Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I think we deserve

a soft epilogue, my love.

We are good people

and we've suffered enough." ~ Seventy Years of Sleep # 4. nikka ursula (n.t)

Time and Space

Dick comes up for air.

He is alone, of course.

It’s Monday now. He’s hiding in Bludhaven, where he has remained since Saturday afternoon, cowardly asking Alfred to make sure no one disturbs him, to convince everyone that he needs space. And Alfred has done a good job, although perhaps Dick’s privacy is only respected because Damian stayed the weekend. He told his friends to leave him alone too, so they wouldn’t panic when he stopped answering (as if he was a consistent responder anyway these days). He didn’t specify how long he was to be undisturbed, and his family has been known to find grey areas quickly, particularly when Concerned, and yet..

Alfred took Damian back to Gotham for school early this morning, and Dick has been left alone.

Until now.

His phone is ringing again.

From this angle, he can’t see who is calling. In the last five minutes, he has already let it ring to voicemail three times in a row, watching it vibrate precariously on the edge of the bathtub. Dick has been soaking in the tub for hours and the water is too cold to be soothing but moving is too troublesome to bother. He likes baths to relax, when he has time for them; they never remind him of rainy nights the way showers can betray him. This time, he is bathing with a purpose, or trying to. He had told himself he’d ‘soak in his thoughts’ and process the giant mess that is his personal life, but whenever he tries to think about it his mind slips away, so all he has done so far is space out and lose time.

Oops, the phone goes to voicemail again. Then the ringing resumes. Dick really should get that, it could be important.

With herculean effort, Dick stretches out his arm to press talk and then speaker on the phone. 

“What’s the emergency?” Dick asks, infusing all of the energy he doesn’t feel into generating a lively tone. It half works.

“Hi,” says Barbara. Always Barbara, composed and put together while he’s unraveled in a mess of his own making. “How are you?”

“Are you just checking up on me?” Dick asks, making slow circles with his hands and watching the water swirl. He’s not annoyed; a couple days of refuge have curbed his edge, like sea glass ready to be handled.

“I’m not just checking up on you,” Barbara denies. “I’m also updating you on the outside world, since you’ve decided to play hermit.” Is that bitterness? Dick can’t read her tone. He has been avoiding everything since Saturday. It has been over forty-eight hours since the aquarium. He has been alone for twelve hours since Damian left early this morning. Perhap it has been selfish of him to enjoy the retreat. A tiny voice accuses him in the back of his mind, you can’t always just run away. “Figured it’s about time you heard some things.”

“Mmm. What things?” Dick watches the water. It’s mesmerizing. Damian had a great point with the pet fish, and it was actually fun visiting the pet store yesterday, even if he’s ninety percent sure it was purely a distraction technique. He should play with the fish in the bathtub. Or does that kill them? He can’t remember.

“Bruce is getting therapy,” Barbara says bluntly. 

Dick’s hands still before him, the final ripples crashing into the walls of the tub and unraveling into nothingness. Time passes, and Dick does nothing.

“Dick?” Barbara is asking. “Dick? Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” says Dick. “Bruce is getting therapy.” The words are foreign in his mouth, and it feels like he has just told a lie. Because how can they be true, Dick thought surely Bruce would never-

“That’s right,” Barbara’s tone is careful now. “Tim kind of forced him into it this weekend. With help from Cass. And Jason. Everyone, really.”

“Really.” It’s an echo instead of a question.

Barbara snorts. “Well, ‘help’ is a generous term. Tim blackmailed Bruce with the league after Jason punched him in the face.”

Dick sucks in a sharp breath, caught off guard. “Jason did what?”

“He punched Bruce in the face,” Barbara repeats, and maybe she sounds a little satisfied. “There’s footage and everything. Definitely worth a watch.”

“Damn,” says Dick, faintly. He hates himself a little for the anxiety that automatically wells inside of him. Hopefully Jason is okay. Bruce probably didn’t like being punched in the face. Bruce is probably angry. Dick tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter, but it’s difficult. So he switches subjects. “Therapy you said?”

“Yeah, he wasn’t really given a choice,” Barbara allows the redirect. Dick hears her shift, a keyboard click. Working as she talks, always multitasking. “It’s through the JL, they have a new program with specialized therapists, trained for vigilante and superhero trauma. I looked into it a bit, the style is reminiscent of an approach to soldiers.” Soldier. The term feels right. “I checked the policies and contracts - pretty air-tight regarding the double life aspect.”

“That’s good,” Dick says. Hearing Barbara pointedly outline the positives of therapy makes him tread carefully, wary of her intent. Dick knows everyone thinks he needs professional help. He just doesn’t feel ready right now. What would he say to someone who doesn’t already know everything? These days he doesn’t want to talk to people even when they do know his story.

But Bruce getting therapy? Dick has a lot of feelings about that. Irrationally, he feels almost jealous that Bruce has everyone forcing him to get help after everything he’s done while Dick gets a bathtub of cold water in an empty apartment. The jealousy is so hypocritical Dick can’t ever share it aloud - not after he literally stormed off and demanded to be left alone. Besides, he can’t help feeling happy too, that maybe professional therapy will produce the behavioural change in Bruce that Dick could never force from him.

“Are you okay, Dick? It sounds like your teeth are chattering,” Barbara analyzes, tone clinical.

“I’m taking a bath,” Dick confesses reluctantly. “The water is a little cold.”

Silence on the line for a moment. Barbara is probably trying to calculate how long he has been stewing in his own personal soup and the potential toll on his health. He side-eyes his phone screen. It’s around dinner time now; Dick isn’t going to tell her when he turned on the tap. “You should get out of the tub, Dick.”

“Mmm,” he says absently, swirling the water around again. “So therapy? That’s good. Good for Bruce. I don’t see why you called me though.”

“Really?” Barbara sounds unimpressed. “Don’t pretend. I called because I know you want to avoid all of this but you’re in the middle of it.”

“It’s not about me -,” Dick tries, but Barbara scoffs.

“It’s always you, Boy Blunder. Honestly, you freak out on the mission Friday, Bruce gets pissed, and I heard there was a huge fight afterwards with everyone. But then you all go to the aquarium on a happy family trip? Seriously? And then you’re suddenly gone to Bludhaven and everyone’s mad at Bruce and now he’s in therapy.” Barbara doesn’t like to be out of the loop. It often manifests as aggression. “Something smells fishy, and it wasn’t the aquarium. You can’t hide in Bludhaven forever, Dick, not from this family.” Her voice gets softer. “I saw the news articles about the aquarium flooding. Security tapes were wiped. What happened?”

Dick sighs. “What did Tim tell you?”

“It was Steph, actually,” Barbara says. Uh oh, Dick was kind of mean to Steph, this might be painful. Barbara has some latent protectiveness about Steph and can get defensive, especially to Dick and Bruce for their initial behaviour. “She said you had a meltdown in one of the exhibits and ran away.” Dick winces. It’s not wrong, but it’s embarrassing to hear about thirdhand. “And that Bruce said some… personal crap about you.”

“Oh,” says Dick. He’s certain suddenly that he’s colder than the water; ice from the inside out. He can’t seem to expand his lungs. “What?”

Barbara, Barbara, Barbara. She has been Dick’s confidante for so many things, but when it comes to Dick’s deepest hurts, he prefers to bleed alone. They both do. Perhaps that is why they could never patch each other up, why there relationship could never truly recover after-

Dick tries to slam on the breaks for his thought train, since he’s in the middle of a conversation. Even so, he feels like a few minutes have passed, and yet he is confident he hasn’t missed anything, the line still silent, a clear sign of Barbara’s discomfort.

“I’m not going to discuss your rumoured sex life,” she says eventually, and Dick closes his eyes because he can’t believe he made her feel like she even had to say that, it’s so inconsiderate after everything he has put her through. It’s good she enforces her boundaries. “I don’t know what’s true, Dick, but I just can’t talk about that with you.” Her voice is a bit shaky, maybe with old pain, but she draws in another breath and moves on like they always do. “But she did say that Bruce admitted to …hurting you. Before.”

Barbara stops talking, perhaps uncertain of what to say. It’s unusual for Oracle to be at a loss for words, but Dick and Barbara have never talked about this before and it’s unfamiliar territory. The jump in topics is jarring, but he doesn’t land in any safer terrain, caught in a different whirlpool of intrusive memories and emotions. It’s weird anyway hearing about this from Barbara, who hasn’t been around recently for one of the worst weeks Dick has ever had. It’s strange; she knows Dick so well, but the events of this weekend have left Dick so Changed, while Barbara has stayed the same.

Why is he the one so affected by all of this? Everyone has been part of this family, this group, for years. Didn’t they see this all before?

Barbara tries again. “So, how are you? With … everything.”

Dick hadn’t really wanted to talk when Barbara called, but maybe he’ll feel better if he can find some answers to the questions that tangle his thoughts.

“It’s strange, I guess,” Dick says eventually, shifting in the tub. He decides to go for honest. “Like, why now? We’ve been …fine, we’ve been fine for years. Dealing with each other’s trauma and crap. No one said anything before, so it must have been working, right? So I don’t get why it’s such a big deal now, that things had to …change.” Why did this break him?

“Dick, it wasn’t working,” Barbara sounds skeptical, but her pitch is soft and gentle. “You know it wasn’t fine. Just because you were surviving doesn’t mean it was okay. It was only a matter of time.”

“I know that,” Dick says, annoyed with himself that he can’t say the words he wants, the way he wants. “Okay? I know things could get better. I’d love to not get punched by my family anymore.” Barbara sucks in a breath. Too bitter. Calm down. Calm down. “So Bruce is getting therapy? Great, good, fine. But why did no one think things needed to get better sooner? ” Dick’s voice is coming out a little strained, he can feel the tightness in his throat. And he needs to get his shaking under control before he bites his tongue off. “Why did I have to go through a decade of bullshit before suddenly everyone decides that’s a wrap? Even this past week has been such shit but everyone waited until the weekend to protest. Why now?”

Dick’s face is wet. He’s crying. It’s a saltwater bath now. Barbara must hear; likely it makes her uncomfortable. Dick needs to get it together. Yelling at Barbara is useless, she wasn’t even there. (She wasn’t even there.) But Dick has always suspected that since it’s mostly just him who Bruce has treated as expendable, all of this must somehow be his fault. Otherwise why would it be limited to him? And it made sense, until now suddenly it doesn’t. 

“I don’t know,” Barbara chokes out, and his wandering thoughts halt, shocked. Is Barbara Gordon crying? First Alfred, now Barbara - all of the unflappable pillars of Dick’s life are crumbling, leaving him unmoored and holding the hammer. But it only takes a moment for her to pull herself together enough to speak again. “Maybe we didn’t want to believe the worst when there always seemed to be an excuse. Bruce has never pretended to be good with emotions, so we never expected him to be gentle. But that was a mistake because we never blinked when he was cruel to anyone. And you were always so fine, and you smoothed things over between Bruce and everyone else, made excuses for him, so it felt like he was doing better than he was because you were always helping him. But it’s so obvious in hindsight. So no, I don’t know why we all waited, why no one stepped in sooner.”

Dick thinks he knows why, or at least knows the reasons he has told himself for years. No one knew enough to be certain; he never told anyone, and sometimes he straight up lied. He pushed everyone away with a smile. He was never a damsel in distress. He didn’t want to be saved. How dare he blame anyone else for digging the grave when he still clutches fistfuls of dirt?

Dick sticks his hands back under the bathwater, washing them clean.

“Sorry, I’m- did you know?” he asks. He doesn’t hear Barbara on the other line, though he knows she’s still there; the silence sounds like she’s holding her breath too. She has long stopped typing. “When we were younger. About our …fights.” 

He doesn’t need to be any more specific. Not with the detectives he surrounds himself with.

Barbara breathes out, long and slow. “I was never sure,” she admits. “Like I said, you’re good at hiding your emotions; you’ve always shown people only exactly what you wanted to.” Dick tries not to read into this or speculate on how Barbara feels about their own history. “But back before Jason, when you and Bruce first started really fighting, and you were so angry all the time and lost, I suspected that you were hurt… by more than words.” A shaky breath. “Dick, I’m so sorry.”

The surface of Dick’s thoughts are carefully calm, a still body of water, depths purposefully unexplored. He holds the ripples at bay by sheer force of will as memories float up from his youth. Bruce’s smile when Dick perfected a move in the training room. Bruce’s frown, when Dick got a small cut while saving a civilian, turned into a lecture on field competency. Bruce’s face, while telling him how well he’s doing as Robin on patrol - then Bruce yelling at him that he’s not ready to be Robin with the Titans. Bruce telling him to get out, Bruce telling him to come home; Bruce yelling to get out, Bruce yelling to get back here. There were harsh grips and reprimanding slaps, but it’s the harsh tone, it’s the hard words, that always cut Dick deepest.

“Why did you never say anything?” Dick asks quietly. His friends on the Titans had raged against Bruce, but they had never known the man behind Batman the way Barbara had. It was easier to demonize an unknown, rather than a real person in one’s life.

“I thought you didn’t want me to.” Barbara’s response is honest, if a little defensive. “And we were kids, Dick. I was a kid.”

Dick bites his lip. The explanation will have to be enough, even though it doesn’t feel like it. Dick doesn’t think she can say more anyway. Her usual air of moral superiority leaves her floundering when she finds she regrets something. And Dick doesn’t feel like looking to blame people anymore; he’s so tired. Everyone gets wrapped up in their own dramas all the time, to penalize them for being human is unreasonable, and Barbara’s right. He didn’t want help, not then.

Now? ...He’s undecided.

The line is silent again for a while. Dick is pretty sure Barbara won’t hang up until he does, not when she’s so concerned for his mental health right now. And he’s slowly realizing that she needs this catharsis as much as he does. Dick lets his mind drift back to the present, and he inevitably circles back to the events of the weekend and his aquarium full of regrets.

“I didn’t apologize,” Dick says after a while, groaning.

“What do you mean?” Barbara asks, patient.

“For this weekend. I was so rude,” Dick says, idle tone disguising his inner turmoil. His words are joking but he’s not really, not when he recognizes the lingering indignation and self-hate at his own actions. His emotions war within him at the unspoken turbulence he has been fixed on all day, his heart a battleground. “To everyone. But I didn’t apologize to Steph or Tim or Jason or -” Bruce. He says quickly, “I was even kind of mean to Alfred, Babs!”

“Wow,” says Barbara. “It’s almost like you were really hurt and took out your anger on other people.”

“Babs,” Dick whines, happy to make light of his own emotions by overacting them childishly. “I know. But everyone finally tried to help and I spit in their faces.”

“Well get this: you’re not the only one capable of dispensing huge amounts of undeserved forgiveness,” Barbara delivers this pronouncement like it’s a death sentence instead of liberation, “I’m pretty sure no one holds anything against you right now. Seriously, you could murder someone and you’d get away with it.”

Dick winces at her words, safe in the bathtub where Barbara can’t see. Barbara never really sees him anyway, not since Catalina broke them up, not since Blockbuster - certainly not since Dick murdered Blockbuster. But Barbara doesn’t know. No one does, really. Dick doesn’t talk about anything, ever. The strategy was working.

“Thanks, Babs,” Dick manages. “Still should probably apologize to them though. Anyway, what shall I do with my blanket forgiveness? Become an evil dictator?”

“You could start by getting out of the ice bath,” Barbara says pointedly.

“Right,” Dick says, still not feeling ready to continue with life. “But then what?”

“Look, I’m not going to tell you how to deal with something like this. I’m not going to take your choice away here.” Some of Dick’s anxiety remains. Freedom is kindness, but Dick is deeply afraid to make the wrong choice. “You can treat yourself a bit, take some time like you’ve been doing. Relax. But you could call your brothers, your friends. Get back to work. Buck up, Boy Wonder, the world continues,” Barbara says, all tough love, and Dick half smiles at the familiarity.

“Yes sir,” he says.

He is about to hang up the phone when Barbara says, “Wait.” Dick stops, patient. “I didn’t just call you to give you a pep talk.” She sounds apologetic.

Dick sighs. “What is it?”

“Jason’s headed your way,” Barbara tells him. Dick closes his eyes and groans silently. Of course he is. “He’s not accepting my calls so I don’t know what this is about, but I figured I’d give you a heads up.” A pause. “And Dick? Maybe talk to him. Or someone.”

Dick sighs again, more dramatically. He refuses to commit to another full conversation with anyone right now. “Thanks, Babs.” He hangs up the phone.

It rings again immediately. Dick rolls his eyes and presses talk and speaker, leaning back to rest his head on the tub. “Hi Jason.”

“Dick,” says Jason. “I need to talk to you.” He is speaking loudly over the roar of a motor, but still Dick picks up on the undercurrent, a strange urgency to Jason’s words. Dick instinctively assumes something must be wrong, something new, but if it was serious Barbara would have known. Barbara would have mentioned it.

Everything is fine.

Dick closes his eyes, sinks deeper into the tub. “Now?”

“Yes now -,” Jason stumbles a moment over his words, deliberately choosing a more passive path. Interesting. “I need to - I think we should talk now, if you’re free.”

Dick swirls the water. “I said I didn’t want to see anyone,” he points out, in case Jason didn’t know.

Jason definitely knows. “The twerp is back in school today. Are you alone?” There’s a bit of weight to the question, the same pressure that Dick has felt from all of his siblings lately, like they’re uncomfortable with the idea of Dick being without supervision. Like he isn’t a capable adult.

“Yes,” Dick says, swallowing his annoyance. Pointedly, “I like it.”

“I need to see you,” Jason says. It’s almost sweet, but there’s no way Jason is calling for cuddles.

Dick closes his eyes. He doesn’t feel up to an argument. Maybe he can just say no? Well probably not, but perhaps his decline for company will be accepted if it’s indirect. “Maybe later, Jay.”

“Sorry to cut into your me-time, but I think now, Dick,” Jason says Dick’s actual name, almost apologetic, and Dick blinks. Then Jason coughs. “I’m at your apartment.” Through the phone, Dick hears the motor cut out.

He grinds his teeth.

“Ah,” says Dick. It seems Barbara’s warning was a little late. This will be difficult; it’s so much harder to hang up on someone in person. But this talk is going to happen whether he wants it to or not. “See you soon.” He hangs up.

He briefly looks at his notifications. Calls and texts from everyone but Bruce. Dick checks himself for disappointment, but finds he is numb.

The bath was good for one thing, then.

Dick allows himself one last moment to sink his head into the water, ears below the surface, to dwell in the silent limbo of the cold water before he has to confront Jason. Then he puts on his game face, and he drags himself out of the bath.

He has just enough time to pull on a long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants, hair still dripping, when there is a sharp knock on his front door - Jason’s kind of knock. He looks through the peephole anyway, on edge. (Does he want confirmation or time?) It’s Jason, of course. Dick glances back at his window, wondering if he has time for self-defenestration… but no, he has run from his problems enough. He takes a deep breath.

Dick opens the door. “Hi.”

Jason opens his mouth. He could be about to say anything, but it’s probably bad. Actually no, Dick doesn’t want to do this.

Dick closes the door, but Jason catches it with his foot before it shuts. “Hey wait!” Jason pushes the door open. His brute strength surpasses Dick’s, which is annoying; Dick blames his lethargy on his frozen body.

He steps back and crosses his arms. Water drips down his back, a cold stream.

“Asshole.” Jason is annoyed now. He looks Dick up and down, assessing. “How are you doing?” His eyes catch on all of Dick’s injuries, visible and not, before finally settling on his face. “Why are your lips blue?” he asks.

Dick rolls his eyes. “Nice to see you too, please do come in,” he invites sarcastically, sweeping his hand in a welcoming gesture.

Dick wanders to his living room. He can hear Jason following behind. Suddenly needing to be cozy, he grabs a stray blanket on the way, one that Damian had been using while he stayed over. Dick settles on one end of the couch and Jason takes the other. By the time Dick has positioned himself comfortably, curled up as tightly as possible, Jason is watching him expectantly, like he is still waiting for Dick to answer his question. It had been about ..right. “I took a bath.”

“An ice bath?” Jason asks, skeptical, like he thinks Dick is an idiot. Well, he probably does think that. And Dick is not exactly upset that his brother decided to ignore his wishes for solitude, but he’s something close.

“Did you seriously come here to judge how I look?” It’s snappy, but Dick is not in the mood to defend his selfcare right now. He’s exhausted; all of his strength seeped into the tub, leaving him with a quiet anger that sits heavy in his bones.

“No, but you need to stop hurting yourself,” Jason's face looks pinched, not quite a glare but some other strong emotion Dick can’t read. His eyes are tracing again. “How are you doing?” A surprisingly sensitive question.

Dick glares back, but it’s tired and he’s out of heat. He just needs to get this over with. “Why are you here, Jason?”

“I-,” Jason takes a breath instead of finishing. Dick has never seen his brother so uncertain in conversation; the awkwardness hangs on him, making his huge frame look small and unsure. Some deep instinct within Dick has him wanting to reach out and comfort him. But he is too tired, so just burrows deeper into his blanket.

And he waits.

“I have a question,” Jason says eventually, like he’s already beginning to ask it, but then he stops again. He is leaning back on the arm rest so he can face Dick fully. His gaze is penetrating, holding Dick in this moment against his will.

“Well?” Dick prods.

Jason stares at him, gaze penetrating. “You’re not going to want to answer.” A beat. “And you don’t have to answer,” he stresses. “I won’t make you, I would never fucking make you-,” he shifts. “Fuck, you don’t have to tell me. We don’t have to talk about it. But I’m going to ask anyway, okay?”

Dick tries to parse through Jason’s tumble of confusing assurances. Dick doesn’t have to answer to his family? That doesn’t sound right. But for the love of - “Then why are you asking me at all?” Dick says, exasperated.

“Because you can talk to me, if you want to. I’m worried about you,” Jason admits, grimacing like the real emotion behind the words causes him physical pain. He looks away like concern for others is too embarrassing for eye contact.

Or maybe it’s just Dick who makes everything uncomfortable for his family all the time.

“You don’t need to be,” Dick says immediately as his ever-present guilt twinges. “I’m sorry for ducking out and ghosting again,” he apologizes. “And for all the shit I caused.” Dick shouldn’t have grown so complacent with how they were, should have been the one calling for change, for Bruce to change. He needs to be stronger if he ever wants to support his family.

Jason whips his head back around.

“Don’t fucking apologize,” Jason says, appalled. “You didn’t do shit.” A pause. “Well, the aquarium maintenance department probably disagrees-” Dick winces,” -but I think that blow up was a long time coming and Bruce fucking deserved it. You didn’t do shit to the rest of us, anyway. Stop worrying about us, we’re not kids - except for the brat. And we can handle ourselves.” He leans in. “You’ve done enough, okay? You’ve done ..good.” And the strange compliment keeps Dick from arguing the point further, now that he is firmly in uncharted territory.

Jason takes a deep breath. Dick is impressed by the visible display of him trying to calm himself. Whatever he wants to talk about must be really important. Dick’s stomach sinks; it’s probably about Dick and Bruce. Dick does not want to talk about it.

“Look, Jason, I appreciate your and everyone’s concern, and you’ve all made your points this week, but I need to ..process,” Dick says, as gently as he can manage while still being annoyed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Bruce and I really, really don’t want to talk about it with you.” Not when they always, always fight about it. Dick feels a pang of regret. But Jason can be gentle. So he adds more quietly, “I don’t want to fight you right now, Jay.”

Jason shakes his head. “It’s not about Bruce.” Another pause, and Jason can’t seem to let it go without adding, “But he is an asshole.”

Dick snorts, not disagreeing. And he’s dying for confirmation but he forces his tone into neutrality, asks, “Is it true you punched him in the face?” Not that it matters.

(It matters a little.)

“You fucking know it,” Jason says, proudly.

Dick makes an obligatory show of looking disapproving, shaking his head at Jason’s behaviour, but he struggles to squash a tiny sprout of satisfaction at the confirmation that Bruce’s face must hurt. A bigger part of him is feeling responsible for ruining Jason’s relationship with Bruce, for letting them come to blows. Or maybe they were like this anyway, and Dick has just stopped trying to fix them. Tragedy either way, and blame aplenty, whether Dick did something wrong or failed to do something right.

“You missed a massive argument by the way, Dickhead,” Jason continues. Dick tries not to find this anxiety-inducing, not knowing what everyone said, who cut who with a reckless word, who needs comforting now. He can always ask Barbara for the cave footage, but an even bigger part of him consumed with the tired blankness really doesn’t want to know.

Jason side-eyes Dick, judging his reaction to his next words. “No one liked my body bag idea-”

“What the hell, Jason, don’t joke about -”

“- so Replacement is forcing him into therapy. Like I said, we’re handling it fine,” Jason finishes. He looks like he expects Dick to do something, react somehow. Maybe Dick would, if Barbara hadn’t already let him know. He is suddenly very grateful to her, if only for indirectly helping him save face with Jason.

