came.

Bruce didn’t.

He’s probably busy. He might have been there for the day and half Dick doesn’t remember. Maybe he knows if he walks through that door, they will fight, and he doesn’t want that. Dick doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t want to fight with Bruce, but he doesn’t like that Bruce didn’t come.

He blinks. One second, he thinks he will never be able to fall asleep; the next, he’s drifting away.

October 18, 6:31 PM

“-not a hand, nor a foot, nor an arm, nor a face, nor any other concrete part of the body. Oh, be some other name! What’s in a name? A rose would smell just as sweet if we called it by any other name. Romeo, if he had a different name besides “Romeo,” would be just as perfect as he is with that name now. Romeo, take off your name, and in exchange for that superficial part of you, take all of me.”

Dick blinks. What is going on in this room? Jason, sitting on the bed, takes a breath as Dick imagines he’s thinking of the reply he’s supposed to get, before continuing, “Who is this man who’s hiding in the night and overhearing my private thoughts?”

He puts so many feelings in the part Dick doesn’t really want to interrupt him. Jason waits a bit more before saying, “I haven’t even heard that tongue speak a hundred words, but I recognize the voice. Aren’t you Romeo, and a Montague?”

Dick sneezes, as quietly as he can, but Jason still turns. “You’re awake,” he says.

“Please don’t mind me.”

Jason shakes his head. “No, It’s… I was finished.”

Dick hums. “English wasn’t my favorite subject, but I don’t think that’s the end of that scene.”

To this, Jason blushes. “That’s- I said I’m finished!”

Dick decides to tease him a bit more. Isn’t that what big brothers are for? If Jason wants to call him that, he has to live up to it.

“So, who is playing Romeo?”

“Amy, from my English class. We thought it would be nice to switch gender between the characters and actors.”

Dick nods. “It is nice, and you’ll be a good Juliet.”

Jason becomes even redder. “Don’t tease me!”

Dick smiles. “I’m not, that was good acting. Tomorrow, if I’m cleared up to read, I can give you the Romeo lines if you want to practice.” He doesn’t know why he offers that. He’s never been particularly good at acting, despite how comfortable he is on a scene. Maybe he should have told Jason to go ask Alfred, who was an actor, once, or so he says. Or maybe he should have asked him to invite that Amy girl in, so they could practice together.

But Jason’s face lights up, and suddenly, Dick doesn’t regret offering. The kid then blushes some more and stands up. “I’m going to get dinner,” he says. “Do you want me to bring something up?” He doesn’t wait for the answer before he’s gone. 

October 18, 7:45 PM

“More homework?” Dick asks when Jason comes back in the room, a notebook in hand. He’s slowly munching the food Alfred ended up bringing him.

“Yeah,” the kid answers. “I want it to be all done before tomorrow.”

Dick raises an eyebrow. “Why? What happens tomorrow?”   

Jason doesn’t look at him. “I was thinking maybe you would feel better,” he says very fast.

Dick feels his heart sink. He’s been more or less sleeping all day, yet he still feels tired, Alfred had mentioned nothing about removing the IV, and the new pajamas are already drenched in sweat. Not to mention the pain in his head and shoulder every time the painkillers recede. “Jay, I don’t think I’ll be able to teach you acrobatics tomorrow.” The kid has mentioned it once or twice, so that’s what he must want, right? That’s one thing Dick is confident in.

“What? No, I’m not talking about acrobatics, just, you know. Hang out. You could give me the Romeo lines.”

Dick just falls back into the bed. “I would like that, yeah.” His eyes linger on the door. He doesn’t ask where Bruce is.

“Maybe I could help you,” he says after a time, “with your homework, I mean. I’m pretty good at math.”

Jason looks at him with big eyes. “I don’t need help in math, I’m on the top of my class,” he says, and Dick can’t help but feel some sort of weird disappointment. It’s good, right? He should be happy Jason isn’t struggling academically. Yet, this cancels the fantasy he had about helping him. “Besides,” Jason adds, “this is biology.”

The kid then turns toward him, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Though, maybe you can help me. This part is about the immune system. So, what are the signs of infection?”