Dick grits his jaw. “I already said, I don’t want to talk about Bruce.”

“Right, we don’t have to talk about it, I was just saying, but I’m here if you ever want to talk about that too.” Dick rolls his eyes. His family is a bunch of gossips. And as if Dick could confide in Jason of all people about his feelings on Bruce - Jason is way too close to the shipwreck to carry Dick into a lifeboat. Jason seems aware of this because he adds, a bit peevishly, “Look, I know I haven’t been the sweetest sunflower to you lately but despite what you think I actually don’t hate your sorry ass. Most of the time.” Apparently Jason is still incapable of a blatant declaration of affection, so this near-thing is ..really nice. But Dick doesn’t feel like responding; he’s still tense with the uncertainty and bizarreness of the interaction.

Jason must take Dick’s uncertain silence as an indication to move on. “Okay I know I’m probably not the best person to talk about this, or your favourite choice, but I don’t think you’re going to get help otherwise. So I’m here to talk about..” Jason blows a breath out, looking frustrated with himself. Looking uncomfortable.

Dick opens his mouth to prod him again, uncertain where Jason is trailing off to, but then it clicks.

Your reputation precedes you.

He’s taken aback for a second. His mouth is still open but he’s unable to speak. And then Jason is laying words out like heavy weights that hold Dick in place, that demand an answer Dick can’t give, “Were you ever taken advantage of?” A dark beat, a death knell. “Sexually?”

It probably takes effort to ask, but Dick is shocked that Jason can say the words at all when Dick can’t even think them.

“No,” he says immediately.

Dick’s breath is solidifying like a heavy mass in his lungs. Damn Bruce. Dick suddenly realizes that this conversation is not unprecipitated. Of course his siblings are curious. Of course Jason goes digging, then runs back to Dick with this horribly perceptive question. But Dick isn’t ready, and he’s so tired. He doesn’t want to talk about this, has never talked about this before.

Has he ever been taken advantage of? Sexually? No.

“Dick,” Jason tries. Soft. Out of character. This week has changed them all, peeled their layers, exposed their hidden selves and sore points.

Dick curls impossibly further into himself, wrapping his arms tightly around his knees for protection. He peers defensively out from his blanket cocoon. “No. I’m not talking about this with you.” His breath catches, solid, and he chokes. “I can’t.”

Is the room getting darker? Or maybe he just needs to breathe, and the dark spots in the corners of his vision will go away. He forces his lungs to expand, wills himself to live through this uneasy moment. He has always adapted quickly to discomfort. He can already feel the resignation sinking in; he thinks he doesn’t want to talk, but. Perhaps he deserves this conversation, some kind of punishment for the things he has let people do in the past.

The concern in Jason’s eyes burns. He is still treading carefully, expecting conflict. “Dick, you’ve painted a really ugly picture and I -,” another stumble; it’s so wrong, Jason is always confident with his words, speaking without regret. But now he is speaking slowly and carefully and it’s wrong. “You don’t have to answer. But I want to know the truth. People talk a lot of shit and I think I should hear it from you.” Another calming breath, no green flickering anywhere today. “Dick, what happened with Mirage?”

Dick remains perfectly still. He needs to be careful how he looks when Jason asks him these questions. So much can be given away without a word spoken. 

“What do you know?” Dick asks, and it’s not just a barb, it’s a real question: what does Jason think he knows? It’s obvious he showed up today with these notions already decided. Dick regrets not keeping tabs on his family; Jason has clearly done some digging in the last forty-eight hours.

“I talked to some friends,” Jason confesses, a little guiltily, but there’s a defiance in the set of his jaw that betrays his self-righteousness. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. Dick tastes bitterness like jealousy, for how much Jason and Roy share with each other.

“I don’t know what Roy told you this time,” Dick says, still tired, instead of annoyed. “But it’s probably true.” He keeps all emotion out of his voice, seeking detachment. It makes him sound dead.

“Kory talked to us,” Jason says, and Dick can’t hide the cringe. “She said you slept with Mirage instead of her.” Dick knows, he was there. Jason doesn’t need to say it. This is so personal, but everything personal has been so public lately that Dick feels like he may as well walk around naked, so why not have his little brother narrate his sexual history.

“Look I get it, okay? I’m sorry I cheated, I didn’t mean to and I never meant to hurt Kory like that. And I’m not so good with relationships, I thought we covered this Saturday,” Dick snaps. His arms feel numb; he’s gripping them too hard. “Thank you for driving all the way here to throw that in my face.”

“What - Dick, no,” Jason says, sounding bewildered. “I meant you thought you were sleeping with Kory, but you slept with Mirage instead.”

“Yes?” Odd. The distinction never seemed to matter before.

Jason takes in Dick’s confusion and groans. “Are you serious? She tricked you. That’s not consent,” he stresses.

Oh. There’s a dangerous, slippery word that Jason hasn’t said, and Dick’s thoughts slide around it now. “It wasn’t exactly against my will,” Dick finds himself arguing with Jason. Bizarre; usually he only has this discussion with himself, after a nightmare, trying to remind himself he deserves it.

Usually he’s crying. He’s fighting hard not to now.

“Did you want to have sex with Kory?” Jason continues to patiently press needles into his heart.

“Yes.” Dick feels weird saying this to his brother, who obviously thinks he knows something Dick doesn’t about Dick.

“Did you want to have sex with Mirage?” Jason asks, intense.

“No, I-,” Dick thinks for a moment, tries to remember without flashing back. It’s hard, but his fingers digging into his arms help him stay present. It’s such a complicated memory. If it hadn’t been Mirage… “I regretted it,” he settles on. “But I said yes at the time.” Despite his efforts, images flicker before his eyes. She really did look like Kory. Still, he should have known.

Jason is staring at him, aghast. Apparently, even when Dick is telling the truth, he is somehow answering wrong.

“You said yes to Kory,” Jason differentiates. “Mirage took advantage of you.”

Well, yes. Wait, no. “But I-”

“Dick, it’s not your fault,” Jason cuts him off sharply.

Dick shuts up.

It’s not your fault.

Dick must hold his incredulous, uncomprehending silence for too long. Jason scrubs his face, swears softly. “Un-fucking-believable. Of course you think it’s your fault, you idiotic martyr. Just like with all the family problems, I swear. Your guilt complex is pathological.”

“I’m-” sorry.

“It’s not your fault,” Jason repeats, more firmly. Then, a little desperate, “Has no one told you that before?”

Dick doesn’t know how to answer that; people tell him all sorts of things. Dick is responsible for a lot, but there are limits. But this specifically? Well.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Jay, it was a long time ago.” The wound is so old, Dick is afraid that to rip it open now will only cause more damage. And Dick has been using the scar as a reference for new pains, everytime someone thinks he owes them something because he smiles at them. If Mirage wasn’t his fault, what is he supposed to think about everything else? Better to leave it alone, for things to remain as they are. Dick is doing fine, he can take responsibility for his own mistakes. It’s just like everyone thinks.

Strange, though, that Jason has adopted this viewpoint after talking to Roy and Kory. He would have thought - but, well. Dick doesn’t know them that well anymore. Maybe..

Dick continues, “I don’t need you to make me feel better; I can defend myself.” That’s the problem as much as the solution isn’t it? Dick is strong. Dick can defend himself, so he doesn’t need Jason to make him feel better about himself. Dick can defend himself, so he could have stopped her, so why didn’t he-

This blanket is so constricting, but he can’t move his arms to free himself.

Dick tries for a bit of humour, to lighten Jason’s dark expression, to distract himself, since his life is one big joke anyway, “I’m sorry you have to hear this again Jay, but your big brother’s a ho.” He lets the word lilt out like it doesn’t mean anything to him. Like his stomach isn’t aching strangely.

Jason flinches as if the words hurt him. “Don’t,” he snaps, looking a little unnerved at Dick’s blasé attitude, like he’s hurt that Dick is trying to brush this off. “Don’t talk about yourself like that. Not about this.”

“It’s the truth,” Dick says, angry. When the truth hurts Dick, he doesn’t get to just not hear it. He’s on edge, arguing about this topic that he tries to avoid. He can’t help reliving Saturday between blinks, seeing everyone’s uncomfortable expressions as Bruce tried to tell Dick he needed to be more careful about sleeping around. “And it’s what you all think anyway.”

“It’s not,” Jason breathes heavily, and there it is, the green. “It’s not the truth, it’s victim-blaming.” It is Dick’s turn to flinch with the insinuation that he might not be the offender. “And fuck you, I don’t think you’re a slut.”

“You called me a seahorse,” Dick points out petulantly. It’s such a small thing, he feels whiny for even bringing it up. Jason always brings out the childish sibling in him.

Jason’s face pinches. “Sorry about that,” he says, and Dick was about to speak but now his mouth is left hanging open. “It was partly a joke, and a little bit of a test that you f- anyway.” Jason shifts. “Kind of shitty of me.” Yeah it was. The apology has Dick caught off guard and he’s unable to speak, so Jason continues, “No one thinks you’re a slut, not in this family.”

It’s not your fault. The words are kind of exactly what Dick has longed to hear, but hasn’t dared to hope for. It’s a bit entrancing to hear this from Jason, who’s a sibling but more of an equal, who has never been really close to Dick, who is close to Roy, and who has no reason to give him empty assurances to spare his feelings like Donna or Wally. And he wants Jason to keep saying these things, but there is a problem.

Jason doesn’t know everything.

If he did, he wouldn’t say it’s not your fault; not if he knew what Dick has done. 

There is something about Jason fighting so hard to make Dick not think he’s a slut that makes Dick feel like he wants to tell him everything. But Jason is just one person, and so many people think-

“Bruce thinks so,” Dick says quietly, hugging himself tighter. 

Jason makes a sound like someone sat on his chest. “Are you kidding me? He’s been hurting you for years. After dowsing him in a tank of water, you still care about what that asshole thinks of you?”

Dick winces, because the answer is yes and always.

Jason can clearly tell. His jaw clenches. “Unbelievable. You know, part of your problem is you always let what other people think affect you too much. If someone says you’re a slut, that doesn’t mean shit. It means you’re not a slut, they’re wrong.”

Dick blinks, not sure where to start. As if things were that simple, but maybe they are for Jason. Dick doesn’t know why he cares so much about what other people think. But ..life is so much easier when people are happy with him, when he does what they want.

“That’s not even the problem with Bruce anyway.” Dick shoots him a look as Jason changes to the protective sibling role he seems to have been studying this week. Jason notices the look. “It’s not my fault we’re talking about him, you brought him up!” Touché. Dick can’t help thinking about Bruce when they’re at odds, when all of the problems between them trace back to him. “I don’t get you Dickhead - I know everyone wants to give him a chance, fuck knows why, but that doesn’t mean you need him in your life. Really, you should just cut him out. You’re better off without Bruce, we all are.” Jason looks like he’s trying to convince himself.

Once Batman’s Robin, always Batman’s Robin.

“He needs us,” Dick says. No matter what Bruce thinks. No matter how Dick feels about the toll it takes to be Bruce’s emotional support. As if Dick has ever wanted space in his entire life. “I think I need him too. You know, Tim’s right with the therapy. Bruce could use the help.” At Jason’s raised eyebrow he adds, “I know he has room for improvement. It could be good for him to have professional support.”

Jason pulls a face. “Whatever, I’ve told you what I think you should do, but it’s your stupid life. Just don’t expect me to go anywhere near him anytime soon.” This is usually what Dick expects. Jason sighs, a long annoyed whistle. “And since you care so much about his stupid opinion - okay, Bruce doesn’t - look, I know how it sounded, but you know he has the emotional intelligence of a literal crab. Bruce sucks. I literally hate you for making me defend him right now on behalf of your fragile psyche.” Dick bristles. Jason meets his eyes very deliberately. “But he doesn’t think you’re a slut, okay?”

Dick cycles quickly through his immediate thoughts. How would Jason know? But he used to get along with Bruce, when he was young, maybe his instinctive understanding has carried over somewhat through the pit changes, despite no evidence. The problem is Dick wants to believe Jason right now. And Dick knows Bruce sucks at communication; he has been reminding himself of this for years, whenever Bruce’s words are particularly hurtful. But when there are both words and actions, it is hard to dismiss, and this time it is unmistakable.

“But he was talking about the rumours. And that’s why he picked me. For.” Dick can’t say it.

Thankfully Jason seems to understand. “No. No. First, Tim is a gossip girl and you know it. He thought he’d help you by telling Bruce about Deathstroke, but he told it wrong. And people in general are gossip girls, and Bruce hears people saying things about Constantine, or whoever you’ve randomly spoken to lately. He’s an idiot for not talking to you about it, because it’s obvious there’s something wrong and I’m starting to -,” Jason cuts himself off, switches, “And that had nothing to do with that damned clusterfuck of a mission. He’s a bastard for making you think that, but then you ran off -,” Jason halts again before he can detail Dick’s blame. “Stop looking like that, it’s not your fault.” Dick doesn’t know what he looks like; he can’t feel his face or the rest of his body. Jason groans. “Fuck, Bruce is useless. But if he actually thinks you’re a slut I will slaughter him with prejudice, forget therapy.” He slams a fist on the couch, and Dick would flinch if he wasn’t still frozen. Of course Jason is irritated when he has to defend Bruce.

Since Jason is fervently worked up about what he’s saying, Dick tries to give his words the benefit of the doubt and parse through the logic. Okay, maybe Bruce’s true thoughts are complicated by his inability to express himself, as always. Sure. Dick knows him well; it’s plausible. And maybe Bruce heard concerning rumours from multiple sources and was actually trying to verify them with Dick before believing them, and picked a terrible time and place and method and everything by trying to kill two birds with one stone and simultaneously semi-apologize for the mission assignment. Bruce could actually have no idea about Dick’s sexual history, which Dick decides is maybe a good thing. Dick can visualize this being reality; it’s not so impossible. But it’s not the only potential explanation, not even the most likely.

(And yet, the vague hope, the mere idea that maybe Bruce doesn’t think that about Dick relaxes him so much he desperately wants to believe it. But even if he wants to believe it’s true, he doesn’t know.)

But Dick can also visualize continuing this discussion about Bruce’s misspeaks and true intentions. And Dick thinks maybe he doesn’t want to see how Jason’s anger will develop if they keep talking about Bruce. Some points can’t be argued anyway; even Jason seems to agree other people talk about Dick like he is somehow open for objectification. There has to be a reason. A reason from people who know Dick better than Jason thinks he knows him. Jason’s distanced opinion on things is nice, at least when it’s so validating, but there has to be more from someone who actually knows the story. So.

“What about Roy?” Dick asks, maybe defensive, maybe vulnerable. But other people’s opinions matter. Unfortunately. They determine Dick’s damn life.

“Dick, I mean it, you’re not a slut,” Jason says instead of answering. He looks exasperated, but his words are strangely patient. Dick keeps waiting. “Why do you need validation from all of these people who weren’t even there when it happened? Kory knows you didn’t cheat on her, you have to know she never blamed you.” Dick knows. But he still feels guilty. “Roy doesn’t know shit.” When Dick continues to be silent, waiting for more, Jason’s exasperation breaks into something harder. “Roy doesn’t use his brain sometimes, okay? He misunderstood some important things. But we had a nice talk about consent.” He clenches his hands. A sinking feeling in Dick’s stomach comes with the insinuation of a fight, of even more conflict he’s brought into the lives of the people around him.

Beyond that, it’s weird to imagine Roy and Jason having a conversation about Dick’s love life, but here is the confirmation. And here is Jason thinking Roy got it wrong, but Jason can only know so much from his own experience. When he was Robin, he saw Dick head over heels for Kory. Dick wonders if this is why Jason seems to so easily reject the idea that Dick could be the poison in his relationships, even when Jason has witnessed some of the lasting rockiness between Dick and Barbara. But Jason’s social circles aren’t identical to Dick’s, a different fringe of crime fighting; he hasn’t seen Dick the way other people have, or heard what they say about him. Maybe Miriam was in the wrong, maybe Kory has been right all along and it’s not Dick’s fault. But how could that one incident have left such a long scar in Dick’s reputation? Dick has to believe there’s something more to it or he would have gone crazy ages ago. And Roy said-

“But he did say I’m a slut,” Dick persists. Roy told him so, in front of everyone. And no one denied it- but that’s not fair to them, it was such an awkward and tense moment, with so much going on. Dick was making it tense. Of course no one defended him about a tiny, throwaway, insignificant truth-

“Not anymore,” Jason says, a steely glint in his eye. Dick is scared to ask what happened exactly, but now he’s really regretting not keeping tabs on Jason. Where does Jason think he’s coming from that gives him this intensity, this need to convince Dick? It’s hard to argue when he doesn’t know what information Jason has. It’s not like he can know what Dick has never told anyone, but there’s a pattern even Jason must be able to see. “And if anyone else says that shit about you, I’ll fight them too.”

Dick is bone-tired from years of sleepless nights wondering how to fix his own reputation and having to accept the nauseating reality that he can’t. Jason isn’t going to fix it with his fists now. Dick scrubs his face with the blanket. “It’s no one in particular, you know. You can’t blame people for believing what they hear anymore.”

“Fucking watch me.” Jason examines his surprisingly nice fingernails.

Dick does watch him for a moment, soaking in the surrealty of his little brother wanting to fight people for his honour. Refusing to believe it’s a lost cause. But of course, Jason thinks it was just once, and then just gossip.

He doesn’t know.

Dick sighs, stretches wearily. “Whatever, Jason. You don’t even know the rest, what’s happened.”

“What’s happened,” Jason echoes, eyes narrowing at his hands like he’s noticed a problem within his grasp.

“If it’s not my fault, then why does it keep happening?” Dick points out as he presents his case, trying to establish a pattern beyond coincidence, that shows there is truth to every negative light Dick has been cast in. He is ignoring his own tension rising, his internal alarm bells that tell him to stop talking now.

It’s too late anyway, Jason has been connecting dots all weekend. He freezes. Then he slowly looks up, eyeing Dick carefully.

“What keeps happening?” he asks quietly.

Dick retraces his words in his mind. “Oh.” Oops. He presses his lips together.

There is a buzz in his veins. It’s fuzzing out his thoughts.

Dick… wishes he hadn’t spoken, wishes he was strong enough to tell Jason to get out of his apartment, or better yet that he had not opened the door in the first place, so Jason couldn’t make him feel all of these things. He’s too tired to fight right now, physically or mentally. He can’t figure out how to dodge Jason verbally when Jason is in hyper-observant bloodhound mode and Dick can’t even grasp his own thoughts.

Dick closes his eyes.

He has been so sloppy lately. He’s letting dangerous things slip. The words are sitting heavy in his throat now, beating against his sealed lips, his last defense; with a swell of panic, Dick realizes he doesn’t have the strength to swallow them back down. But Dick is so tired of hurting other people lately that he’s back to hurting himself. It’s only a fair return. He resigns himself to a painful exposure of his worst secrets. He deserves this.

“What happened?” Jason asks again.

This blanket is so tight.

The thrum grows louder. Dick’s pulse is beating in his ears. There’s something horrible inside of him. His hands reach for his hair, pulling and tugging painfully, forcing him into a rocking motion. It’s not enough, he can still feel it. He stands up so suddenly the blanket falls to the floor. Dick sees Jason’s startled gaze settle into something wary as he watches Dick pace.

And with sudden certainty, Dick knows the horrible thing will come out. He’s going to say it.

Dick wonders what he’s doing. Jason said Dick doesn’t have to talk, but here he is about to speak words he has never said aloud. Dick is doing this to himself, but he can’t determine if it’s because he wants to share or because he feels like he deserves to be known for the monster he is, if deep down he kind of wants to make things worse for himself. A part of him doesn’t want Jason to know, afraid it will change how he thinks of him, that Dick is at fault, or is somehow less; but Dick can’t ignore the tiny hope of what if Jason knows, and doesn’t change his answer?

Dick can only ever hope, and place his faith.

“It was a long time ago,” says Dick, ignoring his doubts, taking a risk. He wishes he was far away right now, but instead he’s feeling every motion of his lips, tasting every bitter word. “You weren’t around. I was alone. In Bludhaven. And then she showed up.” Dick can’t look at Jason directly as he speaks, so he’s looking out of the corner of his eye. “Have you heard of Blockbuster?”

He’s pacing as he speaks. He can’t be still, he needs the distraction. If he’s not focusing on the words, just describing the events, just giving a report, - then maybe he can suppress the anxiety, the panic.

He fills in the background while Jason’s eyes follow him back and forth across the room. A villain, a behemoth of a man who hated Nightwing, hated Dick. A vigilante called Tarantula, a woman named Catalina. The slow destruction of Dick’s life in Bludhaven. “-And he was never going to stop. I didn’t want to-,” Dick’s voice is a whisper, he doesn’t know if Jason can even hear him. “And then I stepped aside, and she shot him.” A question of justice, that Catalina perverted into murder, that Dick allowed. “I let her. And then I left.” He ran away. “And she followed me. She wanted to make me feel better.” Did she? Probably. Dick had been so upset. “She wanted to have sex and I didn’t want to-,” Oh, this is hard. Dick’s voice is so broken, or maybe it’s his whole self that he never bothered fixing. He’s shaking while he paces.

“Dick, breathe,” Jason commands, worried.

Is he breathing? He feels sick. He thinks he’s going to-

“Fuck,” Dick hears Jason say as Dick sprints to the bathroom. He barely makes it to the toilet before he’s puking. Someone sinks next to him on the floor.

“Dick.” It’s Jason of course, there’s no one else here, but for a second Dick had thought he felt someone else touching him. Jason is awkwardly patting his back. It’s a reassurance. Dick thinks Jason is telling him he doesn’t have to finish. But Dick still feels like he has to puke and he’d rather it come out as words so-

“She wasn’t going to stop,” Dick whispers, spitting out bile. The sex, that Catalina had with him, that Dick allowed. “And I - I let her.” The nebulous time afterwards that they spent together. “I stayed.” Jason sucks in a breath, but Dick needs him to know that even though Dick aided a murder, then slept with the murderer, that even today, he still- “I regret it.”

He pukes one more time.

When he is done, there is an almost pleasant tingling in his throat, the relief after vomiting. It mingles with the relief of purging an old, heavy secret. Dick feels lighter. Jason disappears momentarily then suddenly he’s handing Dick a glass of water. Dick obediently rinses his mouth out before leaning back against the wall next to his brother.

Jason doesn’t move again for a moment, a still-life portrait of a judge assessing a case, deciding a sentence. Dick waits on his determination, feels fresh guilt over how embarrassing he’s acting right now, how pathetic; he just dumped his problems on his little brother in the hopes that he’ll get, what? Some sweet reassurances? A hug? How selfish.

What have you been telling your siblings Dick?

Dick closes his eyes. Bruce would be so disappointed in him. “I’m sorry, Jay,” he breaks the silence.

“For what?” Dick can hear the frown. He turns to face Jason.

“This isn’t your problem.” And Dick doesn’t know why these sorts of memories are bothering him so much lately anyway; maybe it was something about the mission that triggered all of these reminders, maybe it was hanging out with friends. He’d had it handled before, he thought. Well, somewhat handled. Somewhat ignored.

“You’re right,” Jason says, and Dick’s stomach drops again but Jason goes on, “This isn’t about me. It’s about you. Dick, I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Jason looks so serious, so earnest. Then, “Shit, fuck that Catalina bitch.”

And the vehemence is so sudden it startles a broken laugh from Dick like a sob. He has to be careful that he doesn’t shake tears loose with the motion. Jason has already seen him puke, he doesn’t need to see him cry. “It was years ago,” Dick says, like time minimizes pain. As if it has ever worked that way for Dick, for any of them. Bruce being a prime example, having allowed his childhood pain to completely shape his life, his present.

“It’s obviously still hurting you. Fuck,” Jason curses softly, “And you let Bruce send you undercover - Fuck. I know I said I wouldn’t bring him up but, fuck. Does Bruce know? That you were-”

“No,” Dick cuts him off quickly. “It’s not his fault, he doesn’t know. Like you said, he’s dense about some things.”

Jason takes a deep breath. “Okay, fine. But fuck.” Then Jason is back to being gentle. “Have you held this in the whole time? Have you never told anyone this?”

Dick gives him a look.

“No one needed to know.” It’s Dick’s problem. It has always been Dick’s problem.

And the thought of his family’s shame and disappointment if they knew has always felt so dreadfully heavy, he was afraid it would crush him.

“Fuuuuuck you and your shitty self-destructive coping mechanisms,” Jason groans. He regards Dick speculatively. “You didn’t want to tell me, did you,” he says it, and it’s not a question. “So why did you tell me?” Dick doesn’t answer, not when Jason clearly already has his own conclusions. Jason groans. “Why are you like this.” He pauses for a moment, then sucks in a breath like he realizes something. He growls, “Oh fuck you, Golden Boy, I see through your people-pleasing shit. Don’t make me an accomplice in helping you hurt yourself to assuage your own guilt. Just because I want to know something doesn’t mean you have to share it. You don’t owe anyone anything.”

“What do you think family is, Jay?” Dick asks him tiredly, scrubbing his face. “We’re always giving.”

“Not necessarily. It’s a two-way street. Family supports each other,” Jason says immediately. The fact that Jason has a formed opinion on family makes Dick feel warm even while he tries to sift through the connotations of what Jason could mean about family supports. If he means sharing information, well.

“I don’t want anyone else to know,” Dick says firmly. He looks at Jason daringly.

Jason rolls his eyes. “Okay, calm down you judgy jerk, of course I’m not going to tell anyone if you don’t want me to. I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s your story, maybe no one else needs to know,” Jason tells him. “But, maybe you need to talk about it. You know, process. So it doesn’t eat you up.”

Eat you up. Well, that’s an interesting way of putting it, when Dick has started to feel consumed by his own past lately, his failures. He doesn’t feel like agreeing out loud with Jason right now, but there might be some truth to his words. Dick literally just threw up, has thrown up a lot this last week from nerves, and his sleeping is more like reliving a series of horrible memories. Maybe he hasn’t been handling everything as well as he thought.

Still, it has taken more effort than he started with to have this discussion, and he’s so drained now. He looks away. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Jason holds up his hands. “Fine. You don’t have to talk to me,” he says. “But just tell me that you’ll consider talking to a professional. It might help. Tell me you’ll think about it?” He’s pressing; he must be concerned.

Dick thinks about it. He would love to be able to eat again, to sleep again. But even though this conversation was not as horrible as Dick had feared, he’s just not certain yet that talking to someone will help with that. But:

“I’ll think about it,” Dick says. Appeasing Jason, but he means it a little too.

Jason nods. Then, oddly serious, “And you know, we’re family right? You and me. Like aside from the club Bruce is running. We’re brothers.”

Brothers. No matter what Bruce says about anything. Well, that’s nice to hear. “Thanks, Jay,” Dick manages. He’s about to add something sappy, but Jason must be able to tell because he’s rushing to speak first.

“Why is there a fish in your kitchen?” Jason asks.

Dick blinks at the change of topic. “It was Damian’s idea,” he says finally, pulling himself up to lean over the sink. He washes his face. “Part of a five step plan to get me to do self care.”

Jason makes a ‘huh’ sound. “What’s its name?”

“Hope,” Dick replies. Irony always finds him in life. He catches Jason’s eye roll in the reflection. Well, siblings deserve needling, so, “Maybe you should get one too.” He gets a middle finger for his helpful suggestion.

“I don’t fucking think so,” Jason says. “I’ve got enough on my plate, I don’t need to be responsible for a whole-ass fish.”

Dick recalls Damian’s determined face, his declaration that he wants to help everyone in their family. How hard it is to say no to him. Dick dries his hands and says, “Just wait, you’ll see.”

Jason gives Dick a look like he doesn’t believe him. Well.

He’ll see.

Jason jerks his head to the door. “Enough bathroom lurking, I’ve reached my daily quota.” Dick snorts, but he follows him out. “Do you have that Just Dance game?” Jason asks in the hall. Dick carefully does not look surprised at the request, though it doesn’t matter since Jason’s back is turned.

“Of course I do,” Dick says, adding, “I’m really, really good at it.”

Jason snorts. “Bet.”

—--------------------

When Jason leaves, hours later, Dick feels a little more corporeal. He picks up his phone again.

Dick has not been drifting mindlessly through the weekend, not the entire time. Really, his thoughts won’t leave him alone. He feels like he can admit to himself that he has some resentment towards his family and friends because no one intervened, for years. Even this week, after his siblings were confident Bruce was in the wrong and needed to change - even then, everyone was waiting for someone else to tell them how to act. No one wanted to make the first move when it meant breaking the status quo. Perhaps for some younger sibling-related reason, they all felt like they couldn’t actually tell Dick what to do. It’s obvious that they look to each other for what is right and okay, and often they look to Dick, who does his best to smile while he bleeds. He wasn’t asking for help.

Even his friends will tell him he should leave, and have been pushing him since he was a teenager to admit that he and Bruce need to change. But still, no one has ever made him do something about his situation. It’s bizarre to Dick that for the first time last Saturday, he is the one who sent himself away. But everything is changing and he doesn’t know what he wants to say to anyone anymore so it’s best to step back, retreat. 

With the clarity of space now, Dick is pretty sure he’s also angry at himself, for how he has been treating people. How he reacts to Bruce, but mostly how he reacts to anyone picking up on his vulnerabilities, so close to the surface these days. Maybe it would be easier if he could forget the bad stuff, but his memory has always been too good for his own mental health. To forget nothing, to forgive everything; a monumental task. 

He finds his mind slipping back to other targets that are easier than himself. He’s not sure what to do with his siblings, with people who want to help, and he hasn’t been kind. But he can fix it, make amends. He can focus on this problem today; it’s much easier for him to process, and it hurts less to think about. It’s hardly even deflection.

Dick was never meant to be alone. He was born to love and be surrounded by people. He has no misconception here; he knows he needs other people, and he can be a people pleasing leach. But right now he owes some people some apologies. Steph, Tim. Donna. Wally. It is not their fault he punished them for trying to reach out. It is not their fault Dick is mad at himself and let it manifest in how he treats others. But he doesn’t have to be this standoffish. He can make some changes.

He takes a deep breath. He’ll make some calls. He misses his family.

And as for everything else: he’ll think about it.

—----------------------

A knock on Dick’s door has him tensing, throwing off his technique as he flips an egg. It lands on the burner, and Dick scrapes it off in a hasty save.

It’s Thursday morning. Dick isn’t expecting anyone, but apparently surprise manifestations are the norm these days.

Dick turns off the stove and takes a breath. He hasn’t seen anyone since Jason on Monday, but he has talked to his siblings. Everyone is treating him carefully, and it irks, but things will settle out.

Another knock at the door.

Still, Dick hopes it’s not Bruce. He doesn’t know what he’d say. Dick glances at his phone, sees  there’s a new notification from Jason. Dick stifles a groan. Jason has been pestering him daily now. It would be just like him to decide he can show up again.

This will be quick. Dick is reaching out to his other siblings so they shouldn’t be bothering Jason, and he has plans to visit Gotham soon. No, he’s not ready to talk about his feelings and no, he doesn’t feel like getting professional help yet but no, he doesn’t need another intervention so Jason can take his bike and his presumptuous ideas and head straight back to Gotham.

Dick stomps to the door, opening it with a huff. “Jay, give me a break, for the love of -”

Dick will blame what happens next on his own distraction.

He gets a face full of water.

Dick splutters, reeling back at the attack, body instantly on high alert. He’s already reaching out blindly and slapping the weapon away on instinct.

“What the hell, man?” comes an indignant cry. There’s the sound of something plastic clattering to the ground.

Wait. “Wally?” Dick wipes the water out of his eyes. He blinks.

Wally is already bending over to retrieve his water gun, checking it for damages. He looks relieved, then annoyed. “It’s scratched! You owe me a new one.”

Dick stares at the water gun, taking a long time to catch up to the moment. “Sorry I was …expecting someone else.” A beat. “I do not owe you another one, I got you that one.”

Wally sticks his tongue out. “I’ll sue for damages.”

Dick, despite himself, starts to smile. Wally is unexpected, but a pleasant surprise. “What are you doing here?” he asks, leaning against the doorframe.

“Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me,” says Wally, whipping the water gun up again. Dick ducks just in time, avoiding a second spray to the face.

“Hey! What gives?” he asks, more bemused than annoyed at getting soaked.

“‘What gives’, he says,” Wally parrots. He puts his hand over his heart. “Dude, I am wounded! Highly offended! I heard from Roy about you. Roy. Harper.” Jason, Dick thinks, annoyed. “And I thought to myself, am I not the best friend? Am I not the trusty confidante? I was carefully giving you space, but no longer,” he pronounces. He waves the gun purposefully, shoving it in Dick’s face. “So I don’t care if you don’t want to talk to me about your problems, because you’re stuck with me and even if you don’t want to see me it’s too late sucker I’m very attached and I will find you,” Wally finishes fiercely, now grabbing Dick’s shoulders for a moment in the fastest hug of Dick’s life before stepping away again. His words are too quick for Dick to process normally.

“Okayyyyy,” says Dick after a moment, still unsure where this is going. The last he knew, Wally was walking on eggshells around him after Dick blew up over his friends suggesting he might need help. The guilt is harder to ignore when Wally is standing right in front of him. 

But then Wally’s stomach growls, and they both raise their eyebrows at the same time and crack up.

The tension of the moment eases a little. Dick really isn’t upset that Wally is here. It’s actually a little nice to be reached out to even after he had blown him off, nice to know that their friendship is stronger than Dick’s carelessness. Truthfully, his own embarrassment has kept him from trying to take back his words. He has missed his best friend.

Dick steps back and makes a dramatic bow. “Did you want to come in? I just made eggs.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Wally says, wiping away a fake tear before zooming past Dick to his kitchen. “Did you make any for yourself too?” Wally calls back.

Dick rolls his eyes into the empty hallway before closing the door and wandering after his friend.

Wally has already set out plates and cutlery and served them both semi-equal portions and is now sitting patiently waiting.

“You dork,” Dick tells him fondly.

“You good?” Wally asks him, eyes squinty. He presses his fingertips together like he’s thinking hard. “You know, in general. Or in specific,” he adds.

“I’m doing okay actually,” Dick says, approaching slowly. He flicks his wet hair out of his eyes, carefully focusing on the strands while he says, “I’m sorry I was a jerk to you guys.”

“Don’t mention it,” Wally tells him seriously. “You were hurt. You’re allowed to be upset.”

There’s a lump in Dick’s throat, approximately the shape of all of his guilt, and it’s choking his words, “But I-”

“No, Rob, stop. You’re already forgiven, stop blaming yourself.” Dick’s heart flutters a bit, but then Wally is pointing a fork right into the heaviness of the moment and waving it around. “But if you think that I’m going to leave you alone ever again, you’ve got another thing coming. I brought my toothbrush,” he adds threateningly. “I can stay for a long time.”

Dick rolls his eyes but feels warm. He grabs some fish flakes and tosses them into the tank on his way by. Wally tracks the motion. “Wouldn’t dream of peace and quiet.”

“That’s right, and don’t you forget it.” Wally takes a large bite of egg. “Cute fish by the way,” he comments around his mouthful.

“Thanks.” Dick pulls out a chair, and they fall into an easy and companionable silence.

“So Roy,” Dick asks finally, curious, “Says what, exactly? When did you talk to him?”

Wally gulps down water. “He started messaging me on Monday. Told me I should see you.” A pause. “Have you been talking to Roy?”

Dick shakes his head. “Jason.”

“Ah.” Wally nods with understanding. “That makes more sense. Unfortunately.” Then he checks his phone and grimaces. “Okay, it also makes this a little awkward. So, I thought you had made up with Roy somehow.” Wally shifts. “I sort of invited him to come see you with me.”

Dick chokes on his water. “You what?” He is not ready to see Roy. But he also thought Roy wasn’t ready to see him. “And he said yes?” Wally’s eyes dart the way they always do when he’s feeling guilty, and Dick’s exasperation heightens proportionately. “Wally!”

“I’m sorry! I thought you were friends again!” Wally protests. “He sounded like, really caring? Okay, listen, he was being weird. He really wanted me to hang out with you, I think he wanted to see you but doesn’t know how to himself, the idiot. So I figured I’d just cut out all the awkward avoiding and have us all hang out.” He checks his phone again. “He’s almost here.” He looks guilty. “Dick, I’m sorry I invited him without telling you. I wanted us to have a water gun fight.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out two extra water guns, still in the packaging. “I thought it would be fun, like old times,” he says quietly. He bites his lip. “Do you want me to tell him to go? I will, if you’re not comfortable with it.” He would, if Dick only asks him too.

But Dick’s heart hurts to see Wally let down. He tries to remember what exactly is wrong between him and Roy. Dick decides he doesn’t really have a problem with Roy, nothing that can’t be ignored. So maybe Roy is better friends with Jason now, so what? And he called Dick a slut, oh well, Dick has called himself that. Roy punched Dick, but Dick punched Roy.

But Roy has been messaging Dick lately, not that Dick has been responding, and Jason said he’s changed, and Wally even thought they had made up for some misguided reason. And if Roy is willing to drive out to Bludhaven to hang out with Dick, maybe that says something too. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

Wally is already typing, and Dick can read upside down the sorry bro and my bad and forgot he’s busy and I’ll make it up to you in the pending cop out.

Dick takes a deep breath. He reaches out and grabs one of the guns, pushing another between Wally and his unsent message. “Let’s hide in the stairwell. We can sneak up behind him when he reaches the apartment door.”

Wally looks surprised. “You sure?” He looks searching, and when Dick nods his eyes start to light up. A slow grin stretches across his face. “Dude, yes.” He backspaces his message and follows Dick excitedly into the hallway to lay their trap.

Dick pushes his lingering dread down as he patiently waits with a buzzing Wally for Roy’s arrival. When Roy does step out of the elevator, Dick’s heart stutters a moment as he watches through the tiny window they are peeking through. No visible weapons, his posture tensed but looking more nervous than angry. Still, maybe this was a bad idea - Dick is so sick of conflict. But Wally is grinning at him like a maniac, waiting for his cue.

Roy knocks on Dick’s apartment door like he actually wants to be let in.

Jason said Roy doesn’t hate you, Dick reminds himself. He makes the signal to Wally; Dick is ready.

They burst out.

“Ambush!” Wally cries loudly, sticking the water gun in Roy’s alarmed face. Roy drops down to a knee in defense like he’s ready to launch an arrow he doesn’t have before he even seems to realize his own actions. Dick flips over both of them, grabbing Wally’s gun out of his hand and handing it to Roy as he lands on the other side. Roy glances at him, just a flicker of his eyes in the middle of a battle, to check whose side he’s on. The uncertain moment passes in an instant.

Then they both turn as one and fire at the disarmed Wally.

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” Wally announces, shaking water out of his ears as he raises his fists in mock outrage.

“You got me first,” Dick reminds him, zero pity.

“You shouldn’t yell ambush, it’s not sneaky. No one likes spoilers,” Roy admonishes Wally. He crosses his arms, unimpressed. Dick finds himself laughing.

“Okay wow can we stop ganging up on me? I thought this hang out would be fun,” Wally complains. And it's said jokingly, but Dick freezes at the bare reminder that the three of them have gathered to hang out. He can’t help it; he glances at Roy from the corner of his eye.

Roy is watching him back, the strange nervous tension returning to his posture. “Hey Dick,” he says. He sounds like he always does.

“Hi,” says Dick. He doesn’t know what to say, but he feels like Roy wants to talk. But there’s too much between them, and nothing is sorted out; it’s hard to hope for a fresh path. And yet here he is, holding his breath, as if Roy’s opinion matters to him. Maybe he should stop pretending it doesn’t. Maybe that would help with the suspense.

Roy is still sizing him up, until he suddenly seems to realize everyone is waiting on him to speak. He blinks. Then he sighs. “About last week,” he starts, and Dick feels Wally tense simultaneously as he does, “I’m sorry.” What. “I overstepped. We both did.” That makes more sense, the ‘we’ - Dick can be an asshole too. “But I’ve been talking to Jay and thinking, and I was wrong.” What. “I know I said that stuff about Kory but you’re not… you know. It wasn’t - it’s not your fault, I’m just mad stuff happened like that, and you always just lie down like a martyr-”

“Roy,” Wally cuts him off, looking at Dick with undo concern - oh, he’s not breathing again, oops.

“Okay,” says Dick, just to trick himself into inhaling.

Roy looks frustrated with himself. Or maybe he’s frustrated with Dick, that’s more familiar, but it feels weirdly like it’s also somehow on Dick’s behalf. “Sorry,” Roy grinds out, again. “Look, you’re like, a good person. It’s frustrating that you don’t care about yourself, okay? But Jay likes you. And I don’t hate you, okay?”

Wally mouths, Wow.

Dick swallows, mouth dry. He decides to not address most of what Roy said. He’ll probably think about it later, lying awake at night instead. “Okay,” he says again. He can’t help it, his guilt won’t let him hold it in, so he starts, “Sorry for punching you and saying that stuff about Ollie and Ja-”

“Right yeah okay forgiven moving on,” Roy interrupts with a touch of panic. Dick closes his mouth, relieved.

It’s quiet for a moment. Dick can’t tell if they really just made up, there’s still so much unsaid, but it’s nice to know they’re on the same page about not being actively angry with each other.

“Wow,” says Wally, out loud this time. “That was really somethin-”

Dick and Roy glance at each other. Then together, they shoot him in the face.

—------------------------

The Text arrives a few weeks later, while Dick is coaching gymnastics.

He doesn’t check his phone until his mid-afternoon session is about to begin, the last class before Christmas break. He’s in the locker room, laughing at a story Tessa is recapping from her toddler divas. Ryan asks him the time and Dick glances at his screen. He has a notification, a text from Bruce. He feels a small flutter in his chest; in the last couple weeks, Bruce has started  sporadically sending him mundane texts, a weird change from the near constant radio silence before. It’s never anything exciting, but Dick still feels a pleasant thrill at being texted at all and he refuses to feel bad about his tiny happiness. He expands the notification, reads the single line.

Dick drops his phone.

“Woah, Grayson!” Ryan lunges to try to catch it but the phone crashes onto the cement floor.

Dick’s fingers feel numb. Actually, his whole body is detached right now.

“Hey, you okay?” Tessa asks, her story interrupted. She peers closely at Dick. 

“Sorry,” Dick says, blinking at the ground. He looks up at her and puts on a smile. “Lost my grip for a second.”

“Aw man, bad luck,” Ryan says sympathetically, handing Dick his phone. The screen is smashed.

Dick stares through the cracks. The Text is fractured behind the broken screen, difficult to read. Safe to look at. But the words are burned into his mind and they’re all he can see, even when he closes his eyes.

Why now? Everything has been awkward since the aquarium, especially between Bruce and Dick, but it’s not like they’re estranged. Dick has refused to let them drift apart, and has stubbornly continued as if nothing happened. But this? Dick is blindsided.

It’s almost Christmas. After Dick’s week of relative solitude, he packed his emotions back into himself like a reusable plastic bag. He has reattached his family connections, well-practiced, and it is almost like nothing was ever wrong. Jason still watches him carefully. Jason and Tim are annoyed that Dick even went back to interacting with Bruce at all. What do they want Dick to do, run away? He doesn’t want to be anywhere else, wants nothing more than to be close to all of them. He thought that would have been obvious by now.

But Bruce has been questionably better, treating everyone a bit like glass. Dick has never seen him like this before. It’s obviously difficult for him, he’s constantly starting to say something, stopping, and then saying something else. It makes in-person meetings really bizarre. But the strangest change has been the texts. Bruce has been texting Dick the most inane things, like asking how his day is going or what he had for lunch. Dick has checked with Tim and Damian; it’s not just him, Bruce is sending weird messages to all of them.

Dick knows Bruce is in therapy, but they don’t talk about that, or any problems. No one talks about any of it, really. Everything is weirdly back to normal. Mostly normal, anyway, at least on the surface. Dick is pretty sure Tim is up to something, disappearing every now and then. But he’s taken up more Titans work lately, avoiding Bruce with an obviousness that must be itself intentional. Damian is more clingy around Dick and has consistently been over to Bludhaven each weekend, though whether that’s for himself or if he thinks Dick needs the monitoring is uncertain - it is probably a bit of both. Everyone has been tentative around each other, and they’ve had some uncomfortable arguments. But it’s not awful, and Dick is pretty sure they’re still celebrating Christmas, some of them anyway. Though Damian can be sullenly silent, Cass is off continent again, Tim is orbiting at a distance and Jason continues to be openly defiant (and he has been doing more independent cases, disappearing regularly off their radar. From their sporadic talks, Dick understands he is busy processing.)

But between Dick and Bruce, they’re pretending nothing happened. And Dick is fine with this; he has pretended the same under much worse circumstances, and now it’s obvious Bruce is trying to be better. There is no reason to make any major changes when what they have is working.

So why, Bruce? Why stir the pot now?

“Earth to Dick,” Tessa says, and Dick tries to focus, snapping his eyes open again. “Is everything alright?”

“I -,” Dick starts, wrenching his focus back to the present. “Yes, of course.”

Ryan narrows his eyes. “You’re shaking. Are you feeling okay?”

Both of his coworkers are looking at him with a touch of concern. Dick is feeling a little sick now. It could be his stomach, but his breathing is wrong too. It’s his mind, though, that’s the real problem. There’s no way he can teach a class of catty preteen girls right now.

“Actually,” says Dick slowly, turning his phone over in his hand, “I am feeling off. Ryan, do you think you can take the girls with your boys? I think I need to …go.”

His coworkers exchange a look. Dick knows everyone at his workplace thinks he’s “going through something”; he catches them talking about it, but no one has directly asked him. Whatever. Whether they think he is actually sick or having some emotional crisis (uncomfortably close to the truth), Dick doesn’t care. He just needs to go, now, before he hyperventilates in public because why would Bruce –

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

“Sure thing, man,” Ryan is saying, sympathy clear in his voice.

“Yeah no problem, we’ll cover you,” Tessa says carefully. Some hesitation, then, “Feel better, yeah?”

Dick feels bad for worrying them. He finds himself fighting a strange urge to sit down and explain everything so they stop looking so concerned, but he has more urgent problems than what these people think of him.

(And if he told them everything, wouldn’t they just be more concerned? No, it would have to be a really good lie, and Dick is too tired right now.)

Dick smiles vaguely, grabs his bag. “Thanks guys. I owe you one.” And he claps them both on their shoulders and heads out, trying not to run when he just heard Carol lecture seven year old Betty that they don’t do that in the halls.

Once he’s outside, there is no conversation to distract him from his thoughts, and all he can think about are the deceptively innocent words frozen on his phone screen and petrified in his mind. He feels his breath catch and he moves faster, pushing his legs into a jog and then a run. He doesn’t have time to wait for a bus. If Dick’s mind wasn’t such a mess right now he might feel embarrassed sprinting past civilians, but he just needs to get home, fast.

He jumps up his staircase and stumbles into his apartment, slamming the door behind him and sinking to the floor. His breaths are gasps now. He stays down for a moment, trying to focus on breathing. His neatly packed emotions have exploded into a torrential whirlwind, sweeping him away. He’s feeling a lot right now, too much, and he can’t sort it out. He needs to – he needs to –

Damian’s concerned face flashes in his memories, telling Dick he will stay with him whenever he  needs. He remembers Barbara’s tone when she checks up on him. Jason’s insistence that he talk to someone. Then Alfred’s face when Dick said he would remain in Bludhaven, in his lonely apartment, for a while.

Maybe …he needs to call someone.

But who? No one in his family, he can’t talk to them about this, especially not when he’s so obviously shaken up by it. Barbara is too closely involved too. Wally, Donna? But they hate Bruce, and while an echo chamber of Dick’s own hurt could be validating, he’s present enough to know that what he needs right now is someone to just listen. Someone who -

Ah. That’s who he needs.

Dick automatically pulls out his phone and attempts to open his contacts. He stabs at the shattered screen, but it doesn’t respond. He struggles to swallow the rising frustration that tastes a lot like panic. He slides his finger along the cracks, trying to force the visual to change. He thinks it works for a second, until he realizes he’s just looking at a blood smear from his sliced fingers.

“Shit, shit,” Dick mutters to himself, dropping the phone. He doesn’t need the phone anyway, he just needs -

“Clark.”

His voice is barely a whisper, more of an exhale. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but it feels like a blink and the door behind him is wrenched open and Clark Kent is suddenly here.

“Dick?” Clark sounds worried. “Is everything alright?” Dick can’t speak. He is still looking down at his bloody phone, but he can hear Clark move around, making a quick sweep of Dick’s apartment, likely looking for hazards. After a few moments, Clark maneuvers himself to drop slowly onto his knees in front of Dick on the floor of his entryway. He’s leaning a bit so he’s lower than Dick, not a threat. (He must be the kindest, most considerate man Dick has ever met.) “What’s wrong?”

Dick finally looks up. It has been some time since they last spoke - Dick has been busy in Gotham, in Bludhaven - but it is Clark Kent, glasses and all. He’s even carrying a clipboard. He is looking down at Dick’s phone, frowning at the bloodstained cracks. Then he’s looking back at Dick. His wide, earnest eyes seem a little blurry through Dick’s own watery gaze. “I -,” Dick tries.