Dick tosses him a used tissue that Jason dodges easily. “That’s what I get for being nice to you,” he says, burying his head beneath the covers.

Jason just laughs, and it’s a beautiful sound.

October 19, 00:54 AM

He’s alone when he wakes up. One look at the time, and he guesses why. Batman and Robin are probably out. Alfred is otherwise busy.

He gets up, and a voice in his head tells him that no one will be here to pick him up if he falls again. But maybe that’s what it means to be an adult, right? Picking yourself up when you fall to the ground.

He goes to the window and opens the curtains. Absurdly, he almost expects to see stars. But this is Gotham, and a heavy mantle of clouds is hiding the sky. He doesn’t see Batman and Robin, not that he was expecting to.

He stays there a while, like he’s waiting for something. He shivers. He’s so tired of being cold, yet he doesn’t know if he can change out of his sweat covered clothes on his own, and he doesn’t want to ask for help. Besides, he will feel too hot again in a moment.

His legs threaten to give out, and he sits back on the bed. He doesn’t take his eyes off the window.  

October 19, 02:36 AM

He sees them. He’d taken the covers to put them on while staying near the window, half too hot, half too cold. He’s wondering if maybe the fever is rising despite whatever it is that Alfred put in the IV when he sees them.

They are coursing the sky, as majestic as they can be, and he understands why Gotham inhabitants admire Batman and Robin. It’s spectacular.

And then, they disappear, probably to go in the cave, and Dick tears out his gaze from the window to puts it back on the door.

Batman never comes to check on him.

October 19, 9:35 AM

“If food isn’t an issue, it might be more comfortable for you to switch to oral medications,” Alfred says, when he notices Dick ate most of the breakfast he had made for him.

Dick smiles, even if it’s forced. “Thank you, Al,” he says, holding out his arm for Alfred to remove the IV. It would be more comfortable indeed.

“Turn down,” the Butler orders, “I just need to check your back.”

Dick obeys, and lets Alfred work in silence for a short while before finally finding the courage to ask, “Does he know? About Frye, and Bane?”

He doesn’t have to explain who “he” is. If Bruce won’t come to him, he will get information to him in an indirect way, and that means Alfred.

The butler’s hands freeze for a second where they’re bandaging his shoulder before resuming work. Alfred’s voice is almost too neutral when he asks, “You don’t remember telling him?”  

Dick shakes his head slowly. “You told him as soon as Master Jason and he brought you back to the cave. But you were in bad shape, so it’s no surprise you don’t remember.”

Dick let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. At least this conversation, and the way Batman reacted to it, has passed. And, hey. What he doesn’t remember can’t hurt him, right?

“I don’t know why B said that,” Jason had told, but he’s too scared to ask what was actually said. He especially doesn’t want to drag Jason into that. Jason has been between them enough. Jason has suffered enough.

October 19, 11:07 AM

 “Why must you make me suffer in this way?”

Dick laughs as he gathers the cards. “That looks like a third win for me.”

Jason looks at him with an outraged face. “You’re cheating,” he says.

Dick just laughs again, only to end up with him coughing. “Jay, how could I cheat?”

“I don’t know, you’re reading my face or something!”

“Oh, that’s not cheating,” Dick says as he deals the cards. “That’s just how you play Old Maid.”

Jason pouts, and when he loses again, he says. “I want to play another game.”

“Did you know,” Dick says, “In France, this game is named le pouilleux. The flea-ridden. The one no one wants.”

Jason looks at the lone queen in his hand. “The flea-ridden one no one wants, hmm,” he says. And his face twists in something so sad, like he feels bad for the card, like he understands, it makes Dick immediately regret he said anything.

“Let me teach you how to make a card castle,” he says suddenly. “This is a valuable skill you’ll need all your life.”

Jason snorts, and at least he doesn’t have that look on his face anymore. “How so?”

“To impress people at school. But I can’t do it one handed.” Not to mention, he probably still shakes too much. “Gather the cards.”

“And then you help me with the scene? You promised.”

Dick didn’t promise anything, but he nods. “Yeah, but first let’s make a castle.”