Behind Clark, Dick can see his dim apartment somehow distorted by the tears or maybe Dick’s panic: the walls pressing in, the shadows suffocating. He can’t be here anymore, betrayed by familiarity, not for another second.

“I need to get out of here,” he chokes out, grabbing his useless phone again and pulling up his hood. He stares at Clark like he’s his only hope. “Please.”

And Clark, bless him, doesn’t need to hear anymore than that. He helps Dick to his feet, hands him his coat, and then they are off into the sky. It’s an unusually clear day for Bludhaven. Dick distantly sends a prayer for no one to look up.

The airtime passes in a blur. Dick wants to enjoy the flight the way he used to when he was small and always thrilled to get carried by Uncle Clark. But his mind won’t let him escape its distress, and the next thing he knows they are landing gently in a small clearing in a forest. There is no snow; they must have gone south, but Dick recognizes they are in the Appalachians. Or maybe Ozarks? 

Dick takes a few steps away from Clark. It’s silly, he’s not the one who just carried someone hundreds of miles, but it is Dick whose breathing is loud and irregular while Clark silently watches him, radiating concern.

“Dick?” Clark asks quietly, after a few minutes of standing there while Dick looks up at the sky and unsuccessfully tries to calm down. “You’re safe. It’s just you and me here. There’s no one around for more than a five mile radius, I promise.”

With effort, Dick focuses on Clark. He turns to face his pseudo uncle, rakes a hand through his hair. Breathe. “Hey Clark, it’s been a while.” He tries for a smile, but it feels so awful he immediately drops it. “Sorry about that freak out. Thanks for coming, and bringing me …here.” Wherever they are. The winter sunshine feels good, but it’s not strong enough alone to change the course of his mood.

“Of course, Dick, anytime,” Clark replies, still careful. “I’d like to help more. What’s wrong? Are you in trouble?” And the most careful of all, hushed, “Is it Bruce?”

Dick can’t help it - he laughs. Everyone always, always, wants to know if it’s Batman who is stressing Dick out. Ah Bruce, your reputation precedes you.

But still, “No,” he vehemently denies, wanting to put Clark at ease. “Not in trouble. That’s not - that’s not it.” Clark waits for Dick to say more, but Dick can’t. And Clark knows something has been going on in Gotham, but they’ve all made it clear to the super hero community that they’re handling it on their own and don’t want an intervention. Not yet anyway. But it means that Clark really doesn’t have the background for Dick’s current freakout.

Oh, what a mess. Why did he think calling someone was a good idea? He will have to explain. Yet he can’t say it out loud. He shoves his hands in his pockets and his fingers brush against his phone. Oh. His pulse quickens, but maybe this is for the best, maybe this will be easier. 

He savagely rips his phone out of his pocket, wipes the blood off the screen with his coat. The text is hard to read through the cracks, but Dick is confident Clark will get it. Dick stalks over to Clark and shoves the phone into his hands. “Here,” he says. 

Clark examines the screen for a moment. Dick watches his face as the frown of concentration melts into surprise and then washes off with shock and confusion. Clark closes his eyes, his expression settling into frustration. “Oh Bruce, what have you done,” he says, so quietly Dick is certain he is not supposed to hear.

“Yeah,” Dick folds his arms. “Exactly.” He whips around again to pace the clearing. 

“How are you feeling?” Clark ventures.

Dick throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t know! What am I supposed to feel? Should I be happy?”

“You don’t have to feel anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were upset or angry, this is …a lot,” Clark assures him seriously. Supportively. He can’t help but be a shining hero at all times.

Dick presses his lips together, blows air out. It doesn’t help, there is still so much inside him to vent. It comes out staccato. “I’m just so confused. I mean, I’ve been waiting my whole life for him to - ,” to what? Acknowledge that their relationship is the father-son shape Dick has always seen it as? “To tell me. What we are. But I’ve gotten used to him just showing me. How he feels.” Bruce gets angry. Bruce gets disappointed. Dick can handle it. “And that’s fine. So why would he -,” Dick’s voice cuts out.

He is accustomed to the familiar shape of his relationship with Bruce. He has accepted that he is not a son, and that he doesn’t need to be. Their relationship has stabilized, improved even since the aquarium - or maybe since Bruce got therapy. Dick is fine.

But.

He closes his eyes and all he can see are the words:

Would you like me to adopt you? [Received 2:49 pm].

Dick’s entire existential crisis, reduced to a yes/no standardized test he is doomed to fail. And he is spinning again, out of orbit.

“Have you two spoken about it?” Clark prods.

“Of course not,” Dick scoffs, almost hysterical. Now he’s shaking while he paces. “That would involve speaking about things that matter. We haven’t really talked since - since.” Dick stops, not wanting to get into everything with Clark right now. He changes course. “He’s started texting me stupid things like ‘have a good day’. Our last conversation was about the actual damn weather when I dropped Damian off on Monday.” He shakes his head. “No, this is totally left field. I got the text and panicked and called you. Sorry about that,” Dick adds, then ruefully, arms spread, spins in a circle, “Welcome to my mess.”

Dick laughs again, self-deprecating, but are these tears on his cheeks? He really is losing it. Maybe shoving his thoughts away and locking up his emotions the last few weeks didn’t work so well after all. Jason will be so smugly proud that he was right, that maybe Dick does need help. The pressure is building, like the inner turbulence from motion sickness, things changing too quickly, and he is struggling to adapt.

“No, don’t be sorry, I want to be here for you, thank you for calling me. And it’s not your mess, it’s Bruce being an idiot,” Clark says firmly, reaching out to Dick. But Dick’s headspace isn’t clear, so instead of behaving like a normal person he flinches away and feels so guilty when Clark freezes. “Sorry,” Clark says, looking at Dick with somehow even more concern.

Dick shakes his head. “If I don’t get to be sorry, you sure don’t. But you’re right, Bruce is acting crazy. Why the hell would he send that? Over text? Does he even care about it?” It’s a genuine question. Dick has no idea.

His heart rate is rising.

It really is bothering him, how casual the message is, thrown in with all the other nonchalant things Bruce messages now but can’t really care about; like, “It’s supposed to rain in Bludhaven tonight”,  “Alfred is trying out a new mansaf recipe”, “Would you like me to adopt you?”. Like this is an idea Bruce thought of offhand, treating it even less carefully than the suggestion of an unprecedented family trip to the aquarium, when this is everything to Dick.

Everything he isn’t, anyway. And he has spent his lifetime being alright with that. He has always felt a bit out of place, never adopted, like he is an imposter. Like maybe there is something wrong with him. He has pushed hard to make their family work anyway and to have his own place in it.

His palms are sweaty. He clenches them tightly. 

Who does Bruce think he is? Does Bruce think adoption is really a cure-all for their myriad of problems? Does he just feel guilty for how he has treated Dick, now that he has realized it, and this is his way of making it up to him –  and isn’t that a thought that makes Dick feel suddenly cold. What if Bruce is asking not because he wants to adopt Dick, but because it seems like a fair trade, after what he has put Dick through?

Everything in their family has been so much harder recently. There are lots of reasons for the challenges, but Dick tracks the increase back to Bruce’s return from the timestream, with him reinserting himself into their lives and forcing their new patterns to fit back into the mold he wants. Bruce is so controlling; he’s always been that way, but everything is worse when he feels like his authority is slipping. Dick has been carefully tiptoeing around his ego, but it’s to keep the pace going for their whole family’s dance.

Does Bruce think that Dick’s world revolves around him, like a satellite whose orbit can be tweaked and repaired as needed? Is Dick just some sick joke to Bruce? To this family?

Not that anyone else is making the patchwork repairs easier. Jason will only speak to Alfred, Tim will only speak to Steph, Damian will only speak to Dick, Cass has been almost radio silent since she left. And everyone is appalled that Dick wants to talk to Bruce at all, like he’s making the wrong decision. But he doesn’t want all of this dead silence in his family.

“Dick. Breathe.” Clark’s voice is close, concerned.

Dick is hyperventilating again. He can’t stop. He has figured out what emotion is rising up within him, the tide that is threatening to overwhelm him. Familiar, and not as spent as he thought it was.

It’s rage. He’s seething mad.

How dare Bruce. The presumptuous jerk.

Clark must be part empath, because he takes a step back and repeats, “No one is around us for five miles. Let it out, Dick.”

A clear command. Years of conditioning to wait for orders have him latching onto this one. Dick leans back, throws his arms out, opens his mouth and screams.

It’s a wordless, primal sound that carries all of his fury into the sky. It takes effort to scream hard; Dick’s entire neck is taut with the weight of his hurt being given a savage voice. It’s painful on his throat, but in a twisted way it feels good. Something is being released with the noise.

Eventually, he can’t keep it up anymore and his voice gives out. Dick tests out a few noises, and settles for a whisper as he closes his eyes. “Thank you.”

Clark’s poor, sensitive hearing. Dick hears Clark shift towards him. “Can I give you a hug?” he asks quietly, hovering close by.

Dick opens his arms in answer, all the signal Clark needs. The embrace is rejuvenating. He feels a rush of gratitude, and tries not to feel ashamed about how exposed he is right now, all of his emotions and vulnerabilities on full display.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Dick whispers hoarsely. “Can I just ignore it?”

Clark squeezes him tighter once before letting go. “Sorry Dick, I don’t think you can leave this one alone.” A pause. “But it sounds like this is about more than just the text, though. How are you guys doing, really?”

Dick sighs deeply. This is what they get for keeping all of their family drama on the down low. “You heard Bruce was getting therapy right?”

“I hadn’t been certain if what I heard was true,” Clark muses. “I never thought I would see the day Batman talked about his problems.”

Dick snorts. “Right?” He flops down to lie in the cool grass, exhausted. He muses, “Do you think his therapist told him to send the text?”

“I doubt anyone would tell him to send that over text,” Clark says wryly. Then he ventures, “But Bruce may have been trying to give you an out if your response was …negative. By not forcing a reaction out of you in real time.”

Dick thinks for a while. Now that he is feeling clearer, tired after his screaming match with the sky, he tries to recall Bruce’s poor emotional logic. He can imagine pretty clearly Bruce’s therapist recommending that he explore his relationship with Dick, and then Bruce naturally considered adoption, because everyone else is adopted. Because if Bruce ever thought about Dick for five minutes it was probably pretty obviou -

Anyway. Dick doesn’t like to think about Bruce discussing Dick in a therapy session.

“He’s trying.” Dick sighs again. “Although he did just give me a panic attack. Why is he so emotionally clumsy all the time?”

“It’s definitely a flaw of his. How are you guys otherwise?” Clark prods. Dick looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Clark knows Bruce better than most people, and as an equal, not an authority figure. Clark knows Bruce isn’t perfect. He knows Bruce and Dick are almost too incongruous to be passable as a working relationship sometimes. 

But he doesn’t know everything.

Dick bizarrely feels in control for a moment. He gets to choose, he gets to decide if he will tell Clark or not. He decides whether Clark will know that Bruce can phrase things so Dick ends up feeling like a terrible person for things he didn’t even do, or how sometimes Bruce will use a bit of force to remind his soldier, to remind Dick, that their mission is serious.

Dick should be using past tense, even in his thoughts. Nothing but the most superficial of conversations have been exchanged since the aquarium. He shouldn’t hold Bruce’s past mistakes against him, not when he is trying so hard in the present, not even when the pain always feels fresh to Dick.

(But how long will it last? How long until they fall back into old habits? How long until Dick is sent away?)

But in this moment, Dick has the power to make a choice. It’s freeing.

In the freedom of the moment, Dick finds the courage to take the step he could never even see as an option before. It takes him a couple moments, and he clears his throat a few times before he can speak. Then, like the Flying Grayson he is, he leaps:

“Once when I was Robin, Bruce got mad and hit me after patrol,” Dick begins, his voice still a whisper. Clark goes perfectly motionless beside him. “And then it wasn’t just once.”

It is faltering, and slow, but as the sun lazily traces the sky, Dick lets himself tell Clark what has been hurting him for years on the inside. He keeps some things to himself, the private hurt from Mirage or Tarantula - it’s still raw from his talk with Jason and it cuts him trying to get it out of his throat so he swallows it back down. He doesn’t mention the morass that is Deathstroke, which has always troubled him less than everything else for some inexplicable reason. But about Bruce, he’s pretty sure he says it all. It is painful getting the words out, like they burn his tongue as he speaks, but once he says them he feels lighter.

It takes a while, maybe hours. The sun is starting to set, and Dick is starting to shiver. Clark has not spoken, just sat quietly listening until Dick’s whisper trails off. Dick is pretty sure they both cried at some point, but by the time he finishes he is feeling almost normal.

“-and now, everyone is walking on eggshells around everybody else and no one will say anything. Oh yeah, and Bruce thinks now is a good time to adopt me and, I don’t know, atone for it all?” Dick swipes a hand over his eyes. “I’ve been trying to ignore it, but it’s starting to get to me,” Dick confesses finally, feeling sheepish about his screaming episode. So dramatic, Grayson.

A moment of quiet, but Dick has said all he felt he could. His voice is well and truly shot now. He waits breathlessly for a response, to be told he has got it wrong, somehow, like he thought. That he’s wrong, that Bruce was right to do this to him. Clark will know what to say to enlighten Dick.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Clark says, squeezing Dick’s hand. “That must have been very hard to keep inside for so long. And I,” Clark clears his throat, “I’m so sorry I didn’t see it. When you tell it, I feel like I should have ....” Clark trails off, but Dick doesn’t mind because it sounds like Clark believes him. Dick hadn’t even realized that he had been afraid he wouldn’t until he finally exhales and feels his lungs ache from holding his breath.

“No apologies,” Dick reminds him gently. “Besides, I didn’t want you to know.” A beat. “Don’t bring this up to Bruce, okay? He’s trying to be better, and I don’t want him to know I told you.”

Clark is quiet. Dick can almost hear him thinking, turning the words over in his head before he finally speaks, “Dick, you are very important to me. And I’m here for you, whatever you want. I’m really proud of the man, and hero, you have become. You’re very strong.” Clark shifts so he can look Dick in the eyes. “But this is a lot for anyone to deal with. Have you ever considered getting professional help, for you? Talking to people close to you is great, but there can be something very liberating in speaking with someone trained and removed from the situation.”

Dick swallows. “Yeah, I’m thinking about it,” he admits. “Everyone is talking about therapy these days in Gotham, it’s weird. I guess I mean they’re talking around it. But even Damian thinks we need help, although he may have ulterior animal-themed motives.” Clark looks intrigued and Dick snorts, “Get this: he got everyone pet fish and called it therapy.”

“Ah,” Clark makes a noise of comprehension. “I saw a fishbowl in your apartment and wondered about that. When did you get a fish?”

Dick almost smiles, remembering Damian’s excitement. “After the aquarium, Damian campaigned for a week to get everyone a therapy fish - because taking care of something is supposed to make you take better care of yourself. And once Alfred got on board, no one stood a chance.”

“I thought I saw two fish in your house,” Clark points out, fishing. Ha.

Dick laughs, a wheezing, breathy sound that hurts his throat. “Well Damian only gave me one, but I thought one would get lonely!”

Damian had gotten Dick the one goldfish to start everyone off, named Hope, much to Damian’s chagrin. He still finds it amusing, after the lecture on self care from his kid brother. Dick needs to keep Hope alive, so he needs to keep himself alive. After less than a week, Dick decided that no one swims alone in his house so he got a second fish too and named her Darling. He has always been fond of pet names, which he thinks must be pretty obvious from the nicknames he throws at all of his siblings.

Damian made everyone else get a fish too, since clearly everyone could use the extra motivation for self care. The naming creativity is a broad spectrum. Bruce’s goldfish is Fish, though Steph has tried to get everyone to refer to the fish as Charles. Tim’s fish is Fishy (“The real mini Bruce,” Jason tells everyone. Tim quickly renames his fish Bernadette.) Jason’s betta fish is red and officially named Julius Caesar, because Jason is a pretentious ponce, but he refers to him as the Little Asshole, because Jason is also a punk brat. Cass’ betta fish is in safe keeping with Alfred until her return and is named Princess appropriately. Steph’s goldfish is Nemo. Alfred’s betta fish has no name so Jason named it Hamlet. For Damian himself, he capitalized on Bruce’s weird new guilt complex and now is the proud owner of a giant tank hosting a squad of moon sea jellies, unnamed, but Dick calls them the names of the Pacman ghosts interchangeably.

The pet fish have actually been a source of unity amongst the family, and an opportunity for bonding, especially around the names people gave their fish. The group chat is full of fish photos.

“That’s pretty thoughtful of you,” Clark says with a smile, still talking about Dick getting a second fish so his first fish wouldn’t get lonely. “You are always caring about others.”

“Says Superman,” Dick retorts, rolling his eyes. “Also they’re just fish, don’t give me too much credit.”

“Dick, you have a lot of people who care about you back,” Clark tells him sincerely. “A lot of people want to see you get help. I know your siblings would want that. Do you have any other therapy plans?”

“A couple ideas, I guess,” Dick says, noncommittal. He rubs his frozen hands together and rolls to a stand. “I thought the special vigilante therapist Bruce has is a good idea, but.” The thought of going to the same therapist as Bruce is so abhorrent Dick has to physically repress a shudder. There has to be more than one JL therapist though. “Anyway, I’ll figure it out.”

Clark rises behind Dick, and they both shake out their coats. There is still a faint light in the sky, and Dick can see a trailhead opening on the edge of the clearing. They are in some state park, likely.

“Dick,” Clark says, “Promise me. You’ll get help. And if you ever need someone, you'll call me.”

“I just did call you,” Dick jokes, but he turns serious at Clark’s expression. “Alright, fine,” he says, exasperated, but Clark did just fly him across the country at Dick’s whim, so he owes him a little. Dick holds out a hand a bit mockingly. “I promise I’ll ask for help when I need it. But that won’t necessarily be when you think I need it,” Dick points out, unwilling to yield fully.

Clark laughs. “I’ll take it.” He shakes Dick’s hand.

“So,” Dick says, looking around. He gestures at the trail, “Now that the emotional breakdown is out of the way, fancy a hike?”

Clark checks his watch. “I need to be home for dinner at 5:30, but we have a few minutes.” He looks up, adjusts his glasses. “Oh sure, why not.”

Dick grins, and then they amiably wander into the forest, chatting.

It’s amazing. Dick has just shared his oldest secrets, the darkest parts of his life, and the world carries on. Clark laughs at his jokes like nothing has changed between them. If anything, Dick feels maybe a little closer to Clark, like there’s a greater trust now.

Dick feels himself relax.

“Are you free for dinner? Lois is cooking Italian,” Clark offers. “Or maybe ordering takeout, depending on how the experiment goes.”

“Experiment huh? Ominous, but count me in,” Dick agrees. His steps slow for a moment, hesitant, “And Clark? Thanks. For everything.”

“Of course,” he replies instantly. “Any time.” His tone is warm. “Now let’s go, it never pays to keep her waiting.”

Clark holds out a hand, and Dick takes it.

—-------------

Dick has been telling himself he doesn’t want help, afraid of what would happen if he were to change.

Here is a secret: there’s something sick and twisted in Dick that does not wish for healing, that actually wants to be sicker. That feels like the worse his condition, the more it will let him justify his continuing hurt. And there’s some reward from the pain he feels when he continues to act like nothing's wrong, when he allows all of his previous hurts to be unaddressed. The wounds are still there, throbbing, and Dick revels in the private reminder, the pain a link to something he doesn’t want to lose. Bruce took Dick in when he was younger than any of his siblings who came into Bruce’s care; his attachment and his fear of abandonment are deeply rooted. Dick has to admit to himself that he doesn’t want to lose Bruce, not really. And he’s used to lying to himself habitually now, even when he doesn’t have to, but.

Dick has to admit to himself that maybe his satisfaction from the pain, just because it’s a reminder of Bruce, isn’t a good thing.

But it falls into the patchwerk armor he has sewed for himself out of his own fragile skin, trying to make it thick enough to carry him through the highs and lows of his relationship with Bruce. The problem is that Dick doesn’t need to carry the weight of his homemade coping mechanisms with him anymore. It’s just hard to set it down, a habitual crutch, when Dick has always needed it in the past, when Bruce was constantly pushing him and Dick needed to be able to catch himself. But Bruce isn’t shoving him away anymore, or shoving him down - instead, he’s sending weird texts and asking about his day. Dick doesn’t know what’s going on, what Bruce is thinking, and in the past that would keep Dick up at night. But Bruce is changing in positive ways Dick would never have thought possible, at least not alone. 

But Bruce is not doing this alone.

 Perhaps Dick should seek help as well. Just to try it.

—----------------

“...and then I said ‘I’m not even your son, Bruce,’” Dick recounts, staring at the ceiling. “And then I kicked him in the balls, smashed the fish tank, pulled the fire alarm, and left.”

“Did you really?” asks his therapist, Carlos Garcia, interested. It’s mumbled around munches of doritos. He is reclined on the opposite couch.

Dick reaches into the bowl of Skittles on his own lap. “Well, I didn’t kick him,” he admits. “But I thought about it.”

“Understandable. Toss me a Skittle?” Carlos requests, and Dick obliges. He makes a ‘hmm’ noise as he chews. “So why did you leave?”

Dick raises an eyebrow. “Because I was pissed off.”

“About what in particular,” he presses.

Dick is quiet for a moment. “It felt like Bruce didn’t know me.” At the look he receives, he continues, “Not that he didn’t love me, or that he hated me, just that I was a stranger. And that scared me.” He chews thoughtfully. “Although now he’s acting totally strange. Nice, but strange.” It unsettles Dick a bit, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Carlos doesn’t look away. “You mentioned that before, but I want to go back to the aquarium. You said that’s when he started changing, and you don’t really feel like you can hold things against him since, but let’s talk about it a bit more. How did you feel about what he accused you of?”

“Hmm?” Dick says, pretending to be very absorbed in sorting Skittles.

“How did it make you feel that he brought up rumours about you?” his therapist clarifies.

Dick’s hands still. He puts on a smile. “Hey, have you ever tried fish-flavoured candy?”

Carlos rolls his eyes but allows the dodge.

And slowly, Dick gets therapy, and the world doesn’t end. It took him a while; to fight his old habits and to heal, he has to want to. But he does want to now, most days.

Therapy doesn’t make his life instantly better, either. In fact, at first it really, really sucked. There are over a hundred therapists registered with the JL. He filled out an application form to match him with one. And still, he went through three therapists before he found someone he could drop his guard around enough to be real with, to open up to.

Dick is never going to tell anyone that his current therapist reminds him of Wally. A bit chaotic, but a real person who is trying very hard, and it’s endearing.

In Carlos’ room, there is a quote on the wall from Pooh Bear: 

“But you could be doing something Important,” I said.

“I am,” said Pooh.

“Oh? Doing what?”

“Listening,” he said.

Next to it there is a poster labeled “The Importance of Smaller Steps” and two ladders, one with giant gaps between the rungs and the other much more accessible.

It’s all so cheesy and cringey Dick can’t help but love it.

In therapy, Dick spends a lot of time talking, though not always. He talks often about important things, though not every time. Pet fish, Bruce, his decision to ignore Bruce’s adoption question, pizza toppings, Damian, gymnastics, Catalina. He chooses what to say and when to stop. It feels good. And slowly, he feels a bit better, about what happened to him and who he is now. And what he is not.

Dick’s therapy sessions end up structured around discussions of the different people in his life, because Dick sees himself best in relation to others; and this is how his progress will be structured, if he can find it in himself to change. He is willing to try. He’s constantly being reminded that therapy is what works for you, and it’s not necessarily talking, but learning other techniques to be calm, to be present, to look after yourself.

He enters the new year feeling hopeful.

—-------------------

“-And dinner was okay. A little awkward, since Tim has some beef with Bruce now but he won’t tell me about it. I think he only came because I begged him. But they’re not fighting really. Just quiet. And Jason stopped by during patrol on New Year’s, and he did yell a bit, but that’s normal. So I think we’re all good.”

“That sounds like a lot of people, a lot of relationships to keep track of tomorrow.”

“Yeah, it’s a big family.”

“But Dick, you seem stressed about Tim and Bruce even though you’re telling me everything is fine. It’s not always you that has to fix everything and manage all of the relationships.”

“Hmm.”

“You disagree.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable leaving them alone for too long with each other.”

“Bruce and your siblings, you mean?”

“Yeah. Look, I know it’s not my place, I’m not anyone’s parent.  But I don’t think they’re… careful enough. They don’t know what to do with each other. Like, how to be safe.”

“And you do?”

“Yes. I guess. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I already told you I’m not interested in restraining orders or legal action or whatever, we don’t need it. I don’t want to put more distance between us all.”

“Right, you mentioned you’re visiting Wayne Manor regularly again? Don’t look at me like that, I’m just summarizing. But Dick, are you safe when you go there?”