Jason starts to work. His hands are hesitant at first, but he’s crafty and meticulous, and soon, he gets the first row done.

“We could say there’s a balcony right here,” Dick says. “To put a little Juliet on it.”

The cards fall on the table. “No,” Jason objects. “I don’t want her to fall.”

Dick almost chokes. “You don’t want her to fall? Jay, you do know how this story ends, right?”

“I know,” Jason says, starting the card castle again. “But all we have to practice for class is the balcony scene. Everyone, in duo, playing the balcony scene over and over again. And you know, it’s like they’re stuck on the balcony. And they never reach Act Five.”

Dick thinks about it for a second. “I think it’s a little sad,” he says. “That they’re stuck. That they can’t keep moving.”

“Even if it’s to move toward, you know,” he makes a move that leaves no uncertainty as to what he implies. “Act Five?”

The castle falls again. Jason grunts. “It’s so frustrating. Can’t we tape this stuff?”

Dick laughs, but his heart is not in it. “No, that destroys the point. The point is for it to be difficult.”

“Why? Why must we do things the difficult way?”

“Because otherwise, it’s cheating. Otherwise, it’s lying. And you can’t keep pretending forever.”

He tried to build his own card castle. He did it, even if it was unstable. He will do it again. And again, and again, until either the castle holds on its own, or… Act Five.

“I’m trying again,” Jason says. “I’m trying as many times as needed. It will hold. And if it doesn’t, I don’t care. I’m taping it.”

October 20, 0:07 AM

He watched Jason struggle with the card castle, and then helped him practice the balcony scene over and over again (they’re stuck, they’re stuck, they’re stuck on a balcony that doesn’t exist). He’s exhausted, and yet he can’t sleep.

The manor is his own balcony. He might think he’s safe, but he’s not, and it’s a lie. If it wasn’t a lie, Bruce would have come to see him by now. If it wasn’t a lie, he would have had the courage to go look for him. It’s a lie, and he has to get out. As soon as he can move properly again, he will get out. Get away. Get back to his own life. And maybe he can try to have something with Jason, but it won’t happen in the manor.

But he’s not Juliet, he’s not Romeo. He’s not moving toward Act Five. He’s a Flying Grayson. He’s moving toward freedom.

He has to convince himself of that.

He can’t tape his card castle, he’s just going to have to make it hold.

October 20, 1:32 PM

Dick is bored. He supposes that Jason is back in school, and no one is coming into the room. He could go down, he could move, now that he doesn’t feel like he’s going to fall over any time, but there is something that makes him stay there, in the relative security of his room. He already established that Bruce wouldn’t be seeing him, so if he wants to see Bruce, he’s going to have to take the first step.

The thing is, he’s tired of taking the first step, of filling in the gaps, of trying to understand Bruce. He’s tired of what Bruce means to him, of how much he means to him.

He’s tired. And he wants to go home, but he doesn’t know where that is, or what that is, exactly.

So, he just stays there. This is not that different from the dream, after all. He’s in a middle ground. Stuck in between things.  

And he waits. He doesn’t know what for, exactly. Maybe he waits in hopes that one day, all of this will make any kind of sense. Maybe he waits for Act Five. Maybe he just waits for Jason to come home.

October 20, 5:18 PM

There is something, joy, a drop of pride maybe, that lightens up in him when he realizes his room is the first place Jason goes when he gets home.

“How did the scene go?” His voice cracks a little on the words, and he has to clear his throat. Serves him right for barely talking all day.

“Amazing,” Jason says, “Everyone clapped, and the teacher asked us if maybe we wanted to join the drama club.”

Dick smiles. “And? Do you want to?”

Jason stops right on his tracks. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe? I have to think of how much time it will take, considering, you know, my other activities.”

“I think you should,” Dick says. “It’s good to have something else. It’s important to have a life.”

Doesn’t he know it? He had nothing outside Robin. All his friends were vigilantism related. When Robin disappeared, he was left hanging on thin air with no rope.

He sneezes and Jason seems to take it as an opportunity to escape the conversation. “Are you still sick?” he asks.

Dick blows his nose. “I guess my body is busier with the infection than it is with fighting a cold.”