“What do you mean? Actually, don’t answer that. Yes, I’m safe around Bruce. He’s changed, you know?”

“Okay. But are you comfortable around him?”

“I can manage.”

“Dick.”

“Carlos.”

“Even if seeing Bruce, if being there, isn’t physically endangering you anymore, perhaps it hurts in other ways.” 

“…”

“I know you’re not still chewing, but feel free to keep pretending. The way you’re talking, it sounds like you feel like you have to see Bruce?”

“No, not have to. Well. Maybe a little.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. I guess like I said before, I don’t think they can handle it without me. Wow, that sounds so arrogant, doesn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Oh screw you, you’re supposed to be validating my self-confidence.”

“Not if you’re placing all of your confidence in how little of yourself you need to keep in order to survive. Dick, I think you need more time for yourself.”

“Myself? Didn’t we just talk about how I suck at being alone?”

“Not alone then, but your family is ..very complicated. It’s possible it might help you to have some distance - from Bruce, then, if not the rest of them. You have friends outside of the city, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to talk to them about all of this stuff. It’s a family matter.”

“You don’t have to bring everything up with everyone. But it could be good to have supports that aren’t connected to Operation F.I.S.H.. Oh, don’t look so smug, it’s an easy way to reference your family’s interpersonal issues. Just think about it, for next time?”

“Well. I whaley don’t know. But I’ll sink about it.”

“Good.”

—-------------------

Now that Dick is tentatively in the pro-therapy camp, he does some fishing around his family and finds out pretty much everyone is getting support about Operation F.I.S.H. (Dick has taken to avoiding directly naming the topic of Bruce being abusive and everyone being enabling by using the appropriated euphemism). Which is great, but. Everyone is still stubbornly not talking to each other, and Dick knows well how lack of communication can twist perception of others.

Then Dick has an awesome idea, despite Carlos’ misgivings.

So he cajoles his siblings and Alfred and Bruce to get them to try family therapy. He is met with immediate resistance, largely from his siblings. That anyone agrees at all is a testament to how the family treats Dick these days, like he is fragile and they need to bend to his whims or he will fall apart. Their guilty capitulation would normally irk Dick, but he will take the easy win.

They agree to try one group session.

Dick mentions family therapy to Bruce and he agrees to whatever Dick asks so fast Dick is left blinking at a planned schedule of potential dates and times. He coordinates it with Black Canary, who is involved with screening the Justice League level therapists. Dick originally wanted her to run the therapy session for them, seeing a benefit to a hero moderating them. Besides, he isn’t so much of an idealist that he can’t recognize they may need someone capable of physically stopping fights to oversee them.

 But then Bruce steps in to supervise the planning. 

Dick thinks that maybe this is Bruce trying, making an effort to be involved, perhaps even because Dick told him to, and perhaps trying to set it up for Dick, so Dick doesn’t have to. Which makes it hard, then, for Dick to tell him that it feels like he’s doing it wrong . (So he doesn’t.)

Bruce disagrees with having Dinah, not wanting their secrets exposed to someone they all sort of know, not wanting a physical threat from an outsider; he wants a certified therapist with no attachments. So Dinah recommends a few people who aren’t involved with any of them, and Bruce decides on Dr. Jessica Flores.

It’s a common last name. It means nothing to Dick and doesn’t bother him at all. He’s happy that Bruce is demonstrating initiative towards positive change in actively participating in planning the group therapy session; Dick should be encouraging that. He doesn’t want to cause any problems, not when he was the one to try to push everyone into this in the first place. It makes sense that Bruce chooses anyway; there is a lot to lose from any confidentiality breaching and they have always been paranoid.

It’s another argument in itself, but Bruce refuses to have them all gathered together saying vulnerable things in a third party location. Dick does point out the importance of neutrality but ends up caving, so they choose to meet in the Batcave for security reasons, and the therapist will enter with Bruce through the zeta tubes. Most of his siblings are unhappy about it because it’s a random civilian in their command centre, but it’s also where Bruce is most familiar and comfortable. Dinah isn’t happy about it when she hears because apparently it’s important to be in a “safe separate space”, but Dick thinks at least they’re meeting. To compromise, they meet in the cave’s gym. The workout equipment is pushed to the side, and a circle of chairs is set up.

Dick arrives early, dressed comfortably in sweatpants and a hoodie. He starts a call with Cass on a tablet. He’s glad she has committed to joining the session at all; after Thanksgiving, he hasn’t seen her in person. He knows she stuck around a few days for all of the arguing Dick wasn’t involved in, but he suspects it was hard on her. Cass is frustrated with Bruce when he can’t read them and respond correctly, the way Cass thinks he should . Dick knows she had been thinking about returning to Gotham permanently, but she chose to do another stint in Hong Kong now after all of the family drama. She recovers best when she can get away from the gloom. Dick thinks it’s good for her, but that doesn’t stop him from wishing she was at ease amongst them.

“Hi,” Cass says, adjusting her camera. She is sitting on her bed; it’s dark in her room.

“Heya,” Dick says. “Ready for some family fun?”

“You are wrong. It will not be fun,” Cass warns, gently, “But we need to try.” She adds, a bit more positively, “Steph says good luck!”

Dick swallows. He has been trying not to feel nervous, but it’s happening anyway. “Thanks Cass.” He sets the tablet down on one of the chairs and takes a neighbouring seat.

Everyone else shows up slowly.

Alfred and Damian come in together, Alfred carrying a tray of refreshments which he sets up in the middle. Damian is still in his Gotham Academy uniform, minus the identifying blazer. He has been happier going to school lately, since his harbour project was highly lauded. He assesses the seating quickly and beelines toward the chair next to Dick.

“Hey kiddo,” Dick greets with a grin. “Ready?”

“Richard, there is no way this is going to work,” Damian says seriously.

“This is a terrible idea,” Tim announces himself as he walks in, yawning.

Dick grits his teeth to keep the grin on his face. ‘Why is everyone such a downer? Come on guys, we haven’t even started!”

Tim takes the seat between Alfred and Cass. “It doesn’t take a lot of foresight to see where this is going,” he mutters darkly. “Why are we letting this civilian into the cave anyway? Like I get that there’s confidentiality binding, but still.”

“Bruce wanted someone who doesn’t know us already, professionally or personally,” Dick explains. He has his own opinions, but ultimately he can agree Bruce has good points. It’s not like he wants to fight; they’ve been almost pleasant with each other lately. There’s no way Dick is messing that up just for stupid details about their therapy session. And it’s nice to see everyone in the same place, that hasn’t happened since- well. But they need to talk.

Tim crosses his arms. “We shouldn’t even be having this in the cave.”

“Bruce wants it here,” Dick says. There are other reasons, but this one feels most important.

“Of course he does.” Tim glares at the floor. He has been unusually bitter with Bruce recently. Dick isn’t sure what’s going on there.

Dick sighs, but lets it go. “‘Did you see Jason come in?”

“I’m here, unfortunately,” Jason says, walking over to sit next to Alfred. He already sounds annoyed. Great . “Where’s the actual therapist? And the terrible father figure?”

Dick is getting a headache. “They’re coming straight from JL headquarters after Bruce’s meeting,” he checks his watch. “Should be here any minute.”

They sit silently for an extremely tense minute. Nobody is relaxed enough to speak. Nobody touches the refreshments.

Dick is almost about to text Bruce a reminder when finally, to Dick’s great relief, the zeta tube announces Batman and Dr. Flores’ arrival.

Except, then they walk into the gym and it’s still Batman and Dr. Flores . There are two empty seats, between Jason and Damian.

“Hello everyone,” says Dr. Flores, smiling warmly. Dick read her file, he knows she’s forty-six years old and married and expecting grandchildren and she’s not familiar for any reason at all. “I’m Dr. Jessica Flores. Please call me Jessica, or Dr. Flores, whatever you prefer. I am a founding member of the JL psychological and therapeutic support teams along with Black Canary and have been employed there for five years now doing private and team sessions.” Dick doubts she has ever seen anything like his family, though. “Everything from this meeting will of course be strictly confidential. I am aware of your identities to some extent, but how would you each like to be called?”

Dick sees Jason whip around to laser vision on him, mouthing, Flores? Dick sets his jaw and ignores him, ignores it all. Dr. Flores looks nothing like-

“Hi, I’m Dick,” he introduces himself, smiling. Everyone takes the cue and introduces themselves as Dr. Flores takes a seat.

Then Batman bravely, stupidly, sits next to Jason.

“Yeah I’m giving that a hell no,” Jason glares. “I’m not doing this therapy thing with Batman. Take it off.”

Bruce pulls off the cowl. “Happy?” His face is Not happy. Dick wonders how the JL meeting went; he seems tense.

“Actually maybe you should get changed,” Dr. Flores observes, analyzing the room and noting the combative expressions.

“There’s not enough time,” Bruce argues, checking the clock.

“Then make time for this,” Tim snaps. Dick tries not to visibly react at the sharpness. Tim has been unusually short with Bruce lately, throwing sparks like he’s trying to start a fire. “I think everyone would be more comfortable if we were all dressed as civilians for equal vulnerability.”

Bruce looks like he’s about to say something but thinks his therapist would tell him not to.

“I agree,” Dr. Flores says with a frown. “It’s important that everyone is equally comfortable-”

“It’s fine, we can all see each other’s faces,” Dick interrupts, noting the way Jason and Bruce are clenching their jaws. Maybe they should just move on from this topic. He gives Dr. Flores a smile. “Let’s just start.”

“Dick, you can’t just say everything’s okay to avoid confrontation, you wanted this group talk,” Tim hisses, pitched so only he and Dick can hear, Cass’ tablet between them. Dick doesn’t react aside from a twitch in his jaw, still smiling. This session will work, they can do this.

Dr. Flores looks between them like she’s already getting a headache. “Is everyone alright to continue like this?”

“Fucking whatever,” Jason mutters moodily. Dick nods along, willing them to move on. Everyone else looks at Dick but remains silent.

Dr. Flores nods. “Alright. It’s okay to say if at any time you are uncomfortable and we can make changes.” She straightens her blouse before folding her hands professionally. “Now, let’s start with how you’re feeling today. Does anyone want to begin?”

“Good,” Cass says from the tablet. “Tired.”

“That’s good,” Dr. Flores says encouragingly, bravely not thrown off by the virtual connection.

Then she turns to look at Dick, like they’re going in a circle, so he should be next.

“I’m fine,” he says.

All of his brothers groan.

“What?” Dick says, instantly annoyed. So much for keeping his cool.

“That’s fine, thank you for telling us,” Dr. Flores moves on swiftly, keeping things going.

After everyone has gone, finally, she asks, “Does anyone have anything they want to bring up? Anything they want to see addressed in this session?”

Silence. There are so many reasons this family needs therapy.

“Well,” says Dick eventually, “We could all benefit from some better communication and understanding of each other’s feelings.”

“Agreed,” says Cass.

“We are working on it, but we could improve,” Bruce allows.

“You could really improve,” Jason agrees. Tim snorts.

“Guys, we’re all here because we all want to improve,” says Dick, exasperated. He glances at Dr. Flores, embarrassed on behalf of his family. He finds he’s back to saving face, not expressing his own emotions once again. Carlos is going to be so disappointed at the regression.

Dr. Flores is looking between Jason and Bruce and Tim. Dick thought she had been briefed on their situation, but now he wonders if they should have sent a longer summary.

“What have you been doing to improve?” Dr. Flores settles on asking Bruce.

“I have been seeing a therapist for about seven weeks now,” Bruce says, and Dick notes that he doesn’t sound ashamed and he doesn’t look uncomfortable admitting it. That’s good. “I have been trying to be more intentional about checking in with everyone even when we don’t see each other.” Perhaps this is the reason for the sporadic texting. Dick is thoroughly straining Bruce’s replies for any scraps of insight into whatever he’s been thinking the last two months that they’ve been playing passable family.

“Did something happen seven weeks ago to spark the change?” Dr. Flores asks, perceptive.

Bruce looks at Dick. Everyone looks at Dick.

“Have you seen any news articles on Gotham Aquarium?” Dick tries. Dr. Flores doesn’t appear to be comprehending, but she does look interested. “We tried to have a family trip to the aquarium, but we ended up fighting and… uh, one of the tanks broke and there was a bit of a flood.”

“Dick shattered an exhibit,” Bruce details helpfully. Dick tries not to shrink in on himself too much. He knows he cost Bruce a lot of money in repairs and bribes for that; he read it in the papers.

“Oh? What happened?” Dr. Flores asks. Dick looks around. He doesn’t want to be the one who explains all of the hurtful words Bruce said, or the hurtful words he said back.

“Look lady, that doesn’t matter,” Jason cuts in. “That’s not even the problem here, that’s the aquarium’s problem. Our problem is that this guy,” Jason waves his hand at Bruce sitting next to him, almost smacking him in the face, “has been punching that guy,” a vague gesture to Dick, who wishes the floor would swallow him up, “for years. And he’s been training up this whole room full of child soldiers and then he gets mad when we grow up, get independent, and don’t follow his stupid orders.” Dick’s headache is never going to go away at this rate.

“No killing isn’t a stupid order,” Bruce argues.

“Not what I was referring to,” Jason shoots back. Then an almost imperceptible mutter, “Not this time.”

Tim speaks up, eyes narrowed and accusing. “He’s right, Bruce, you can’t handle it when anyone has a different opinion and it’s hurting us in the field and off of it.”

Bruce crosses his arms. “I take your feedback into consideration, though you’re right I should do so more,” he argues. “But someone needs to lead.”

“You? Jason scoffs. “You have terrible judgment, what the fuck were you thinking sending Dick undercover?”

Dick flinches but tries to step in, “Didn’t you say that he didn’t mean to-”

“We’ve already discussed this multiple times, there were confounding factors. You’ve made your position very clear on the subject of my mistake,” Bruce rubs his jaw like he has phantom pain from when Jason punched him in the face.

“Perhaps it is best to discuss non-mask business when no one in the room is wearing one,” Alfred interjects smoothly.

“There is clearly a lot of tension between everyone around mission work,” Dr. Flores jumps in now that Alfred has cleared a path in the conversation. Dick realizes that maybe she has tried to jump in earlier and he didn’t notice over his laser focus on his family arguing. He tries to pay better attention. “How about out of costume?”

Dick glances at the clock. This therapy session is already exhausting. Dick feels regret seep in, and a bit of dread that they still have fifty minutes, if they last that long.

There’s a crackle from the tablet. Dick reaches out to adjust the view. “What was that, Cass?” he asks. 

They all wait, watching. Her video looks frozen.

“Well, we all have some serious issues with boundaries,” Tim offers in the meantime. “And we all feel some level of indebtedness to Bruce, I guess.”

“Why is that?” Dr. Flores asks.

Jason’s cough sounds a lot like “child soldiers”. Dick doesn’t want to explore that today, this is their first session, so he jumps in with, “Bruce raised us. Along with Alfred, of course.” A gesture. The butler inclines his head in acknowledgement. “For a lot of us, being taken in was an alternative to a difficult situation. So there’s a lot of gratitude tied up there from the get-go.”

Dr. Flores is nodding. “Understandable. That can be common in adopted relationships.” Dick carefully doesn’t react at all to the term adopted. He can feel Bruce’s eyes on him. (He left that message on read.) “And has that gratitude ever contributed to feeling like you owe something? Or a situation where you give more than you feel you can out of obligation?”

Wow. Dick wonders if it’s hot in here or if he just overdressed. He squirms slightly before forcing himself to still when he realizes how many eyes are tracking the motion. Could everyone stop looking at him?

“Maybe it’s just how I make myself feel,” Tim allows, hunched a little. “But there’s a pressure to be useful, to the mission, but also to Bruce. Or Wayne Enterprises.” Bruce shoots him a betrayed look, or maybe it’s just surprise. Dick has to stop reading into everything.

He taps the tablet again to distract himself, trying to restart the call with Cass. There is a crackle, then nothing.

In the meantime, Damian has started speaking for the first time since introductions. “I do feel that perhaps there is an expectation to prioritize Father’s wishes.” He glances shyly at Dick, then away. “Grayson has a life in Bludhaven but has had to stay in Gotham on multiple occasions for support.”

“That’s not - I want to be with you guys, Dami,” Dick protests.

“I don’t make Dick come to Gotham,” Bruce says.

“Bruce, you do so,” Tim says viciously, and where did that venom come from? “You literally called his work and told them he was sick so he wouldn’t have a reason to go back!”

“How did you know that?” Dick tries to ask, but then Jason is bolting out of his seat, looming over Bruce.

“What the fuck?” Jason says, glaring at Bruce. “Why would you do that? He loves gymnastics!” So sweet of Jason to care, but fighting Dick’s battles for him is aggravating - and unnecessary.

“Please stop-,” Dick tries, standing up and inching closer, ready to pitch himself between them. Wishing that his family wasn’t so physical all of the time.

“It was before Thanksgiving. We needed the extra help on the mission,” Bruce argues, standing as well, obviously disgruntled with having to look up to Jason. “I haven’t forced Dick to do anything since I-”

“Stop!” Cass’ crackling connection has recovered in time for her to catch the confrontation. It freezes them all for a second.

Then Cass cuts out again, and they are all left awkwardly waiting.

“How about Dick speaks,” Dr. Flores cuts in. “Please, everyone take a seat again.” There is some hesitation, but slowly everyone sits again. “If you wanted to say something, Dick?”

And it’s kind of her to give him the opportunity to speak for himself, but suddenly he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t think he can give voice to what he’s really thinking when he looks at them all sitting here together because he asked them to; not when his melancholy mind is telling him that maybe they’re his family but that a lot of days they feel more like Bruce’s family and he doesn’t truly belong, he’s just a parasite borrowing their connection to keep himself going emotionally. He’s pretty sure none of his siblings think it’s true, but he doesn’t think he can bring himself to ask for confirmation in this setting, with so much else unsettled. And now doesn’t feel like the time to bring up how he feels about Bruce’s micromanaging either, not when it will just start another fight. But if he brushes the question off then his siblings will be annoyed.

He is taking too long; that’s suspicious too.

“Your brothers seem to think Bruce makes decisions for you. Do you make your own decisions?” she prompts gently.

Dick instinctively glances at Bruce. Bruce is nodding; maybe it’s encouragement, or maybe it’s the answer.

“Yes,” says Dicks, wanting to be agreeable.

“The fuck you do,” Jason narrows his eyes.

“What now?” Dick asks, crossing his arms.

“Bruce literally just told you what to say,” Tim answers for Jason. He turns, “And Bruce, you have got to stop dictating our actions if this family is going to work at all. Now is not the time to be directing people - we need to be able to openly express ourselves here.”

“Dick can make his own choices about how he acts,” Bruce defends.

“You can be a real shit-stain,” Jason seethes unhelpfully, transitioning from defending Dick to attacking people.

“Bruce, you know he tries to please you, so you manipulate him. Try to be a little more self-aware,” Tim says. He sounds like he thinks everyone already agrees with him.

Dick says, “I do not-”

Bruce says, “He can choose-”

“What?” Jason explodes, finally. He has been quieter today, but that just means all of his build-ups have been happening internally where Dick can’t monitor and so it feels like he’s leaping to extremes. Now Jason is standing up again, large and looming. “He chooses to do what you want of his own volition? Or do you have to hit him every time?”

“Jason Peter Todd,” says Bruce.

“Master Bruce,” says Alfred.

“Everyone, breathe for a moment,” says Dr. Flores. “Perhaps that is enough-”

Tim ignores her. He has grabbed Cass’ tablet and is fiddling with it while he talks. “Bruce, nothing can change for us until you admit you were wrong before. I know you’re working on it now, but you’ve got to take more steps before we can say you’re doing well. You need to get to know us before you can tell us about ourselves. You don’t even know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know I was wrong, you’re right,” Bruce says. He looks at Dick. “But I do know you, chum.”

Dick can’t speak.

“No you don’t,” Jason says dangerously. “You don’t know what he’s been through. What he’s dealing with.”

Dick is pretty sure he knows what’s going on here. He wishes he had predicted this, it’s so obvious in hindsight. It’s why they have all been avoiding each other. Everyone feels more comfortable addressing their issues with Bruce through Dick as a conductor, so they don’t have to touch their own personal problems. Dick understands; it probably hurts less for them. But it leaves him feeling strange, like he’s watching his own court case. Or like he’s a child again, and social services are trying to figure out what to do with him. He feels small. He feels insignificant. It’s familiar.

But this is dangerous territory. An angry Jason is not a careful, considerate Jason. And Jason now holds information Dick doesn’t want loosed on a group of people that contains Damian. Dick tries, “Jay, I don’t want anyone to know-”

And that statement alone makes Tim glance sharply at Dick. But Bruce and Jason are focused on each other.

“Of course I know him,” Bruce says, annoyed. He finally looks at Dick. “I know I don’t say it right, but I do know you. I care about you. I just need you to tell me things, so I can-”

Bruce always expects Dick to initiate the communication. Well, Dick isn’t going to tell him about This.

“It’s not on him always, to make sure you know, you have to listen, ” Jason says. And his eyes are green. Dick has missed something in the chain reaction that set Jason off, and he is about to pay for it.

Dick is suddenly certain that Jason needs to stop talking. He also realizes he may be too late.

There’s a specific nerve in the human body that when damaged can lead to the peculiar case of one being simultaneously unable to breathe yet perfectly capable of everything else. Dick is suddenly certain this phenomenon somehow applies to him, in this breathless moment.

He launches himself out of the chair. He’s moving fast, but Jason is speaking faster.

Jason’s words are venom, but this time they are the poison that Dick gave him, entrusted to him, as he says, “You victim-blame him and make him think he doesn’t matter-,” Dick isn’t going to reach him in time, he’s halfway there, “-and tell him he needs to be useful to you, to your damn mission, and how is someone supposed to reconcile that pressure to owe other people when they’ve been fucking raped?”

Dick freezes in the middle of the circle.

The sound of the tablet hitting the ground echoes in the silence.

Dick’s eyes seek out Damian frantically, irrationally hoping that maybe he fell asleep and didn’t hear, but Damian’s eyes are wide and uncertain.

“I do not believe that was your information to tell, Master Jason,” Alfred says disapprovingly over the shock. He has gotten up and picked Cass’ tablet off the floor, tapping at the screen. Somehow his words more than anything else cause the green to recede in Jason’s eyes.

“Sorry, I-,” Jason looks stricken, staring at Dick guiltily, but he’s still within striking distance of Bruce so Dick can’t focus on calming him right now. Dick can’t seem to do anything right now, his body is distant.

Dr. Flores looks a little overwhelmed with the threats of violence, but she tries once more. Dick pities her. It’s not her fault their family is an uncontrollable trainwreck. “Please, sit down everyone. Respect each other’s space, or we’ll have to end the session.”

“Lady, consider this session ended and my subscription canceled,” Jason tells her, flexing his hands.

“Dick, you did - what?” Bruce asks, confused. Always late when it comes to Dick’s emotional well-being. Never framing his words right. Dick knows Bruce is just wondering if it’s true, but it doesn’t stop him from flinching.

“He didn’t do anything, Bruce, are you even listening! ” Tim hisses, leaning forward. “Dick is not the problem, it’s you.” In this family, it’s always a question of responsibility and blame. Dick is tired of it.

Everyone inhales.

“Richard? Are you alright?” Damian ventures quietly into the sudden vacuum of air.

Dick is still frozen in the middle of the room, next to the forgotten refreshments.

“Dick?” Jason asks, stepping closer.

“Miss Cassandra’s connection has broken,” Alfred informs the room. That’s very helpful, but Dick wishes Alfred would step into this other mess and work his amazing cleaning magic on the shitshow. But maybe it’s above his pay grade.

Apparently Jason doesn’t think this wreckage is worth salvaging anyway, because he’s suddenly in front of Dick.

“Come on Big Bird, we’re leaving.” Jason grabs Dick’s arm and tugs him away. Dick has never quite figured out how to resist. “See you losers later when you all chill the fuck out.”

Dick glances back and briefly meets the eyes of Dr. Flores.

And Dick can see it, the moment the therapist realizes that the entirety of their family’s problems and frayed connections end with him.

Then Jason has pulled him out of the room, and all he can hear is Tim still yelling at Bruce, and all he can think is how he keeps failing his family, even as he tries to fix them.

—--------------------

So, family therapy is an undeniable disaster.

Dick receives varying degrees of silent treatment for a few days as everyone stews, mad that they had to go through that while also feeling justified that they knew it would fail, but hey - at least they tried it and it was a good idea so if Jason could stop saying ‘ I told you so’, that would be great.

And Dick talks to his therapist.

Carlos picks apart the coping strategies he has nailed into himself. The internalized triangulation, with Dick throwing himself into every family conflict. How his people pleasing nature has been cultivated by his environment into a need to be useful and agreeable at all times to survive, and how this has led to him struggling to say no in any situation. These are both tricky to untangle, woven into the learned behaviours of not only Dick but also his other family members. And Dick’s therapist stresses that the only thing Dick can control, can work on, is himself, so.

So Dick is going to have to think about this a bit more.

It’s hard to want things to change when they’re already so much better than before; Dick is more focused on and nervous about sliding back into old patterns than trying for further progress. He isn’t naturally pessimistic, but he worries hard about the things he needs to protect, his family most of all. It’s so fragile, this new growth; there is so much that could easily destroy it.

But he can’t control other people. So he tries to let his family be.

And things continue to be generally better. Bruce hasn’t addressed Jason’s slip in the therapy session and he hasn’t brought up their other issues, but he has continued to show more interest in Dick as a person, so it’s good. It’s enough, Dick thinks. 

Dick still gets moments where he has doubts, where he feels like nothing has changed, where the sight of Bruce’s clenched fist even around something as innocent as a fork at dinner will have him seizing up in brief panic. It’s coupled with the age old dread of being alone, being abandoned. The ingrained fear of punishment for not being perfect. Moments where he is pretty certain his therapist is wrong and his negative thoughts are right and he is the one holding his family back from recovery, that he is the poison after all, just like he always suspected. But those moments get fewer and shorter, and he is more ready to call a friend or a sibling now when he needs reassurance. Not always, not all the time, but to master a habit, he has to start with repetition, not perfection.

It’s going to take time, but he tells himself it’s better.

—-------------------

“Richard, thank you.”

Dick rolls over in the dark. The statement of gratitude is unprecipitated, breaking the silence of their sleepover in Dick’s apartment. It’s not so unusual for Damian to find the courage to say the things he finds difficult in the cover of darkness, though.

“For what, kiddo?” Dick asks, trying unsuccessfully to blink away his sleepiness.

Damian chooses his response slowly as Dick valiantly holds onto consciousness. “I know I am not easy to love.”

Dick’s entire body shudders at the emotion in the words for a split second before he’s pitching his face closer, reaching out blindly to squeeze Damian’s shoulder. “You are the best thing in my life,” Dick says honestly, now wide awake. “I would do anything for you.”

Damian settles his own hand on top of Dick’s for a moment. An acknowledgement. He is quiet. Then, “To keep me safe?”

“Of course,” Dick confirms.

“Then please,” Damian whispers. He’s reaching out with his hand to grip Dick’s own shoulder. “Do anything to keep yourself safe. Please take care of yourself. I will help you.”

Dick feels like he has been slapped. Maybe he should have seen this coming; Damian is a perceptive kid, it comes with his artistic nature and strict upbringing. He doesn’t need all of the puzzle pieces to draw an ugly picture.

And Jason yelled pretty loudly in family therapy.

“Okay,” Dick whispers back. And he squeezes Damian’s hand. A promise.

“And,” Damian hesitates. “Father has spoken to me about you. About us. He wished to acknowledge his poor attitude towards our relationship upon his return, and to encourage our interactions. He also expressed that our …bond is of great value. Which, of course, I was already aware of.” The last is tacked on aloofly. Dick’s lips quirk up at this, though part of him is still stuck on Bruce making an apology - after filtering through Damian’s elevated speech.

(Wondering if Dick will ever get one of them. But it’s already been so long-)

A pregnant pause, and Dick waits. “I know I have been... difficult for you and Father to agree over. And he has hurt you, which is wrong.” Damian is not done speaking, so Dick stays quiet. “But I know he is important to you anyway. I myself have been... difficult in the past, and I am important to you anyway,” Damian says softly, subdued. Again he is not done speaking, so Dick stays quiet with minor difficulty. “And Father makes you happy when you get along, and he is not awful at chess, so I will try to tolerate him moving forward.” Hmm. Sounds like Bruce has been improving his interpersonal relations, and Dick is happy to hear it, when he knows how important the approval of Damian’s father was to him when he first arrived. And Bruce is showing support for Damian hanging out with Dick instead of behaving like a jealous child with a toy, so that’s awesome.

“No one gets to hurt anyone anymore. And you tell me if they do.” And Dick has to add, since Bruce has hurt him much deeper and differently than Damian ever has, “You are very different from Bruce.” And because it’s true and he thinks Damian would appreciate hearing it, he also adds, “For example, I like you much better.”

There’s no reply. But Damian doesn’t shift for a long time. Then he snuggles closer. Dick smiles.

—-------------------

This is the way it always goes between Dick and Bruce: nothing, nothing, until everything.

It’s February now.

Dick is working in the cave alone with Bruce. This is a surprise in itself; everyone has tried to keep them supervised. But Tim was unexpectedly sidelined by an injury and sent to bed, so it’s just the two of them. They’re working quietly next to each other in relatively easy silence.

Bruce reaches out to hand Dick something - it’s just a paper, Dick knows that, but it’s in his peripheral vision and he’s tired and Bruce is reaching for him and-

 Dick flinches so hard he falls off his chair.

He hits the ground with a hard thump.

Then the cave is silent.

He is instantly hit by a wall of panic and shame at his instinctive reaction (why isn’t he over this?) and he’s muttering quickly, “Sorry, sorry, I just-,” But he can’t say what is wrong when it’s just in his mind.

He stays on the floor for a split second to collect himself. To generate an explanation to Bruce. He just needs a moment, and they can go back to pretending nothing happened. Just one moment, and he will be perfect again.

But then there is the sound of a chair scraping the ground and suddenly Bruce is kneeling in front of him and Dick is looking up to see tears in Bruce’s eyes and Bruce is reaching out more slowly this time to lay a hand on Dick’s shoulder and it is so gentle and Bruce says, “Dick, I’m so sorry.”

What?

“What?” Dick croaks, confused. “You didn’t do anything. I'm just,” he waves his hand around, then hugs his knees. “Overreacting.” As usual.

Bruce sits back on his butt on the floor, shaking his head. He runs a shaking hand through his hair, a motion that alarms Dick with its nervousness. “No. Dick, I’ve done a lot. I’m sorry it’s been so long and you haven’t gotten an apology from me. I’m sorry it’s been so long since I realized you needed one and I still haven’t delivered. I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish.”

Dick’s heart lurches. This is happening right now.

They still haven’t talked about everything. It has been months; Dick has figured maybe they would just continue to move on like it never happened, start over fresh. He was happy with that, he thought. But he also thought it was all he was going to get, all Bruce was willing to give. Maybe all Dick deserves, though he isn’t as sure about that anymore. But still, an apology…

“You mean about hitting me?” Dick asks quietly.

Bruce sucks in a breath sharply, like it pains him. “Yes,” he says, forcing the word out between his teeth. It’s a harsh sound. Dick tenses. Bruce notices and takes another breath. “Yes,” he says again, more levelly. “I should never have hit you. I’m sorry I ever did.” Never , he says. Ever. Such absolutes, but regret has no limits.

Dick shifts. He has imagined this moment many times, but usually he pictures it happening somewhere sunny, maybe with food, maybe not on the floor.

But here they are.

“It’s okay.” He tests, “I can be pretty shitty sometimes. And you’re doing really well with the others.”

“Dick,” Bruce says, looking surprised, then remorseful. “I mean about you, specifically. You don’t deserve that, ever. No matter what.”

That’s… Dick wants, badly, to ask for more. Morbidly, he wants details. The shape of questions he has wondered for decades coalesce in the back of his mind. 

But. He can’t push it. Dick won’t risk this tentative bridge, his family’s healing, for his curiosity. This will be enough, Dick can make it enough. It’s already more than he’d ever thought possible, he marvels, studying Bruce’s earnest expression. So instead, he tries on a smile. “Thanks, Bruce.” He forces gratitude into his tone. “I know. We’re good.”

We’re good. The words feel right, after months of decompressing with Carlos, of tiny pleasant conversations with Bruce, and yet.

There’s a moment of silence, but it’s all wrong. Something in Bruce’s emptying face, in his frozen posture, a chill in the air, sets Dick on edge, makes him realize he’s made a mistake here somewhere. He takes a careful, controlled breath, hating the way his heartbeat spikes, and waits.

A few seconds later, Bruce speaks. “You don’t…,” he begins slowly, brow furrowing. “Dick. You don’t really mean that.”

That rankles a bit, and Dick fights to keep the scowl off his face. “Really? Well sorry for thinking I might know what I mean.” An internal wince at how childish he sounds.

By his unimpressed eyebrow raise, Bruce seems to agree, but he speaks tolerantly. “Don’t,” he chides. “Don’t do that. And there shouldn’t be any apologies from you.” 

Don’t do - what? “What?” Dick asks.

Bruce sounds tired. “You know.” Dick… knows? “There’s no need for you to say anything, you don’t have to say we’re good.”

Dick wants to point out that he wasn’t even making a real apology right then, but he’s trying to be a Real Adult. Instead, he says, “What do you want me to do, then?” He crosses his arms around himself.

A sigh. “This is the issue.” Something in Dick balks. Bruce continues, “You shouldn’t be asking me at all.”

He feels his defences rising, and Dick can’t keep all of the bite from his tone. “Well I’m sorry,” - that word again-, “that I’m not reading your mind here, Bruce.”

Another look; this time the annoyance is there. “Come on, Dick. We can’t pretend you’re not compromised here.”

“Not comprom- what?” He’s bewildered by the direction this conversation is taking. Is this even still about their relationship? Or by ‘compromised’ is Bruce somehow referring to…

“It’s not your fault,” Bruce is quick to reassure. “Of course, it’s not. But it doesn’t help to ignore it.”

One of the things Dick has been learning in therapy is to recognize how easily they talk past each other - how important it is to clarify early to avoid misunderstandings. “Bruce,” Dick speaks plainly, if apprehensively. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

A frown, and finally some sort of understanding lights in Bruce’s eyes. “I see.” A beat. “I had hoped you would have seen it for yourself…,” he starts slowly. Then, almost to himself, “But I shouldn’t expect that.” His tone is rueful. Against his will, Dick burns under Bruce’s disappointment. 

Dick breathes out, slowly, but still can’t quite bring himself to release his arms. “What should I be seeing here, B?” He pitches the question to be willing, cooperative.

Bruce meets his eyes, searching. Dick hates the flicker of resignation there before Bruce opens his mouth. Not good enough, Robin. “Dick, you are aware that there is a certain… dynamic, to our relationship,” he says, “That certain elements have remained the same despite the different roles we’ve both assumed.” A pause, and Bruce seems to be waiting for something.

The statement seems harmless enough. Dick chances a nod.

Bruce nods in return, as though there has been some meaningful exchange. Know your place, Nightwing. “One of those elements is, of course, my own… authority, in your life.”

Dick blinks, and, okay. Bruce is clearly still an important part of Dick’s life, the fact that they’re sitting here together at all is a testament to that. But. Dick has always considered himself to be fiercely independent. It chafes that Bruce would suggest otherwise, after everything Dick has fought for.

(Do you make your own decisions, Dick?)

“In Gotham-based team-ups, for sure,” Dick offers after a stilted moment.

The lines around Bruce’s face pinch. Wrong. I have no use for a partner I can’t depend on. “There is that,” Bruce allows. “But beyond vigilante action. My opinion continues to exert a strong influence over your behaviour.”

“ Bruce, you can’t just claim that, I make my-”

“You can’t deny,” Bruce cuts him off, “that many of your actions have stemmed from my own.” He levels Dick with a look.

“Sure, what you do affects me,” Dick says, exasperated, “Because we’re not strangers, Bruce-”

“Dick, no.” It’s the irritation, the reprimand, that brings Dick’s retort crashing to a halt. He’s frozen, watching Bruce smooth a hand over his face. “This,” Bruce says finally, motioning to Dick, “is exactly what I mean.” 

You’re the problem.

Dread is twisting itself tightly in Dick’s gut. Bruce seems to read his silence as continued obstinance. “Look at yourself. After how you’ve been treated here. After all the times you’ve left,”- left? That’s not how Dick remembers it -, “And especially after what you said at Thanksgiving.” When Bruce meets Dick’s gaze, his eyes are hard. “What are you doing here?”

Get out.

Dick’s breath stutters. What is he-? Is Bruce disappointed in him, because he hasn’t stuck to his word? Because he won’t stay gone? It’s desperately unfair, when so much of it has been for Bruce’s benefit .

“Bruce,” Dick says hesitantly, every word feeling like a step in the dark. It’s hard to visualize the calm reasoning he has formed in therapy, the shape of the peace he has carefully constructed, so blurry in the rushing motion of the moment. “I’m here because I want to be. I choose to come back, every time. I choose this family.” I choose you, he can’t bring himself to say.

But Bruce is shaking his head again. It’s infuriating; Dick wants to scream, but it might come out wrong. He clenches his jaw. Over-emotional. “This is what I was afraid of.”

You’re… compromised. Volatile.

“...What?” Dick asks, and it comes out in a whisper. 

But Bruce hasn’t paused. “-can’t address the topic, you need to admit it exists. You can’t choose to pretend-”

(Always a fucking show.)

The language is so general, so vague. Bruce could mean anything here. Dick knows he and Bruce have made progress, and yet still, here, it feels like they’re slipping. Dick wants to ask for clarification, but he’s scared to open his mouth and confirm more of Bruce’s worst thoughts about him - whatever they are. And so, once again, hugging himself tightly, he waits for the hammer to fall.

“Tim and the others were right, things need to change. I’ve been working on it. I want to help. But I can’t do that if you’re not ready for it-”

It’s strange. Bruce has been so careful up until now, making cautious stumbling efforts to connect, enduring in a manner uncharacteristically slow and ponderous for months. But in this moment there’s a familiar light in Bruce’s eye, now that they have uncovered the point they've been dancing around for so long. Perhaps there is something about the proximity after months of tiptoeing that has Bruce going feverishly after his point with Batman’s intensity and Batman’s disregard for others. It’s familiar, but not recently, and it’s not a return to normal that Dick welcomes.

Dick has felt wrongfooted for this entire conversation, and finally, defeated, he gives up trying to find his balance. “Bruce,” he tries to halt the lecture, starts to rise. “You’ve lost me. It’s late. Why don’t we talk about this another time?”

Bruce’s hand reaches, and it’s the lightest touch on his elbow. A shadow of what it used to be, but still powerful enough to halt him, and it forces him back down. Dick’s attention narrows to the point of contact.

“You can’t keep doing this, Dick,” Bruce says, reproachful. A deep frown creases his brows, and his eyes slip to where his hand rests on Dick’s elbow, faint surprise dawning to find it there.

Bruce doesn’t touch Dick these days.

Coming back to himself, Dick jerks his arm away before he can find out whether Bruce will pull back. “Doing what?” Dick snaps, annoyed. He’s being careless, but he can’t stop now. Not with this pressure in his chest, like all of the waiting is over - only he’s not sure if the release will free him or destroy him. 

(If this is where it ends, between him and Bruce.)

“You know what, you’re doing it right now. You’re avoiding the subject!” Bruce’s voice is rising, and Dick feels his pulse racing to match. All of their careful pretenses of the last months are gone. “Just look at yourself.” Damn, look at you. You’re gorgeous. Can I..? “This is a perfect example. You’re faced with a situation you can’t handle, and your instinct is to run away, to pretend everything is fine, that you’re fine, when you’re not.”

Bruce is right on one front - Dick can’t do this anymore, whatever this is. He wants it all to end, but more than anything, he can’t look at Bruce’s disappointed face - so Dick closes his eyes. But it doesn’t stop the flood of words, past or present, and all very real. 

Who do you think you are?

“-coping strategy for years, as long as I’ve known you.” Bruce sounds tired, and it comes out as frustration. “Dick. You need to see the situation clearly. Stop lying to yourself.”

“Bruce,” he whispers. Pleads. But Bruce isn’t listening, is caught up in this theory of his that’s lingering just out of Dick’s reach.

“-your continued willful ignorance-”

There is something very wrong with you.

It’s getting hard to make out what Bruce is saying, between the Bruce of today and the Bruce of three months ago, of ten years ago. Between the echoes of everyone for whom Dick has fallen short, and- 

I don’t need you.

(He’s so tired.)

“Stop,” he breathes. Doesn’t know why he tries, when that word never seems to mean the same thing coming from him. Isn’t even sure if the sound makes it past his lips. “Please. Stop.”

And.

Bruce does.

The echoes fade, the cave is silent. Dick senses Bruce move back slightly, giving him space. Dick looks up, confused.

Bruce is scrubbing at his face, wiping at his frown. He drops his hand and meets Dick’s eyes, his own furrowed with something that looks less like frustration now and more like contrition. “I’m sorry,” Bruce enunciates carefully, speaking slow. “I am failing you again, with this pathetic apology. I don’t know why I always seem to make it about myself-,” Bruce slams his teeth together, biting off the end of his sentence with a harsh click. “Dick, I’m sorry. I’m the problem here. This is all my fault.”

Dick is trying to follow, but his mind is still sawing at his thin tether to the present, with sharp memories threatening to pull him into the past. He can only get out a whisper. “But I -”

“No, not you, Dick,” Bruce says. “You have done nothing wrong, okay? I’m the one who has been hurting you for,” a breath,” years, and I’ve been selfish even these last months. I’ve been forcing you to stay, when all I do - it causes you pain. I’m concerned that you choose to stay at the cost of your own happiness.”

Just leave. Everyone says Dick should go, the one thing they’ve been able to agree on. But all Dick has ever wanted is to stay. Why do you care so much what other people think of you? Well. Other people seem to control his reputation. But with his family? Dick has decided he’s going to do what he wants instead.

“You don’t get to decide what I can handle,” Dick tells Bruce.

Bruce’s lips quirk strangely, the faintest ghost of a smile, like Dick’s words remind him of something. “You’re right,” he says. “But I don’t think it’s fair to you for it to be me who has been reaching out, robbing you of the decision to hear from me at all. Of course you respond, you’re… you. You’re so good. I’ve been abusing that.” And Bruce’s eyes are soft - is that fondness? But there is still the regret, deep in the hollows of his eyes. “I never should have hit you, I never should have hurt you at all, Dick. You don’t deserve that.”

Well. If Bruce really thinks that Dick is not to be blamed at all, then maybe Dick does want to know. He holds so many questions he can’t answer alone.

“Then why did you…” Dick trails off. Why. Why. Why?

Why why why why why why why?

“I didn’t mean to,” Bruce says, then winces. “I didn’t think about what I was doing to you,” he corrects. “For a long time, I was so focused on the mission. I think I always have been. I’m still trying to understand myself, understand how I lost what’s important and stopped noticing you. There will never be an okay reason why for that.” His eyes are far away for a moment before refocusing purposefully on Dick. “But it was never on you, I hope you understand that. It was always on me. It’s not your fault.”

It’s not your fault? Huh.

“You never talk about this,” Dick says after a while. “I thought maybe you forgot.” Or that you didn’t want to remember.

“I can’t forget,” Bruce says, rushed. “It would be an injustice to you, when I have caused you so much pain.” Batman would never stand for an injustice he’s aware of.

“So, you remember, everytime?” Dick asks hesitantly.

Bruce is silent for a moment. “I remember enough,” he says finally. “Enough that I know I don’t deserve your loyalty, chum. You don’t deserve this. I’ve dragged you down. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I shouldn’t be here… you want me to go?” Dick parses, conflicted. Dick would never leave for himself, but. But he thinks he could go, if that would help Bruce. Bruce has been doing so well; Dick wants to support his progress however he can, even if that means he needs to back off. He doesn’t really want to, but maybe space could be good.

“No!” Bruce almost shouts, then visibly fights to control his volume when Dick flinches again. “No, that’s not what I meant. You know I’m not good with words.” Bruce sighs, looking frustrated. “I mean you don’t deserve this situation. You shouldn’t be with me at all, after what I’ve done to you. But you’re still here. And I can’t help but feel guilty for that as well, that you feel like you might owe me anything. I’m the reason you keep putting yourself through pain by being around me.” Dick had hoped no one noticed his lingering habitual discomfort when they gather as a family; he tries so hard to disguise it. But he still wants to spend time with his family, with Bruce - it’s worth any minor uneasiness, and he’s working on it. “Maybe I’m the one who should go, but only if you want.”

“No.” There’s no question; Dick wants his family whole. He wants Bruce to understand how important it is for Dick to be present, no matter how uncomfortable. “I think it hurt the most when you would send me away,” Dick admits for the first time. “Like I wasn’t important in your life.”

Bruce looks like Dick is slowly stabbing him with particularly dull knives. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” Bruce says. “You have been a valuable partner and…I consider you my son.” Dick can’t believe how fragile Bruce looks, it feels so wrong. Dick is afraid to breathe and shatter them both. “And I am starting to realize I have not treated you as I should all these years. I have been blind and taken you for granted, that you would always be around me.”

“I want to be here, Bruce,” Dick says fiercely into the strange uncertainty of the silence. “I decided that for myself. And maybe you’re an asshole, but you’re getting better and it’s worth it.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Bruce says, looking grave.

“Oh fuck you.” Dick’s annoyance is back. “It’s my choice.”

“Dick, I just meant.” He stops. “Of course it’s your choice.” A pause again. “But I have been selfish these last months, making you choose to have a relationship with me at all.”

What? Dick is exasperated by how bizarre this conversation is; in his mind it was supposed to be logical and planned and also very, very short.

“Of course we have a relationship,” Dick says, confused.

“But it hasn’t always been… healthy, and sometimes people may consider choosing to cut out toxic things to heal.” Bruce looks at him meaningfully. “I’ve been relying on you these last few months; you haven’t had a chance to consider …leaving. If that would help.”

Dick feels irritation flare within him. Haven’t they been over this? Repeated, the suggestion feels a bit like an attack. He folds his arms. “You’re not getting rid of me, Bruce.” He glares. “I think I’ve made that clear.”

“I didn’t -,” Bruce looks at the ceiling, scratches the back of his neck. “You know I’m not good at expressing myself.” Bruce sighs once more. He rummages in his pocket, pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. He smooths it out carefully before looking back at Dick. “I have been seeing a therapist for a while now.”

“I know,” says Dick, because he does. He’s curious though, so he waits patiently for Bruce to go on.

Bruce clears his throat. “Right. I’m not good with words,” he repeats. “I’m not good at talking, not about important things. It has been suggested - I’ve been trying to write instead, to help give me clarity. To give me time to get the words right.” A slight pause, before Bruce seems to gather himself. “And I’d like to read something to you, if that’s okay with you?”

And he waits for Dick to actually give him permission. Dick glances at the paper. It looks old and worn, with a lot of smudges, crossed out words, and additions. This is something that Bruce has clearly spent a lot of time on. He has been seeing a therapist for months - how long has he been carrying this around?

“Okay,” Dick says carefully, filled with a nervous mixture of hope and trepidation. He tries to relax but can’t help bracing out of habit.

Bruce nods. He has never been very expressive, but there’s a wideness in his eyes like he also has trouble believing this is real. Then he straightens the paper and begins to read. Dick feels safer watching him when Bruce’s eyes are directed elsewhere.

“Dear Dick,” Bruce says.

The words echo slightly in the empty cave, coming back to be heard again, reminding Dick that this is actually happening.

“I have known you since you were a determined young boy who wanted vengeance and I was a lost young man who thought I could shape your future into something good. I wanted to give you a light, even while I was standing in the shadows, even when it became quickly obvious that it was you who was the light. And at first I had vague notions that I could be your…parent.” Bruce’s voice breaks slightly. Dick feels a pressure build in his throat. “But you weren’t looking for a replacement in that role, and I didn’t know how to be one anyway. But I liked having you in my life so much that the idea of you not being a part of it scared me. I couldn’t lose you,” Bruce says plainly, “And instead of talking to you about it, I became angry with any little thing that changed about you or between us. In trying to keep us together, I drove you further away. I didn’t know how to change myself, how to control how scared I felt, so I tried to control you instead. But you are and have always been your own person. I have watched you grow into a strong young man, despite what I have put you through, and I’m sorry that it took me so long to see that I have hurt you more than helped. Everything you have become, I am proud of you for.”

Dick makes a small choked noise, and Bruce glances up to check if it’s a request to stop before continuing, “I can take no credit. Every good part of you is in spite of me. I’m so sorry, chum.” There is a hitch in Bruce’s voice as he carries on. “You are an amazing acrobatic, competent fighter, capable leader, and excellent big brother. And,” Bruce’s voice cracks hard, “You have been an outstanding father figure to Damian.” Dick cups a hand over his mouth to hold suppress a sob. “Better than me.” It doesn’t work; a shuddering gasp escapes his lips.

Bruce’s voice is so shaky it’s hard to understand now. “I have been acting like a child. If I could be a little more like you, chum, I would be a much better person. Thank you for sticking with me when I didn’t deserve it. Thank you for being a light even when I wanted darkness. I don’t know if you can find it in your heart to forgive me. And you don’t have to. But you need to know that it’s your choice. I don’t know what’s best for you. I want to do what you want. If you never want to see me again,” Bruce swallows. “I would understand. And we could work around it so you can still see everyone else. But I want to get better. It’s hard to learn to communicate properly. But it’s hard on us when we don’t. I want to choose a new hard.”