Jason hums and sits down on the bed. “Maybe it’s the flu,” he says.

“Where is that coming from?”

Jason shrugs. “I don’t know, you’ve been looking and feeling shittier than you would have been with a cold, and tons of people have been having the flu recently. Lot of kids were missing at school because of it.”

Dick looks at him with big eyes. Jason raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“And you didn’t think of telling me that before you hung out with me all weekend?”

“Relax, it’s not people I hang out with, and I haven’t been feeling sick. I just meant, maybe it’s the case for your students as well.”

Dick wants to reply something like the fact that he hadn’t been feeling sick means nothing, but something on Jason’s face makes him stop. “I don’t have the flu,” he just says. He hopes he doesn’t, because that would mean more time at the manor, and he wants to be gone as soon as possible. “I’m just feeling shitty because of the infection.”

And just because he can, he grins and says, “Though, the hypothermia by shower sure didn’t help.”

He expects Jason to say something about being dramatic because he is being dramatic, but the kid just looks at the ground.

“Jason?”

Jason blinks. “Hypothermia by shower? Aren’t you being a bit-”

“What is it? What’s going on?” Dick asks, because it’s too late now, Jason won’t be able to cover that something is wrong.

The kid sighs. “You were almost dead when we found you.”

“Almost dead? Look who’s being dramatic now.”

Jason raises his eyes quickly to face him. “Don’t joke about this! How can you be so calm?”

Dick wants to tell him that this is part of the job, that he knew this was a possibility, and that Jason should know that, too, but something prevents him from doing so. Instead, he says, “I’ll be okay. And you found me.” And he won’t stop. He can’t stop.

“And,” Jason continues, “You’ve been joking about how it’s my fault, but you’re leaving out the fact that it is.”

Huh? “What? Jay, what are you talking about?”

“The bacteria came from Gotham harbor. You jumped in to save me and got injured when you jumped. You wouldn’t have gotten a concussion if you were operating at top capacity. Don’t try to deny it, I know it’s true.”  

Dick blinks. Does Jason think that? Does he really think it’s his fault? “I don’t know what B told you-”

“He didn’t tell me anything!” Jason seems maybe a little too defensive. “He didn’t tell me anything. I mean, when we went back from the harbor last Monday, after Alfred checked me up, he made me write a report on what I did wrong and how to fix it and we designed a new training regimen to improve my swimming but the night we found you, he told you, well, that. And then he told me-” Jason stops to take his breath. He looks like he’s one step away from crying. “And then he told me ‘good job finding him’.”

Dick nods. “It was a good job, you probably saved me. I saved you, you saved me, we’re even.” Something poisonous makes its way into Dick’s mind, and he can’t help but add, “So, if you were hanging out with me out of guilt, you can stop, now.”

It’s Jason’s turn to look at him with big eyes. “What? No!”

“What’s with the big brother game, then?” He thought… He wanted to have that relationship with Jason, and when Jason called him his big brother, he felt… something. But part of him still feels as if Jason was mocking him. His place in this family is on a precarious equilibrium, and Jason’s word choices feel like tape on a card castle. Cheating. Forcefully trying to hold together something that is not meant to hold.

“I’ll stop,” Jason says, “If you don’t like it, I can stop saying it. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“I’ve been alone most of my life. The ‘flea-ridden’, how do you say it?”

“Le pouilleux… Listen, Jay, I-”

“And you call me ‘Jay’, and you saved me. And sometimes, when I was all alone and hungry, I wished I had a big brother, but maybe this is stupid, and-”

Dick doesn’t wait for him to finish. He reaches out and takes the kid in his arms. He hears Jason hiccup. “I’ve had nightmares of that night at the harbor. I still do, honestly. That, and the night we found you,” he confesses in a whisper.

Dick holds him tighter. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Jason shakes his head on his shoulder. “I understand, I think I understand how B can be. But you have my number. Next time, if you feel overwhelmed, if you need help, you could call me?”

Dick doesn’t want to say he won’t burden a child with his issues, so he just says. “I will.”

They stay like that for a while, until Jason calms down a little, and says, “If I’m a carrier of the flu and you get it, I don’t want to hear you complain.”

Dick just laughs. He doesn’t let him go.

“Brat.”

October 21, 2:29 AM

The noise in the manor doesn’t wake Dick up, per se, because he was already awake, but he had learned to recognize it. Batman is back from patrol.

He waits a bit, eyes open. He knows for a fact his door won’t open. Not unless he opens it himself. The question is: does he want to open it? Is he ready to open it?

He wasn’t ready for anything in his life. He wasn’t ready to lose his parents, he wasn’t ready to become Robin, he wasn’t for Robin to be taken away from him, he’s not ready to become Nightwing, and he’s not ready to become an adult.

He gets out of the bed and opens the door.

His bare feet are silent on the floor as he progresses through the manor. He walks, almost automatically, toward the grandfather clock. He doesn’t think about Bruce, about what is behind that door. About why he’s even going to see Bruce instead of just leaving.

When he opens the door, Bruce is working on the computer. He doesn’t turn, but Dick knows he heard him. There is no sign of Jason. He stays there, behind Batman’s back, for what seems like an eternity, but can’t be longer than a minute, until Batman says, “You shouldn’t be barefoot in the cave.”

And that’s it. Anger is easier to feel than whatever Dick was feeling before. And after the week he had, he could do with something easy.

“Why?” he asks, taking a step toward the computer, “Because I might step on a rusty nail and get an infection?”

He sneezes, and the next second, Batman is in front of him. Taller, always taller than him in a way that is upsetting. “No,” he says, not taking the bait. “Because of this.” And before Dick knows it, the cape is on his shoulders, like Bruce did for Jason a week ago. Kindness, like the Batman from Dick’s dream, that might or might not have a part of truth in it. “Jason says you might have the flu.”

Dick huffs. He should maybe take the offered olive branch, tell a joke about Jason over exaggerating and making up things. Or maybe he should be angry, tell Batman he’s not a child who needs to be taken care of.

“Why,” he hears his mouth ask instead, like a spectator in his own body, “didn’t you save him?”

Batman gives him a confused look. He swallows. “Last week, when he fell in the harbor. Why didn’t you jump after him?”

Bruce stays silent a second more before saying, “You were already there, you jumped almost immediately after he fell.”

Dick blinks. “So, you trust me with his life?” But not with mine, stays unsaid.

Bruce understands it anyway. “I meant what I said in the cave,” he says, and Dick still has no memory of what was actually said. “But still, I’m glad you called us. It was the right thing to do.”

It was a mistake, Dick doesn’t say, because it was a mistake, but Bruce might take it the other way. And Dick doesn’t know how much it was a mistake. Maybe it was. Maybe this entire thing was a mistake.

I should never have had a partner in the first place.  

He takes a step back. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says. “Don’t try to stop me.”

And yet, part of him for Bruce to reach out, for Batman to stop him.

But Batman doesn’t move, and Bruce’s eyes silently watch him as he puts the cape on a chair and goes away.

The only thing that stops him from hotwiring a car right here right now and getting away – somewhere, anywhere – is the idea of Jason being left alone without a goodbye.  

October 21, 5:35 PM

“So, you’re leaving?”

He hadn’t seen Bruce all day, and Alfred had tried to tell him to stay a bit more, but the butler knows this is a lost fight. Dick still promised to send him updates.

Jason seems disappointed, but Dick can’t stay. After the conversation with Bruce, he physically can’t.

“Sorry Jay, I have to go back to my adult life.” Leslie and Alfred arranged for him to be gone from both his jobs a bit longer, but Jason doesn’t need to hear that. “But, um, the offer goes both ways.”

Jason tilts his head. “The offer?”

“You have my number. If you feel overwhelmed, if you think you need help… Call me.”

Chapter Text

A call is made. A call is left unanswered.

Decisions made by an overwhelmed child. A child who feels like he needs the truth. Without cheating.

A card castle can’t be taped.

And Jason goes to Ethiopia.

Chapter Text

“You called?”

Dick opens the window and deactivates the security. Trust Jason to call him and forget to make sure he doesn’t get killed while entering the safehouse. Though, Dick thinks as he sees the blood all over, maybe he couldn’t.

“Um, are you alive?” he asks the safe house.

There is a noise from the bathroom. “Yes, looks worse than it is, now come and help me.”

Dick hurries to find Jason kneeled down, holding a gauze patch on his shoulder awkwardly. “Finally,” he says when he sees Dick.

“Thank you for coming Dick, I know you might have other things planned tonight, and also you live in a whole ‘nother city, but I’m glad you cleared your schedule.” Dick replies sarcastically.

“Yeah, yeah. Now come and help me. Guy got a lucky shot; the bullet is still inside, and I can’t remove and clean up properly. I’m not all bendy like you, I actually have muscles.”

Dick kneels down next to Jason, taking stock of the med kit left open next to Jason. Thankfully, it seems well stocked. He bats Jason’s hands away and gets to work.

“And you called me?” Despite what he said, he’s glad. He’s happy his number is once again one Jason can call if he needs help.

“You were the only one available that wouldn’t immediately run to snitch to the Bat. You won’t do that, right?”

“I won’t,” Dick confirms. His relationship with Jason is fragile enough as it is, they don’t need that. “Unless you don’t take care of it properly and it ends up getting infected.”

“It won’t get infected, because you’ll clean it up properly.”

“You know sometimes it’s not-”

“I know. Geez, you’re worse than Alfred, sometimes.” But there is no heat behind the words.

Dick works in silence for a few moments, before asking, “So, how come someone got a lucky shot on you?”

“I was protecting a guy. A small tech company, Cichlid Tech, got robbed by a group I was tracking, but they got angry when they couldn’t find anything they could use as a weapon. I thought everyone had left but a guy was still there, mind you, he wasn’t even an employee, just the co-founder’s ex-husband or something? And a friend of the current CEO?”  

Dick stops cleaning the wound for a second. “No way! I know those guys!”

Jason turns. “Oh? They’re fairly small, and Metropolis-based. Their Gotham factory is quite new.”

“Yeah, but they started in Gotham. I helped solve the co-founder’s murder, it was… It was just before I went to spend a few days in the manor for the first time when you were-”

“When I was Robin,” Jason finishes for him. It’s hard to gauge where the limit is when it comes to talking about the past with Jason. To figure out what will be the thing that will trigger one of his many fuses.

Their relationship is like a card castle, and he has to be careful around the edge of it.

“Yeah, I remember that a bit,” Jason says, “You fell ass first in a garbage container.”

“This is what you remember? Not about how I single handedly stopped a Venom cargo from being delivered while injured?”

Jason fakes thinking for a minute. “Um, no, I don’t remember that. You know, trauma and all.” He gives Dick a large smile, knowing how much it annoys him when he says, “I died.”

Dick just rolls his eyes, but his heart misses a beat when he feels Jason’s back tensing a second later. “Still, I can’t believe what B told you that day. He had no right-”

“Lot of water had passed under the bridge. It’s okay,” Dick says, even if he still doesn’t know what was said. He never found the strength to ask.

“No, it’s not,” Jason says. Thankfully, he doesn’t elaborate, and Dick is left in his blissful ignorance.

They stay silent for a short while after that, and Dick wonders if maybe this is it. But Jason doesn’t tell him to leave or anything, so he finishes cleaning up and dressing the wound.  

“Done,” Dick says when he’s satisfied with his work.  

He fully expects Jason to tell him to get out of his hair, but the younger man just stands up and says, “Feel free to make yourself breakfast while I shower, but everything you burn, you pay back.”

Dick gets out of the bathroom and just looks at the kitchen without starting anything until he hears the shower running. Strangely, he can feel the scar from all these years ago, on his right back shoulder. It’s not really painful, not even an ache. It’s just there, like the memory of his failed relationship with Jason. The memory of what could have been. The memory of a call he missed. The memory of a card castle that fell too fast and he’s not sure how to rebuild.

“If you turn off the hot water,” Jason yells from the shower, “I’m murdering you!”

Dick smiles. Maybe they can fix this. Maybe they can try to rebuild that card castle.

Worst case scenario, they will tape it.