Bruce keeps speaking, but Dick can’t focus. It’s surreal. Dick is watching Bruce’s mouth move and hearing these words, but even knowing this is real, it’s hard to believe he’s saying them. Even harder to believe he means them. He’s not reading someone else’s script; Bruce wrote the words, perhaps slaved over them to get them how he wanted. This is very deliberate. Bruce wants Dick to know these things.

And if Bruce feels this way, then Dick wants him to know that Dick recognizes how much effort it has taken for him to realize it. That Dick is proud of him.

Dick has missed the rest of the letter. Bruce has trailed off, looking at Dick hesitantly. More vulnerable than he has likely been since he first put the cowl on. Dick has never been able to let someone else be unconsoled in his presence for long.

He opens his arms, and Bruce takes the invitation, and finally, they are hugging. Dick doesn’t mind that Bruce is holding him so gently it feels almost like he’s not being held at all. Like Dick’s presence is something that must be preserved. Dick squeezes harder to compensate.

“Of course I forgive you,” Dick whispers, “I already forgave you.”

“I don’t deserve it,” Bruce says sadly, determined to be a downer. “I don’t deserve you. You are a much better person than I could ever be. You should hold this against me forever.”

“Well I don’t.” It makes sense that Bruce wants to earn forgiveness, so he can pay his debt and feel deserving. But Bruce will have to accept that Dick has the power to absolve Bruce without any action on Bruce’s part. The powerlessness probably chafes, but Bruce can deal with it. Dick shakes his head. “You just keep punishing yourself, you colossal bottomfeeder.” Bruce always thinks it would be better if he was the only one fighting crime, so the rest of them could leave, could live peacefully as civilians. As if that has ever been an option.

“You think you protect us when you push us away,” Dick tells him. “But you break us.”

Bruce looks surprised, but there is a hint of understanding dawning in his eye. Maybe he will finally consider the value of leaning on other people, on functioning like an actual family. Dick wants to roll his eyes, but it would be a little hypocritical.

Instead, he opens his mouth again and surprises himself with a sob. He hadn’t realized he was still crying. This seems to signal something to Bruce, who pulls back slightly, enough to look Dick in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says again, like now that he is letting himself apologize it is all he can do. He is looking at Dick regretfully. Dick is surprised to see tear streaks staining Bruce’s cheeks. 

Dick can feel tears and snot running down his own face, a sticky mess. He’s about to wipe with his sleeve when Bruce produces a fresh package of tissues from somewhere. Dick snorts a laugh.

“How long have you been carrying these around?” Dick asks, selecting a tissue.

“Since December,” Bruce admits, taking a tissue of his own.

“So prepared,” Dick teases. Then, “Thank you.” It’s sincere. It’s for more than the tissues. Bruce ducks his head, seeming to recognize that.

“Can I keep the note?” Dick asks.

“Of course.” Bruce hands it to him, and Dick carefully tucks it into his pocket. He will read it later, to find out how it ends. He looks up to see Bruce watching him seriously, mixed with a surprising nervousness. “And Dick, we don’t have to talk about it now, but I want you to know I very much do think of you as my son, and while I don’t deserve it and you are under no obligation to consider it, I just want you to know,” Bruce holds his gaze, eyes intent, “That if you feel like you could see me as a father figure to you, I would love to adopt you. When you’re ready.”

Dick swallows his initial reaction, which is to puke. “I’ll think about it.”

It’s not the end of the conversation. They sit on the floor for hours, oscillating between apologies and breakdowns, but the road of forgiveness and recovery is cracked and split and Dick barely dreamed he would trip down it with Bruce, that Bruce would want to, but he is happy to start trying now, together.

Tim bursts into the Cave much later, panicked and hobbling on crutches, looking around wildly. He stops when he sees them laughing on the floor with tear-stained eyes, surrounded by used tissues.

“Hey Timmy,” Dick says, grinning and wiping his eyes. Then he frowns at the crutches. “You shouldn’t be up.”

“Go back to bed Tim,” Bruce scolds.

Tim looks between both of them, his face a flood of different emotions. “You okay?” he eventually asks Dick.

Dick looks at Bruce. Bruce shakes his head slightly, not going to tell Dick how he should answer this time. 

Dick turns back to Tim. He feels the press of the crumpled note in his pocket, proof that Bruce has dedicated months to the study of trying to communicate with Dick; poor student though he is, he’s trying.

This time Dick’s smile is soft. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

And he means it.

—-----------------------

“And he gave me this note, it’s so sweet, I think he’s been working on it for months. Here, look at it.”

“Wow. How did you feel when he read it?”

“...I don’t know.”

“Think about it for a bit.”

“I guess I was surprised. Maybe scared at first. It was really unexpected, and I had just done something stupid, I’d just fallen off my chair for no reason when I saw his hand coming towards me.”

“It was a reasonable reaction.”

“It didn’t feel reasonable. But anyway, then we had a misunderstanding and I thought we were going to fight, but then he started reading. And it was hard to listen. It was so weird, Bruce never talks like that. But then I was thinking about how long he spent on the words, like. He must have really meant it right? And… I don’t know, it’s dumb.”

“What is it?”

“I guess I felt… loved? It’s dumb.”

“You’re not dumb.”

“I didn’t say that I was.”

“I know. But I wanted you to hear that you’re not.”

“...”

“Dick?”

“Sorry, I’m overreacting a lot these days.”

“You’re not. It’s a lot to process. Here. Sorry I ran out of tissues - budget cuts. We’re using a toilet paper roll today.”

“Gee thanks, Carlos.”

“You’re welcome. Only our finest three-ply for you.”

—------------------

Bruce texts him more , but it’s no longer just the mundane. Dick asks him about it, the texting; apparently Bruce finds it easier to express his emotion when he can write it out. Every now and then Bruce will send him almost letter-like messages with long descriptions and obviously serious consideration. Bruce lately has seemed hyper-aware of his own communication limitations and is dedicating intentional time to improving. It’s strange, but nice. Dick doesn’t mind the texts. Sometimes he leaves voicemails back.

But sometimes, Dick needs the reassurance of talking face to face, to remind him that Bruce caring about him is real. Dick asks Bruce to meet him for lunch at the aquarium a couple weeks later, just them. A bizarre place for lunch, but Dick had seen an interesting fish dish on the menu at their cafeteria that he hadn’t tried at Thanksgiving for a myriad of reasons. It’s a bit of a test too, since Bruce Wayne is technically on a temporary ban. Dick is afraid Bruce might not agree to come, but all Bruce asks for is the time he should show up.

It’s surreal, walking into the aquarium again. It looks the same as before. Only Bruce and Dick have changed. Bruce is wearing Clark Kent glasses, and they slip inside without issue, another magical disguise. They grab food and sit outside, alone in the cold weather. It’s the same table.

Dick crunches a fry. Swallows. “So, I need to tell you something.”

Bruce sets his fish down patiently and looks to Dick expectantly.

Oh boy. This is hard. His jaw feels tight; it’s easier not to speak.

Carlos told him he doesn’t have to do this, that it might not help for a number of reasons, but Dick wants to. He wants to be able to rely on Bruce, and he’s optimistic and willing to try. He’s also a bit of a troll, so he waits until Bruce takes a sip of water, then says with no warning, “I was sexually assaulted.”

Bruce chokes, spraying water all over his suit.

It takes him a minute to recover. Dick hands him his own glass to try to ease his throat. He waits until Bruce takes another sip. “But you knew that,” says Dick, folding his arms.

Bruce chokes again.

If Dick doesn’t say this while Bruce is effectively incapacitated by a beverage, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to. “It was a while ago, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. When you sent me on that undercover mission, I felt like it was happening all over again,” he says, as blankly as possible, detaching himself. “And I told you I didn’t want to do it. And you still made me go.” It’s just statements of facts. But the weight of them demands an answer. Dick wants to hear some justification for his pain, like that will make it hurt less.

Between coughs and desperate sips, “I regret sending you undercover,” Bruce admits after a while. “Not because I think you aren’t strong. But Jason… spoke to me, after.” Yelled at, Dick interprets. “It helped set perspective. No one should have to go through that, and I definitely shouldn’t put my s- put you through that.” Bruce looks at Dick. “I was so focused on the mission, on the hostages, I wasn’t thinking about you. I should have listened to you when you told me your concerns. I’m sorry.” Bruce is so much more free with apologies now, it’s still surreal.

“But you said, my reputation…,” Dick prods, trailing off as he is uncertain what he’s searching for.

Bruce looks pained, but not surprised, like maybe he has thought about this before. He seems to know instantly what Dick is referring to, that awful excuse for a conversation in the same building they just snuck through.

“I chose you for the mission because you are strong and improvise well,” Bruce repeats firmly. “I considered nothing else at the time, which is a fault in itself. I didn’t even consider your concerns. I’m still uncertain how it got tangled, but I know that seeing you actually dressed for it, just because I-,” Bruce clears his throat uncomfortably. “Well, it did remind me that I had not been as considerate of you as I’d like to be, and I was upset with myself. And I had been meaning to check in with you on the rumours because they were ..unsettling. They didn’t match my understanding of your priorities. And you acted like they didn’t exist at all, which was concerning, and I was worried I didn’t know-,” he stops himself again. “You had no reason to confide in me. The onus is on me. I should have considered that by presenting both topics simultaneously that day that it would hurt you, in the automatic comparison. The idea that you were perhaps reckless in your personal time-”

“I don’t have personal time-”

“I know, Dick, you spend all of your spare time with Damian,” Bruce says, something complicated flickering across his face - a bit of softness, a bit of wistfulness. “I’m not bitter about it,” Bruce adds, then with a rueful look he amends, “I’m not bitter anymore. But when Cass said I needed to focus more on you, I thought I could help you by giving you advice I’d never thought to give when you were growing up, but clearly I was misguided and the delivery was poor.”

Dick absorbs. “You were trying to give me the talk? Bruce, I’m an adult,” he points out.

“I am very aware,” Bruce agrees wryly, nostalgia tinging his tone. “But I’m sorry I didn’t treat you like it. I’m sorry I implied that I knew anything about how to make your life choices. You don’t treat relationships or people lightly, I know you don’t. And I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to go into a situation that was triggering. I didn’t… Dick, I want you to know that I wasn’t aware of your history, that you had been assaulted. I like to think I would have… well. I guess I don’t know.” Bruce is quiet.

Dick swallows. “I didn’t want you to know.”

“Dick.” Bruce closes his eyes for a moment before continuing, “I’m sorry. Jason said you were assaulted a while ago, and I never followed up. I had thought you didn’t want me to pry anymore, that you would tell me if - but, well, that doesn’t matter now.” Bruce visibly pushes aside his excuses, focusing on Dick. “What happened?”

Dick thinks about it for a minute. “It was a while ago.” He repeats. “But.. it was a couple of times.” Bruce winces. Dick shifts. “I didn’t want you to know before, but. I do now.” A deep breath. “I want you to really know me. And that doesn’t necessarily mean knowing all my trauma and hang-ups, but I think I want you to.”

Bruce is quiet for a minute, looking very out of his depth. But he has done a remarkable job so far of participating supportively in this difficult conversation and Dick believes in him. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Dick chews his lip. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “A little?”

And then he talks, briefly, vaguely, and Bruce listens. It’s nothing like telling Jason; he finds when he has chosen this conversation on his own terms, he can swallow the nausea down. But both Jason and Bruce are surprisingly good listeners, silent but present. Dick is grateful; as much as he agonized and prepared, he doesn’t think he could handle being interrupted.

“Thank you,” Bruce says after. “For trusting me. I don’t de-”

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t deserve it, blah blah,” says Dick. He reaches out and squeezes Bruce’s hand. “I meant it. I want you to know me. Sometimes you need people to believe the best in you. I believe you’re going to get better, Bruce.”

Bruce absorbs that, looking like he has been hit in the face with a bottle of water after a week in the desert and doesn’t know what to feel about it. “Dick,” he says eventually. His food has long been forgotten. “I love you.”

Dick blinks. A small smile starts in the corner of his mouth. “I love you too, Bruce.”

Bruce keeps watching him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah actually,” Dick says. He laughs a little. “Actually I am okay. Or getting there.”

“What can I do for you?” Bruce asks, and it’s honest and open and Dick knows Bruce’s attitude is built on his own regret over his past actions and forever wanting to bring himself to justice but it’s real and Dick will take it.

“You can take me to see the sloth,” Dick declares, rising from the table. “We need pictures. Everyone will be very jealous.” And Bruce acquiesces.

—---------------------

So they continue with the texting and the calling and the seeing each other.

And it’s good.

Dick still sometimes freezes when Bruce’s tone is clipped, and when they are together he is hyper aware of Bruce’s body language always. It’s subconscious. It may be part of him forever. They are not perfect; Dick accepts with some melancholy that they will never be perfect, not when parts of them have shattered into pieces too tiny to restore. (Maybe there was a chance, when Dick was small, when things could have turned out perfectly. Perhaps if they were completely different people. Perhaps if there was no Batman.) But they have gotten better - they are something new. And mentally, he knows he is safe.

That is enough, for now.

—--------------

A few weeks later, Dick scrolls up through his chat history from Bruce until he finds the right message from months ago.

Re: Would you like me to adopt you?

Dick types, So how would this work exactly?

He hits send.

Bruce replies immediately.

—-------------

Dick’s life goes on in flashes of different relationships.

Friends are easier. He doesn’t share a lot of details with most people, and he deflects more often than he answers real questions. But when he needs someone, he calls them. Donna and Wally both express agreement that Dick gets to decide what happens to him (although in their opinion he could get out of Gotham and be better for it). But they are all adults and respect him for making choices he thinks are best for himself. And he’s actually talking to Roy, so that’s a nice development as well.

Siblings are harder. Siblings will always expect things of you. 

There is a certain paradoxical nearsightedness and farsightedness about a family’s problems: When you are so close, you see all of each other’s flaws in personal detail, and yet some of the greatest problems cannot be seen from within, and don’t become apparent without a step back to view the whole picture. Dick has been trying to take a step back, and a step closer, at the same time. He’s not sure if it’s working.

In a lot of ways Jason is naturally the hardest sibling relationship for Dick, perhaps because of their much more minor age difference, or perhaps because Dick wasn’t ready for a sibling when they first met and their relationship was forever soured. And Jason knows most about Mirage and Catalina now, a confounding variable. Dick never expected to have that vulnerability with him, and it sucked that he let it slip a bit to the rest of the family, but largely he has dealt with the knowledge really respectfully and Dick is touched and appreciative. Jason is Dick’s biggest therapy supporter, and he regularly asks how it’s going. As a result, Dick actually answers sometimes, so perhaps Jason knows Dick most these days. And Dick asks questions about Jason back, and nothing obliges sharing like a mutual exchange of personal information, so Dick discovers Jason’s part-time job and attachment to a blind elderly lady he reads to on occasional Thursday afternoons.

The problem is that Jason doesn’t think Dick should forgive Bruce so easily.

Dick thinks Jason is too dismissive of the effort and progress Bruce has made. Bruce has been changing his conflict management strategies and learning anger-dispelling techniques. Jason doesn’t think Dick is in a position to see Bruce at all because he’s too “dependent” and “conditioned”, and Dick hates listening to Jason expound on these critical theories of his own psych, no matter the inkling of truth. But Dick has made a lot of progress too, in how he makes his decisions and sets boundaries. And he wants a relationship with Bruce. He wants a relationship with all of his siblings, and he makes it clear, so Jason tries to adopt more of a laissez-faire attitude to Dick’s choices with Bruce and reassures Dick that he will still be attending family events while reserving the right to be an asshole at will.

Dick is inordinately thankful; there is something between them now that is fresh and growing, something that is warm and that Dick desperately wants to preserve.

Surprisingly, in the following months, Tim heads the most difficult sibling interaction. It takes on a form Dick did not expect to have to face, but maybe he should have seen it coming. After all, Tim is like Bruce in many ways.

Dick visits the manor almost weekly now, though he comes and goes as he pleases. He is relaxing in his room, reading a book on his bed, when Tim comes in, face pale and expression blank. His presence is unusual in itself. Tim is not often at the manor anymore, an uncomfortable echo of his absence following Burce’s death, but he still manifests on occasion.

“Dick, I need to tell you something.” His tone is serious. Dick instinctively wonders if something has happened to one of his Titan friends; he has been doing a lot of missions with them lately while avoiding Gotham.

Dick sits up straighter and sets the book aside. He pats the bed next to him. “Sit down. What’s up?”

Tim shifts, lingering at the entrance. “Well, actually, I was wondering about what Jason said during the family therapy session. I didn’t want to bother you if it’s uncomfortable, but Jason said to ask you instead of-”

Dick feels his entire body shut down for a second before his default system reboots and he’s smiling again automatically. “I’m not discussing that with you,” he says pleasantly. The ‘ever’ is silent. “And there’s nothing to discuss with Jason either,” he adds pointedly.

Tim chews his lip, but nods. “Okay fair. You don’t have to tell me. But I’m here for you if you - well, actually.” He closes his eyes and sighs. “Actually that wasn’t it, I just thought that might be easier to talk about.” Dick blinks, instantly filled with dread again. Easier than what? Tim walks forward like he’s heading to the gallows and sits down gingerly. “Dick, I just want you to know first that I’m really, really sorry about everything.”

“Okay?” Dick says, uncertain. A family matter, then. Given the gravity of Tim’s entire aura, this is probably about Operation F.I.S.H.. Which will never truly be gone, Dick knows, but he likes to think it’s pretty much resolved, or at least out in the open.

He smiles reassuringly, swings an arm around Tim’s shoulders. “You know, you’re just one lad, Timbo. And everything is definitely not your fault. Besides, things are getting better. Look at how far we’ve come!” He throws his other arm out as if to indicate his own casual presence in the manor.

Alarmingly, Tim’s shoulders shake as he breathes deeply. “Dick,” he says, sounding more fragile than Dick has heard him sound since he took up the Robin mantle, “I’m sorry for what I did. But I still need to tell you what I did. You don’t know yet.”

Dick bites his cheek, a bit wary given Tim’s behaviour. “What did you do, Tim?” he asks carefully.

Tim looks away. The words come out in a rush, “When you were acting weird before last Thanksgiving, I wanted proof that I was right about you and Bruce. So I looked up old footage from the Bat Cave, and I kind of went overboard, and I saw a lot of your personal …moments.” Dick can’t breathe. Tim what? “Dick, why didn’t you tell anyone Bruce took Robin away from you? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it, but,” Tim takes a breath, visibly suppresses his curiosity, “And I know it was an invasion of your privacy. I felt like it was justified at the time, like if I could just confirm what happened I would be able to throw the evidence in your face and we could help you and fix everything. But then I actually saw your life, there on the screen…and I felt bad right away. And I didn’t want you to know I saw.” 

Tim hasn’t looked at Dick since he started speaking, and now Dick watches him close his eyes, mouth set in an unhappy slant. “It was stupid anyway, to think things would be so simple, like regular casework, like if I just made you see that we would all work together like a team to fix ourselves. Anyway. So. I didn’t want you to know,” Tim repeats, small, though it must have taken colossal courage to confess this. He opens his eyes. “But I think I should tell you. And apologize. So …I’m really, really sorry, Dick. Please don’t hate me.”

Dick swallows, then automatically focuses on Tim’s feelings so he doesn’t have to delve into the unknown depths of what Tim is apologizing for. “Is this why you’ve been so mad at Bruce lately?”

Tim bites his lip and doesn’t disagree. “He was so awful to you, like, always,” he vents, frustrated. He takes a deep breath, then carefully sets his hands in his lap, a quirk he has from a childhood of channeling his nerves in stressful social situations into rigidly perfect posture. “I know I’m not supposed to know. But I do. And I know it’s your decision, okay? I know, but.” Dick hears Tim’s jaw click. “I don’t like how you just forgive Bruce. He hasn’t done enough to- he doesn’t deserve it.” It’s not a question by technicality of intonation, but Tim is erudite and restless when he doesn’t understand something that he thinks should be logical. He wants to know Dick’s reasoning.

Dick struggles to parse out his decisions himself. He knows he seeks relationships with others like a sunflower desperately chasing the sun across the sky. In his life, family has always been something that was unquestionably to be restored no matter the fallouts. For better or worse, forgiving Bruce has always felt inevitable. It used to feel, in their darker moments, like maybe it was for the worse. A lock on the cage he was trapped in. But lately his hope has grown, with every fragile step forward, that it is for the better.

And Dick is tired of living with rot in his family. 

“He doesn’t deserve it,” Dick echoes musingly. “Well, I feel like I don’t deserve a lot of things either. I’ve caused a lot of people a lot of hurt. I’ve done things that have led to people’s deaths. And I mean, we beat people up almost nightly.”

“It’s not the same,” Tim begins. The statement ends with silence.

“It’s not the same,” Dick echoes once more. “But where do the lines get drawn?” What is too far? Too much? How many hits are too many? How long can you stay? When do you have to leave?

“It’s different in the field,” Tim insists. “With Bruce, with us, with you… it’s personal. It can’t be justified. How does he pay for it? I don’t understand how you can be happy with him again.”

Dick winces internally in sympathy for Tim’s struggle. Tim has his own ways of managing emotional pain, traceable to his lonely childhood. He’s an emotional minimalist by necessity in his past and now by habit, and he is prepared to amputate to protect his vitals, with a tendency to cut off things that trouble him and freeze out people who he has conflict with. There are maybe some parallels to Bruce, but Dick knows that Tim’s coping strategies are his own, and also that Tim considers them a last resort.

Dick met Tim when he was still a boy with quiet strength but uncertain of himself, and he is changing and growing in ways that make Dick feel old but humbled by his maturity. Some things, though, are still painfully the same. Tim’s childhood left him with scars, a fear of relying on others and being let down, but it also instilled a desperate need and longing for that same human connection. Tim wants to know why Dick still values connection with Bruce, and maybe he also wants to understand why he values that connection himself, in spite of everything. After all, Tim too has been abused by Bruce while carrying a deep attachment that’s hard to shake, and Dick knows it’s easier for Tim to use Dick as a medium for his own grievances, to explore why he can’t bring himself to let go the way he’s advising Dick to do. Dick feels a hint of pride for Tim that he’s reaching out like this at all, seeking perspective. 

“Hmm,” Dick says. 

Tim’s words remind Dick of how he used to feel when he was young and thought Bruce was infallible, that the world could be separated into black and white. Dick was so lost when he discovered the blurry greys people wade through so they can live, so Dick can live with this family.

“It is harder to justify,” he settles on. “And it’s harder to punish. But what do you want me to do, Tim? Do you want me to never come to the manor again?” He leans forward a little, trying to peer into Tim’s face, but Tim is back to staring fixedly at the mattress.

Dick sighs internally, keeps his tone gentle. “Look, I know it looks like Bruce is getting a free pass for everything he’s done to us - done to me, just because he’s recognized the wrong and is trying to be better. The memories - and tapes,” Dick stresses, just to see Tim look guilty, “Won’t go away. And nothing Bruce does or that we make him do as penance is going to erase it. But I can forgive him. If there’s any debt, Tim - if that’s how you see it - from my side, he’s absolved, okay?” Dick softens his voice. “But it’s okay too if you don’t see it like that, you know?”

Tim shakes his head without blinking; he’s focusing hard. “I know, I know,” he says. “I know. I think about this a lot. But it still doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t deserve it,” he whispers.

Dick wonders now how much of Tim’s hurt is for himself. Tim has inside of him the same self-effacing willingness to bend to other people that Dick has, and Bruce has been controlling his life for years too. And it’s hard to decide what to do with that now, how to go from here with a Bruce who is trying. Dick understands.  

“Listen to me, Tim,” Dick says. Dick has a feeling that Tim is hoping Dick will tell him what to do, so Tim doesn’t have to decide himself or confront his own problems. But Dick has learned that he can only control and change himself, and that’s all he wants. “My choices on how to live, how to forgive, have nothing to do with Bruce deserving something and everything to do with who I want to be and what I want to do.” It has taken a long time to realize, but Dick doesn’t want to base any of his decisions on someone else’s actions, not anymore. “If I want to punish Bruce, where does the hurt end?”

It’s a real question, one that Dick has wondered for years and never found an answer he could live with. But he can’t leave it there. Not anymore.

“I want us to live, Tim, together,” Dick says plainly, not really sure where the words come from. But it’s all pouring out now, the nebulous feelings he has barely explored in therapy condensing into liquid words that flow into an answer for them both. “I want the hurt to end, right now, with family and love. I want to live, and I don’t want to live with the Bruce from years ago, I want to live with Bruce now, the one who acknowledges his past wrongs but wants to have a relationship with us all in the present. Tim,” he waits for a moment until Tim, finally, meets his eyes. “You don’t have to feel the same way I do, but you’re part of my family. Can you appreciate that I’m happy like this, and that I’m happy that Bruce gets to be happy too?”

Tim is watching him attentively, clearly sorting through Dick’s opinions in real time. Then he lets out a frustrated sigh like a deflating balloon. “I don’t know, Dick. I see where you’re coming from. And I get that you’re choosing this. Really, I’m happy for you, actually. It’s cool that you can see it like that, and I know Bruce is trying.” His face flickers in and out of a frown. “It’s just going to take me more time to process it myself.” Tim always dislikes it when it takes him longer than other people to find what he feels like is the answer. “I think in some ways it feels fresher to me, because I’m only now seeing what happened before. And I know you’re both better around each other now. And I’m not supposed to know some of this anyway. It should have been your choice to share the information on the tapes, not mine. It’s just so hard to reconcile, when I know you both, and with what I saw-”

Tim breaks off and looks back at him, eyes wide and apprehensive now that he has reminded them both of the reason Tim has approached Dick in the first place. Dick wonders if Tim has decided that Dick should forgive him. Tim has always had his own sense of justice, clear now in his views on Bruce. But he didn’t approach Dick today to help query the morality of his own actions; he has already decided he is guilty and is presenting himself to Dick for sentencing.

Dick can’t reply.

Really, Dick is blindsided. Sure, he knows everything in the Bat Cave is on camera and stored in encrypted files “just in case” because Batman is intensely paranoid. But he never really thought about what that meant for his personal life, never really considered that his privacy would be invaded this way, nevermind that apparently it already has been. If he truly thinks about it he isn’t surprised that Tim did it. Tim has always been thorough about research.

But that means Tim knows. Tim has seen - who knows, maybe a lot. Which makes Dick feel .. horrified. Tim and Damian saw him the Saturday night before Thanksgiving, and that wasn’t good. But now every single instance where Bruce got mad at him in the cave flashes before Dick’s eyes and he wonders which ones Tim saw. What Dick never wanted him to know.

Dick doesn’t know how much time passes him by while he is frozen.

“Dick?” Tim asks tentatively.

“What did you see?” Dick manages to ask, fighting for a level tone and dipping slightly below even.

Tim shifts. “I - well, I started with key events that may have triggered Bruce to be angrier than usual.” So logical in his systematic invasion of privacy, Dick would admire him if it wasn’t so hurtful. “I only watched a few segments,” Tim rushes to reassure. “Like around… Jason’s death. When you weren’t even here and then Bruce-,” Tim stops, looking frustrated. “And then I asked you to come back! But Dick I swear, I haven’t seen everything, I stopped when I realized what I was doing to you. I’m really sorry.”

Only a few segments. Jason’s death. Haven’t seen everything. But there’s so many possibilities, which ones?

Dick takes a shaky breath.

He looks at Tim. Tim is looking at him with pity. How is Dick supposed to ask him to specify which of Dick’s own painful memories Tim is now privy too? And what if he told other people? Does anyone else know?

Dick is filled with a resigned sort of dread, knowing they have no way to turn back now; they will have to get to the bottom of this mess, they will have to have a serious conversation that will probably make Dick cry. Only, someone has sucked all of the air out of his bedroom and it’s getting hard to breathe, which makes it even more impossible to speak. Dick can’t do this right now. 

Sometimes, Carlos tells him , it is best to remove oneself from a volatile situation. It is okay to give yourself space to think.

So he gets up and leaves the room.

(Days later, they sort it out. Tim tells him generally what he has seen, and that he has in fact told nobody. Dick vents to Carlos. Then he forgives Tim. Dick finds he can’t be angry with Tim for long, when Dick has done things he thought were best for Tim without his consent. When he can’t see how staying angry about something someone did a long time ago will help their family heal. And it feels fair, somehow, for Tim to know so much of this part of Dick’s pain, when Jason understands his other kind of hurt he carries around.

But he does set one of his first boundaries: no more spying on Dick’s past. He will forgive them for what they’ve done before, but they’re trying to be better now. If anyone has questions, they can ask him themselves. 

And Dick doesn’t have to answer.)

—--------------

It’s Damian who introduces him to kintsugi, presenting him with a restored mug he made in his art club.

Steph had stopped by to hang out while she waits for Tim, who is “going for a walk” with Bruce. Dick doesn’t know why Steph uses air quotes for it, when they’re literally going for a walk. But he hasn’t been privy to more, and he’s trying to be okay with not knowing everything. With letting other people sort their own boundaries.

So, Dick and Steph are lounging in a sitting room for Damian’s impromptu show and applaud accordingly over the mug. Damian has started opening up to Steph about his art, and it has helped increase his confidence; Steph gives the more critical feedback Dick can’t find it in himself to offer.

“Awesome job, you’re getting exposed to some really cool stuff from your friends,” Steph compliments, and Damian barely even bristles at the term ‘friends’.

“Actually, I was the one who suggested that we study kintsugi, or kintsukuroi,” Damian confesses hesitantly.

“Oh?” says Dick, in a tone that asks for more. Sure, Damian can be bossy with his family, but he usually doesn’t initiate anything with schoolmates.

“I have always wanted to try the practice, having seen something similar in the league. And I am interested in it as a philosophy,” Damian explains, straightening, a light in his eye. “The damage and repair are considered part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise.” He looks directly at Dick. “It accepts imperfection, and change.”

Dick can’t move, not when he is suddenly floored by the deep feeling of being known. He examines the mug again, the well-defined cracks now sealed but prominently displayed.

Beautiful.

“That’s interesting, Dami,” he says, feeling the seams where some of his own broken pieces have been fit back together again.

Very interesting.

—------------------

And life goes on. Time passes, different people orbiting in and out of focus in Dick’s life.

A challenge from his therapist months later has him eventually telling Wally about how he’s really doing, and about what he’s dealt with that has scarred him, longterm struggles with Bruce and the shorter but memorable damage from his past sexual assaults. It’s still hard to talk about, but it feels easier this time, huddled on his couch with Wally and pizza. And he likes how it feels to talk to Wally now, how he nods when Dick is upset and tells him that his emotions are reasonable. Like Dick is fully understood. It’s soothing.

Dick goes skiing (again) with Jason. It’s nothing like the first time. Of course it’s not; they are different people, from each other and from who they each used to be. But for one afternoon, Dick feels that maybe they can be ..close. And it’s fun. Maybe they’ll do it again (again). 

And Jason mentions that he’s going to meet Bruce when they get back, as Jason and Bruce, and Dick feels odd. He hasn’t really mediated Jason and Bruce’s relationship for months now. The idea that they might be healing on their own, working together, leaves him feeling a bit like he’s watching two kids he has supervised for so long willingly spend time together.

When Dick thinks back, not far back - boy, were they all ever dysfunctional, and they’re still not perfect. And yet. Perhaps he really doesn’t need to constantly intervene for everyone. Perhaps they want their family to work too. It’s a hopeful thought, and he lets it reassure him.

He visits Cass in Hong Kong. He can tell that the distance is good for her, gives her space to observe the rest of them without being dragged into the messy swirl. He can feel the peace himself too, as the stresses of Gotham recede, similar to when he’s in Bludhaven, but it’s replaced by the deep and complicated ache for the familiarity of home. He doesn’t feel truly at peace until he’s back in the dark and grim city.

But the night before he goes home, Cass confides that she is going to finish her latest case in Hong Kong in the next few months, and then she will return to Gotham as well.

“Cass, that’s awesome news,” Dick tells her, because it is. “Are you sure? What made you decide?”

“Sure. No more running,” she says, all steady confidence in her decisions. Dick would like to be more like Cass. “I want to be home. With you.” She points to him. “A lot of change, like you. Like Bruce. It’s hard, but it will be worth it. Together.”

Dick couldn’t agree more.

—----------------

And then…

“Hurry up, Tim, we’re going to miss the panel!”

Dick goes to the Comic-Con with Tim and Steph. Finally hanging out with them outside of vigilante business or manor chilling, something they planned ahead of time and committed to.

Steph’s bright pink hair bounces as she strides quickly, on a mission. Dick glances back to where Tim is trailing behind them, loaded with their purchases.

“Maybe if you carried your own merch,” Tim grouses, almost tripping over a rolled poster. Dick feels kind of bad and starts to move to offer help, but Steph is unrepentant.

“Oh please, you lift heavier than that. We can’t help because it would ruin the costume-” Steph begins to explain.

“Is that Sharkboy and Lavagirl?” A squad of superhero costumes surrounds them. Dick is impressed with the edgy female Red Hood. “I love it! Can we get a picture?” 

Steph and Dick look at each other. “The panel can wait, this is our glory,” Steph says solemnly, and Dick grins, shark-like.

One of the superheroes turns to Tim. “Do you mind taking the photo?”

“He’s really good at photography,” Dick chirps. “He’s been taking pictures of superheroes like you guys for ages.”

Tim groans but accepts the camera.

(It’s really, really fun.)

They stop briefly at one of Jason’s known safehouses on their way home. Officially it’s to drop off a file, but it’s also because Dick knows Jason is dying to see their costumes, the inner geek. If they go to the Comic-Con next year, Dick is definitely going to push more when he invites him.

Jason opens the door to Sharkboy and Lavagirl kneeled in the hallway, raising files up like offerings. Tim hangs behind them, embarrassed (but Dick bets he’s filming). Jason blankly analyzes them in one second and says, “Are you fucking kidding me. I am appalled. Flabbergasted. Sharkboy and Lavagirl don’t kneel. Your fin is pointed wrong, Big Bird. And is that a plastic wig, Blondie?”

He may be throwing obligatory insults about their costume quality, but Dick can tell he’s suitably impressed underneath. And maybe a little jealous. Dick and Steph start posing.

‘What’s the hold up? Is it charity?” A voice calls from beyond the door. A familiar voice. And Dick didn’t realize Roy and Kory were visiting.

And then Jason turns and yells into his apartment. “Hey guys, some fucker dropped something funny in the hallway!”

“Are you serious,” Tim breathes. He is most definitely still filming. Dick wishes he would stop now.

And suddenly Roy and Kory are right there, peeking curiously around Jason. They grin when they see the costumes.

“You’re right, it is funny,” says Roy, looking them over.

Steph wasn’t expecting the additional attention but she takes it like a pro, striking another pose. “Hello, citizens,” she says.

“Hello,” says Kory. She looks at Dick.

Dick swallows, mouth suddenly dry. He crosses his arms. “Hi.”

Jason looks like he’s debating something with himself, looking from Dick to Roy to Dick to Kory. “Did you losers want to… come in?” 

Dick stares at him, but now Jason is firmly looking at Tim and Steph, the gremlin. Jason is such a meddler when he wants to be. He won’t tell them the location of his apartment for months, won’t accept their invitations to the Comic-Con or even something as innocent as ice cream, but when he has an opportunity to push Dick into an uncomfortable conversation with someone he has been dancing around, Jason brings his Bat-trained all.

Steph is already brushing past Dick and Jason. “I thought you’d never ask. I’m so thirsty. Do you have lemonade?”

“There are lemons,” Kory says. “Is that sufficient?” And she’s following Steph in. Roy shrugs and trails behind. Tim has put his phone back in his pocket and pushes past Jason with a mumbled “bathroom”.

“Don’t you dare shit in my toilet, Replacement,” Jason calls after him.

Then it is just Jason and Dick in the doorway, waiting for one of them to decide. Dick stares at a nail in the wall and pictures his coffin.

“You don’t have to,” Jason gives him an out, but Dick knows he’s cornered. As if he can walk away without raising questions. But Jason follows it up with, “I could just say I needed to run to grab a file from a different safehouse and I asked you to help me.” His eyes are honest; he really doesn’t mean to force Dick into this. But he wants Dick to try. He’s pushing, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Dick weighs the situation carefully. He knows Jason is watching him closely, waiting for his call. But Dick has had such a good day he thinks maybe he can do this too. “Actually lemonade sounds good,” he says with a smile.

Jason raises an eyebrow but gestures for him to come inside then.

And Dick can talk to both of them without murdering Roy or killing himself with guilt about Kory. So he does. And he drinks lemonade. It’s nice.

And he thinks… maybe he wants to hang out with them again.

He will get his chance.

—---------------

“Nightwing, I’ve been dying to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you.” Dick’s smile is frozen on his face as he politely turns to greet the excited voice. He doesn’t like the sound of ‘heard so much’. But he can’t avoid this without making a scene.

It’s the spring multi-generational Titan’s party and there is a larger turnout than ever before, with heroes from different teams mingling as well. Formal and costumed mix. New teams, old teams. Dick had been taking a moment to escape, texting Damian while huddled against the wall, and now he’s cornered. Dick always feels a bit apprehensive around people who know him by name (and ergo reputation) only, and this is definitely one of those people, though her suggestive eyebrow raise makes it clear she thinks she knows him well.

“Hi. I didn’t catch your name?” Dick says politely. He tries to stay updated on new vigilantes, but it feels like there’s a fresh face sprouting out of every neighbourhood these days. He respects the bold bright pink and orange combination even as it leaves him squinting. “Nice colours,” he compliments.

Maybe praising fashion tastes is inherently flirty, maybe when Dick squints he looks sexy, he doesn’t know, but she’s laughing like he said something funny. “You can catch more than my name.”

And she is moving closer-

And Dick has been working with Carlos on how to let someone know you’re uncomfortable in a social situation but he finds suddenly he can’t do it; he’s not there yet. Instead, he instinctively is forcing a laugh of his own even though he doesn’t know what’s funny about his lungs constricting or his hands shaking. He wishes he could just say point blank that he’s not interested, but he can’t make himself disappoint her.

But there is one other strategy he agreed with Carlos on. A strategy that only left him alone for one minute to raid the food table.

“Hey there, what’s shaking? Excuse me, pardon me, just going to squeeze by. Here Rob, you’re not busy, hold my olives,” Wally very purposefully inserts himself and his tropical floral shirt between them carrying four plates full of carefully stacked snacks, offloading one onto Dick. 

Dick inspects the tray. “How many types of olives do you need?”

“A respectable sample size,” Wally sniffs, popping one into his mouth. Finally, he turns to look at the new hero like he’s seeing her for the first time. Dick thinks Wally is a poor actor, but this is still a show he’d pay to watch. “Oh hi, can I help you?” He grabs a mushy handful off of Dick’s plate and offers it to her. “Olive?”

“Uh, no thanks,” she says, looking suddenly uncomfortable. To Dick, “Nice meeting you.” She disappears into the crowd. Dick watches her go.

Dick turns to see Wally watching him, still chewing on his handful of olives. “You don’t have to make everyone happy,” Wally says, way too observant when Dick is literally wearing a mask.

“I know,” Dick says quickly, because he does. He raises his plate. “Olive?”

Wally shrugs, then tosses his entire handful down his throat and grabs another. “Well I’m here for you man, to make sure you’re happy.” At least, that’s what Dick thinks he says, mixed in with the chewing.

“Thanks man.” Dick bumps his shoulder, jostling the plates. Wally masterfully restabilizes. Thank God for Wallace West.

And then Dick looks across the room, sees Kory talking with Donna. He imagines himself talking with both of them too, imagines it being nice, the way it used to be.

Dick takes a breath. If ever there was a time for Dick to practice doing things for himself, it’s now. His heart speeds up. There is a familiar tickle of anxiety in his gut, a sense that he is undeserving. But he has had enough people tell him now that he is starting to believe: It’s not your fault.

“Wish me luck,” he tells Wally, who tracks his gaze.

“I’ll be nearby,” Wally assures him. Dick doesn’t deserve this guy. (Dick doesn’t think he deserves much, that’s maybe part of his problem. But he wants to. And that’s a start. So.)

He takes another breath. Then he grabs some punch and joins Donna and Kory.

—------------------------

“-and it was really, really nice.”

“Glad to hear it. Did you talk about Mirage?”

“No. We talked about fruity teas. But I think… I don’t know. Maybe we will? I think we’ll talk again.”

“Glad to hear it.”

—------------------------

Dick has been doing more introspection and reflection this year than ever before, after Operation F.I.S.H.. He has always wondered ‘why’, and now he truly searches for it.

His therapist tells him of a word he immediately likes: Agathokakological. To be composed of both evil and good. Dick feels like it describes how he sees the world, and humanity in general. Maybe what he feels is true for his family and his relationship with Bruce in particular. The love, and the hurt. The affection, and the pain.

Dick thinks about Bruce, really analyzes him, maybe more than he ever has. He thinks about their relationship, all of it, from the beginning. He can reflect on how young Bruce was when he first took Dick in and how old Dick is now. He can see Bruce’s improvements in his siblings’ lives and in Bruce’s clumsy attempts to reconcile with Dick himself. And even when he was young - the good moments: how Batman taught and guided and trained him, how he still feels like Bruce made Dick into who and what he is today. More than any other person, for better or worse. And yet, Dick also has an evolving perspective of himself: now, he wants to be loved right.

It’s so painfully slow, Dick’s personal paradigm shift. He finds the small truths are easier to accept - Dick can agree Bruce hit him, and he can pick apart the reasoning to agree it didn’t always make sense. But once he can believe some things weren’t his fault it’s easier to see how it was wrong, though the big picture is still daunting to him, that perhaps he was abused. That the little things he always brushed aside were not dust to sweep away but poisonous vapours from the rot at the middle of their family that needed to be addressed.

Dick knows he has been hurt hard, by Bruce, by this family. But he needs to find his own way to heal, and that will never be through breaking relationships, when relationships are his lifeblood. He knows that isn’t right in every situation, that it isn’t right for everyone - not for Stephanie, not for Jason, not for Roy. Maybe it wouldn’t even be right for him if his family wasn’t also working so hard to improve as well.

He struggles to articulate how he is doing anymore, when people check in. How does he know if he is “getting better”? He has always gauged himself by his relationships with people, and that makes change more subtle. Are his relationships healthier now? He likes to think so. He feels like if he remembers where he was a year ago, then today seems pretty bright, most days now. He needs to find happiness where he can.

His triangular relationship with Damian and Bruce is tricky. They all have to shift to find a new balance, and it feels like they are constantly re-juggling. The changes that eventually start to feel right take on a certain shape - Bruce becomes a bit more of a father to Dick, and Dick stops trying to pull back from Damian to make room. His kid deserves all the love they can both give him.

—---------------------

Dick texts Slade, Thank you. Dick is fairly certain he tried to help, in his own messed-up way.

Then Dick blocks his number.

Then he unblocks it. Just in case.

Slade responds, Go to sleep.

Dick rolls his eyes.

He goes to sleep.

—--------------------

“So, what did you decide about Deathstroke?”

“Don’t even go there, my good therapist.”

“Interesting.”

—--------------------

Snip.

“Like this?”

Alfred leans closer to inspect the rose bush, squinting in the sun. “Very good, Master Richard. You are improving each day.”

Dick rolls his eyes. “It’s just flowers, Alfred.”

“It is not just flowers, my dear boy,” Alfred says seriously. “It is you, and you are very important.”

Oh. Dick smiles softly. Then he offers Alfred the rose clipping.

It is summer again and Dick finds himself helping Alfred in the garden, like he used to do when he was young. Alfred’s words from that time are clear in his mind even now.

Routine is important to keep oneself healthy and sane . It’s a powerful technique for the mind. 

Dick knows the danger now, when you make bad habits. He twisted those words into a justification for years of abuse. He became so comfortable in the familiar routine, even when it cut him, because he was addicted to the high of relief when he was forgiven and Bruce would bring him back into the fold. It was a way to cope. Now Dick wants to feel all of the same comfort and familiarity with healthy relationships instead, no matter how hard it is to transform them.

Sometimes he is still waiting for the catch, for himself or for Bruce to fall back into the well-worn rut of their old path. But the pattern has been broken now, for most of a year. Now his relationships feel like safety nets instead of trick wires. It feels like breaking a bad habit.

Dick isn’t free of his family, of Bruce, but he doesn’t want to be. He is free of the cycle.

Dick looks around at the restored garden. Sometimes it’s necessary to leave fallow ground behind and start afresh. But this time, they will till the soil and plant anew, in the old space.

“If you two are quite finished,” Damian’s voice calls from the other side of the bush. He had insisted on helping with the garden when he learned Dick was going to be present. “I could use your assistance.”

Damian? Willingly asking for help? Dick meets Alfred’s raised eyebrows with his own. Alfred holds up a blossom. “It seems there are welcome changes everywhere this season,” Alfred comments, eyes twinkling.

Dick grins. Then, “Coming, Dami!”

“Tt. Finally.”

—--------------------

(Dick had another life once, before Gotham, before Bruce: different and the same. Dick was a Robin before he was anything else, before he met Bruce. He has always flown with his family. Once it was his parents and him. And for a while after they were gone, he thought he would forever be alone. He never could have dreamed of the mosaic of people he ties himself to now, how much they have gone through, and yet. He is certain if his parents knew, they would be more happy than not.)

—--------------------

Thanksgiving is approaching again.

Dick flits between being stuck in Bludhaven with casework or busy with some aid he has been giving the League off the continent. He has been trying to spread his net wide in the larger community, getting some much needed fresh social air. He has stayed out of Gotham physically, just texts and calls to his family. But he has heard murmurings through the family grapevine.

There is a rumour going around, about a boy named Duke Thomas.

Dick has never heard of him before, but soon he is hearing a lot about him from Tim, from Alfred, from Damian, and eventually even from Bruce. It sounds like he is staying around the manor lately. It sounds like he isn't going to be leaving.

It sounds like Dick will be meeting him at Thanksgiving dinner. 

Previously, a new member in the family has been a cause for fresh anxieties for Dick. New people don’t know how Bruce works, what they need to be careful of, what they need to avoid. But Bruce has been doing so well lately. In fact, they all have. Dick waits for the old apprehension to manifest when he initially gets the text, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Dick is left with only excitement at this potential new younger brother.

Hmm. Maybe this will be fun.

—--------------------

Dick pulls up to the manor on a chilly late November day. Damian is already out the front door to meet him at his car.

“Richard, your presence is behind schedule, as usual,” he reports as Dick pockets his keys.

They saw each other frequently up until a month ago when he went largely off continent to finish up a team mission. Dick has felt the separation like an ache, and he is just as eager to see Damian again.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Dick says with a grin, going in for a hug. Damian returns it with only the barest pretense of resistance, and this is coming home. He squeezes tighter.

“Dick!” Steph calls. She and Cass are waving in the doorway. “Come on, you’ve got to meet this guy.”

“I’m coming!” Dick hollers, releasing his squirming captive only to keep an arm around his shoulder as they walk. When they get to the door, he looks around. The entryway is empty except for the four of them. “Where is he?”

“Kitchen,” Cass replies. Ah, so the new guy is hiding with Alfred. Dick understands. It is very relatable behaviour.

He turns to Damian, grinning, “Race you.”

And then he is sprinting into the manor, Damian hot at his heels. He feels the air whip by him as he bolts down the hallways, laughing as Jason tries to trip him coming out of the library and he flips over the obstacle. Tim is exiting the kitchen and there is almost a collision, but Dick picks Tim up and bodily throws him at Damian before somersaulting victoriously into the kitchen.

“I am the champion!” he roars over the clamor behind him. He examines the scene.

There’s a fishbowl in front of him, the water clear and clean, central in the room. He looks beyond it.

There is Alfred, minding a pot of something at the stove. There is Bruce in the corner, on his phone but looking up as Dick enters. This must be the new kid right in front of him on the closest barstool, hand raised and mouth open like he was in the middle of saying something to Alfred but is now instead gaping at Dick and more likely the chaos behind him.

“So you made it,” Bruce says wryly. Dick can see the purposeful way he sets his phone aside. His eyes are warm and attentive.

Dick can hear his other siblings filing into the room behind him. Dick doesn’t turn around, but he does bow.

Jason groans so loudly at the theatrics that Dick suspects the megaphone is back. Still, he can’t stop grinning.

This, this, is what Dick has been searching for. It’s not a stifling cage disguised as a home, and it’s not cutting ties with everyone who has ever hurt or been hurt by him. It is this patchwork group of people who love him and whom he loves, fragile and sharp but beautiful so beautiful, with all of their flaws and with all of their crisscrossing forgiveness. They have worked hard for this, and they will continue to work hard. It is a difficult path to walk together. It is worth it.

They are worth it.

Here, Dick can finally come up for a breath of air, and he can keep breathing.

Dick finally feels free.

Duke Thomas sticks out a hand, nervous smile on his face. “Hi, I’m Duke.”

Dick grabs the offered hand and pulls a squawking Duke into a hug. “Hi, I’m Dick. Welcome to the family.”

—-------------------

Fin.*

"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh