Chapter Text
And to all corners of this new world,
let a single person be stricken
from all time and space.
Let none remember his name,
let no records carry his history …
Erase his very soul from this world.
Let all who hear it ask
the same dumbfounded question,
which itself will have no answer:
Who is Dick Grayson?
– Doctor Dedalus (Grayson #20)
If anyone were to ever ask Dick where he thought he’d be the night before his twenty-fifth birthday, at no point would he ever have predicted he’d be spending it here—sitting in bloodied scrubs in the back of a retrofitted ambulance, stitching up a mobster whose family he’d just had dinner with three hours ago.
It’s not exactly the joyous gathering of friends and family he’d looked forward to in the past, but he’d known for a while now that this was how it was going to end up.
You don’t celebrate the birthdays of people you don’t remember, after all.
“Geez, kid, the look on your face. Is it that bad?”
Dick doesn’t startle, but he does put a sheepish expression on his face as he glances up at his patient—Tommy Tevis, a long-time associate of the Blüdhaven Peretti crime family and somewhat-recent friend of Dick’s.
“Sorry, Tommy, just have a lot on my mind tonight.” Dick redirects his focus onto the suturing. “It’s not too serious, but you’re going to want to be careful with this arm the next few weeks if you don’t want me to have to stitch it up again.”
Tommy sighs heavily. “I can already hear the grief Lyn’ll give me for this one.”
Dick makes a not-quite-sympathetic noise as he ties off the last knot. “Funny thing about Lynette. Could’ve sworn that just tonight she told me you were trying to get out of the business.”
“Good grief. When do you even have time to gossip with her?”
Dick shrugs as he grabs a roll of bandages and tape from the drawer behind him. “Maybe if you weren’t always late to dinner…”
Tommy barks out a laugh. “I invite you into my home for a nice, warm meal and this is the thanks I get?”
Dick grins. “That first invitation may have been yours, but you know as well as I do that the rest was all Lynette.”
“That’s my Lyn,” Tommy says fondly. “Good kid like you living all alone, of course she can’t resist trying to feed you. Anything I can do to convince you not to mention this one to her?”
“It’s a stab wound, Tommy,” Dick says as he wraps the bandage around it. “In your arm. I think she’ll notice it.”
“That doesn’t mean she needs to know the details.”
Dick sighs as he tapes the bandages. “So you’re not getting out.”
“It’s not that easy, Nightingale.” Tommy rolls his shoulder and looks down at his shoulder. “I’ve been working for the Perettis near thirty years now. I’m not good for much else anymore.”
“I know that’s not true.”
“I ever tell you, a couple years back, Lyn got me signed up for this program Wayne runs over in Gotham?” Tommy says.
Dick nearly drops the roll of bandages at the name, but manages to catch it and set it back in its drawer, hopefully without Tommy noticing the stutter. “Which one was that?”
“S’called New Leaf, or something like that,” Tommy says. “Supposed to help you get out clean—no questions, no record, fancy new job and everything. All on the up-and-up—or, however much on the up-and-up Wayne is, at least.”
Dick really doesn’t want to talk about Bruce—hardly even wants to think about him, or anyone else back in Gotham, for that matter—but the implication that Bruce’s work is some kind of scam rankles him on an instinctual level. “You don’t trust Wayne?”
“You don’t get that rich being squeaky clean,” Tommy says, which is fair enough. “And the suspicious way his first kid died, out of the country? People talk.”
The sentence makes sense and doesn’t, like trying to jam a puzzle piece that looks right somewhere it doesn’t actually fit, until Dick remembers that when people talk about Bruce’s first kid now, they mean Jason—and Dick is the one that no longer fits.
Suddenly, he really regrets letting Tommy talk about Bruce in the first place.
“Anyway,” Tommy says, “I guess Wayne can’t be a favorite of Maroni’s, at least, seeing how his housing proposal got shot down by the mayor again.”
“What does Maroni have to do with the mayor?”
Tommy blinks at him, then grins. “You really don’t get out much, do you, kid?”
Dick shrugs with one shoulder, keeping his focus on the needle he’s sterilizing. “I don’t keep up much with Gotham news.”
Or, more accurately, Dick’s been avoiding anything to do with Gotham. It feels a bit ridiculous to try to do that from less than an hour away in Blüdhaven, but as much as he’d wanted to run from the lack of recognition in Bruce’s eyes when he’d tried to go to Gotham that first month, he also couldn’t stomach the thought of being too far away—just in case it was all a bad dream that they’d all wake up from soon.
That’s what he’d hoped, at least, for the first couple months of this. Then he’d learned the hard way that trying to actively trigger memories could only end poorly, and all attempts at a roundabout solution involving magic or psychics had reached a dead end.
Someone more powerful might be able to help—Zatanna or Constantine, or Lilith or J’onn—but now they’re as much out of his reach as everyone else that he once knew.
He can wish all he wants, but things won’t ever go back to the way they were before—and that’s just something he has to live with.
“S’common knowledge the mayor’s in Maroni’s pocket,” Tommy says. “She’s not officially part of the family, but he considers her good as, what with her folks and all.”
All gossip is information is what Dick believes, and it’s hard to break the habit of it—hard to resist gently prodding Tommy, making him reveal details about the inner workings of the Maroni family that he wouldn’t realize were valuable until Dick had already coaxed it all from him.
But Gotham business is Bat business, and Dick isn’t considered a Bat anymore. If it’s important, the rest of the colony will already know, and they’ll be able to handle it themselves. They don’t need him.
No one does.
Dick pastes on a light-hearted smile for Tommy. “And you say I gossip.”
Tommy grins in response. “Some things you just can’t get away from, ‘specially if you’re the go-between with Maroni. But hey, with her in charge, maybe it’ll be safe to retire in Gotham in another five or six years after Soph leaves for college.”
“Wayne’s program didn’t work out for you?” Dick says. “Or you just didn’t trust him?”
“Something of both, I’d say.” Tommy slumps over a bit. His energy masks his age somewhat, but right now, he looks exactly as old as he is. “I wouldn’t put myself in the big leagues, but I’m no small fry, either. Way things have been, no way I’m getting out free and clear unless I rat out the whole Peretti family, and that’s not happening. But like I said—having Maroni’s girl in office might change some things for us. We’ll see how things go. Worst case, we’ll need to leave Jersey if we want to give Soph a chance to start clean.”
“Tommy...”
“None of that, now,” Tommy says. “You’re a good kid, Nightingale, but I don’t think my pride can handle sympathy from a man who lives in a shoebox.”
“Hey, it’s a very nice shoebox!” Dick says, allowing Tommy his change of subject. “Just the right size for me, myself, and I.”
It’s not the most glamorous place, but the landlord took cash and didn’t ask questions, so it checked all of Dick’s boxes for Acceptable Residence—plus, it doesn’t have asbestos, which is always a nice bonus.
The Somnus Satellite was powerful, but fortunately it still only worked on sentient beings; even if the bank teller’s mind kept glossing over Dick’s accounts, the ATM didn’t have the same problem. Thankfully for Dick—he thinks he might’ve gone insane without that small bit of proof that he once had a place in the world. If he had access to his old equipment and connections, establishing a new legal identity wouldn’t take long; in his current state, it’s all but impossible, which means he has to make do with what he has.
So far, he’s managed to avoid having to dip into Bruce’s emergency account for him, his current savings and the odd mostly-legal jobs he does for Tommy enough to keep him afloat. He’s glad for that. For one, he doesn’t know what kind of flags it might send up in Bruce’s system to touch the money, but mainly... it just feels wrong, to use Bruce’s money when Bruce doesn’t even know Dick exists anymore.
And that’s another thought that Dick likes to stay away from as much as possible.
“You know,” Tommy says, “every time we ask you to come stay with us instead, you keep saying you’ve got plans to move up to the big city. But somehow you’re still here.”
Dick smiles wryly. “Guess you’re not the only one finding it hard to get out.”
“If you ever need a hand with things—” Tommy’s phone rings, and his brow furrows as he glances down at it. “Well, speak of the Devil. I have to take this.”
Tommy raises his phone to his ear as he climbs out of Dick’s refurbished ambulance. “Hello there, Mr. Maroni. Yes, sir, I’m in Blüdhaven.”
His voice fades as he wanders off, and Dick hops out of the ambulance, taking a minute to stretch his legs.
He’s known for a while now that it’s long past time for him to leave. Somnus’s effects are clearly permanent, and staying so close to Gotham when he can’t even stomach setting foot in it isn’t doing him any good.
He’s just afraid, he knows—afraid of being alone again.
He wouldn’t say he’s best friends with Tommy Tevis or anything, but Tommy’s a friend—which makes him more or less the only friend Dick has in the world right now. His chats with Tommy and the dinners at the Tevis’s home are the only times Dick feels like he can still belong somewhere.
The Tevises probably aren’t people he should have gotten attached to, admittedly—but now that he has, it’s hard to walk away from them, just to end up in another place where he knows no one, and no one knows him.
He knows the story won’t end well if he stays—an ex-vigilante walking into a mobster’s house sounds like the setup of a bad joke—but is it so wrong of him, to want to hang onto the only semblance of family he has?
Tommy comes back as Dick is getting packed up to leave. “Back to business,” he says, with a more serious expression than Dick’s used to seeing on him. “My guys should be here soon. Thanks for the help, Nightingale. I owe you one, as always.”
“Is something wrong?” Dick says. A mobster Tommy may be, but he usually has an easygoing manner that sets even Dick at ease around him. The grim expression on his face doesn’t bode well.
“Seems like Maroni’s girl’s got herself in some kind of mess,” Tommy says. “She’s gone missing, apartment trashed and everything.”
Explains Tommy’s grim expression—he doesn’t like it when the kids get involved in things, especially since he has a daughter of his own at home.
“They want you over there to help?” Dick says.
“Over here, actually. Good chance that whoever grabbed her got her over the bridge before the city locked down. They want me to see what I can find out.”
Dick frowns. “You’d expect GCPD to be all over it, if their mayor got kidnapped.”
“GCPD was supposed to be keeping a close watch on her apartment in the first place,” Tommy says. “You can see why Maroni doesn’t trust ‘em.”
If the mayor really is close enough to Maroni to be considered part of the inner circle of his family, then there’s no shortage of potential enemies that could have taken her—between opposing factions to Maroni, corrupt GCPD officers, or political opponents, it’d be hard to even figure out where to start.
But the who and what of it isn’t business, Dick reminds himself—someone will figure it out, whether a GCPD detective or a Bat, and there’s no point in Dick trying to get involved in that investigation.
That being said, he can’t sit idly by when someone’s in trouble, either. “You have any idea what you’re looking for?”
Tommy frowns. “You know I don’t want to get you involved in this business. You already do more than enough, patching us up.”
Dick smiles wryly. “I was involved the second I heard someone needed help. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. You know people never suspect an ambulance.”
A black sedan pulls up. Tommy glances over at it and takes a half-step toward it—must be his ride. “It’s a plumbing van,” he says, and rattles off the plate number. “You see anything, you call me. Don’t go putting yourself into danger; Lynette’ll never let me hear the end of it.”
“Same to you,” Dick says. “You’ve already been stabbed once tonight.”
“Be safe, kid,” Tommy says, and ducks into the car.
Dick knows a no promises when he hears it. Hopefully, it doesn’t have to come to that.
He hasn’t bothered trying to rebuild most of his Nightwing tech, but one thing he did do was get access to the BPD and GCPD’s systems, just in case. GCPD is on high alert, but they haven’t communicated anything with BPD yet, which means their search might be completely focused within Gotham.
Which means the Bats’ might be, too.
Dick pulls up the BPD’s surveillance system and scans for the license plate. There are hits, but from earlier in the afternoon; the van went to Gotham later that day and didn’t return. Dick switches to the GCPD systems and scans the route the van took tonight, checking for any blind alleys. He finds one—and, as he suspected, finds a second vehicle coming out the other side.
This one’s a dark grey minivan that wouldn’t look out of place in any parking lot. He runs the plates through BPD’s system, and this time he gets a match. The trail ends at a warehouse by the river on the south side, a good forty-five minutes from Gotham, but only five minutes from where he is now. He sends in an anonymous tip directly to both police departments’ systems, but he knows it’ll take them both time to coordinate.
He throws his ambulance into gear and tears down the street. He’s going a lot faster than he normally would, but he’s confident in his driving—and it helps that a racing ambulance isn’t anything Havenites haven’t seen before, so they helpfully clear a path once they see him coming.
Bludhaven’s a much smaller city, compared to Gotham. It only took him a week to get familiar enough to know how to get from place to place without checking the map, and a month to learn most of the shortcuts—on the streets, at least. He hasn’t done much traveling by rooftop since returning from Spyral. Some days, he misses it with every muscle in his body; some days, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to bear going up again.
He parks the ambulance three buildings over and jogs the rest of the way, staying as hidden as he can between and behind buildings. The van’s not parked in front anymore, but he recognizes the outside of the building when he sees it. Carefully, he scales the side of the building up to the window ledge, keenly aware that he’s missing most of his protective equipment.
Luckily, it’s a short climb, and a short fall if it comes to that—which, thankfully, it doesn’t. Dick slips in through the window and onto the catwalk without catching anyone’s attention.
He sneaks over to the edge of the railing and looks over. There’s someone facing away from him, leaning against a stack of crates with their arms bound behind their back—Gotham’s mayor, Dick presumes.
And standing in front of her, gun in hand, is the Red Hood.
Dick’s heart pounds. He’s always thought that if he were to run into anyone from his past again, he’d immediately turn and run the other way, and he wants to—god, does he want to.
But that isn’t exactly an option right now—not with the mayor trapped down there, staring up the barrel of a gun that Dick desperately hopes Red Hood won’t shoot.
Dick’s at a disadvantage, though. Red Hood’s fully geared up, and Dick has nothing except for a paracord bracelet which he isn’t going to be deflecting bullets with anytime soon, so he can’t exactly flip down quipping as usual.
The good thing is that Red Hood doesn’t seem to be in a rush to kill her; actually, he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to do anything at all. He’s standing completely still, the grip on his firearm relaxed, and his gaze is fixed on the far wall—listening to something, maybe? Or waiting for a signal?
Dick takes advantage of his distraction to creep down the stairs. Usually, he’d try vaulting over the railing—it’s quicker, so he’s less likely to be seen—but without the sound-dampening soles of his Nightwing boots, he’s hesitant to risk it with Jason, who’s as observant and paranoid as the rest of them.
He’s most of the way down when the lights in the warehouse go out, the same time a batarang whizzes by Red Hood’s head and embeds itself in the wall with a solid clash of metal on metal.
Dick mentally curses and throws himself over the railing to hide behind a tower of crates, just as he hears the familiar swoop of Batman’s cape overhead.
It’s a sound that’s always brought him comfort. Now—it makes him feel a bit sick.
“Red Hood,” Batman growls from where he’d dropped down in front of the mayor. “Stand down, now.”
Instead of responding, Red Hood raises his gun and fires.
Batman sweeps up his cape as he dives out of the way of the bullets, taking the mayor with him.
“Stay here,” Batman says firmly, before leaving her behind the crates.
Dick stays out of sight as the sounds of fighting go on. He shouldn’t have come—he doesn’t even know why he did. Obviously, if Dick could figure it out, Batman would be able to, too. Dick should’ve just left it to him in the first place.
He’s edging toward the wall, looking for somewhere to make his escape, when a shot rings out, followed by a grunt and a thud.
Dick peers around a crate, stomach clenching in unease. Batman is kneeling on the ground, Red Hood standing in front of him, and Dick doesn’t think—he just moves.
“Hey, over here!” he shouts as he runs by, and all heads turn at the sound of his voice, but he’s moving too quickly for Red Hood to aim and fire. He snatches the batarang out of the wall as he runs by, turns, and flings it at Hood’s arm, careful to make sure that it’ll fly clear of Batman and the mayor when Hood dodges.
Red Hood dives away from Batman, as Dick hoped. Dick’s already on the way to meet him, and he vaults up, handspringing off Hood’s shoulders and grabbing Hood’s arm and wrist as he rolls back down, forcing Hood to let go of the gun as he’s thrown over Dick’s shoulder.
It’s not a move that would have worked on Red Hood in the past—he knows too well to always expect Dick to go up and not down like most other people would—but now Dick has the advantage of knowing all of Hood’s tricks, while Hood doesn’t know any of his.
Dick wrenches Red Hood’s arm up behind his back in a pin. “What’s going on, Hood? Kidnapping mayors doesn’t really seem like your thing.”
Red Hood doesn’t say anything—just continues struggling silently—and Dick’s unease at the situation grows. Silent warrior isn’t really any of their shticks except Bruce’s; Jason’s runs along the lines of profane insults and scathing commentary. That he hasn’t said a word at all is worrying.
Dick pays for his moment of distraction when Hood hurls his weight to one side, and Dick has to roll out of the way with a curse to avoid getting pinned himself. He springs up on the balls of his feet and quickly gets back into Hood’s space, throwing a punch that Hood immediately blocks.
For as much time as Jason’s spent away from Gotham, the core of his fighting style is still all Bruce—especially now that they’re in a similar weight class. Dick reacts on reflex to deflect his blows and get in close again to grab his arms in a grapple, over a decade of experience sparring behind every move.
“Never thought I’d say that I miss you sassing me all the time,” Dick grunts as the complete silence from Hood goes on, “but I could really do with one of your bad jokes right now.”
No response, except for Jason trying to hurl him to the ground.
Dick swears. He’s sure this is Jason—he looks like him and moves like him in ways that’d be hard to imitate perfectly. So what could be going on? A drug? Mind control? Something else?
He doesn’t have time to think about it as Hood tries to shove him down again, and Dick follows through with the movement to slide between Hood’s legs and grab his ankles, pulling him off-balance.
Dick huffs, amused despite himself. “You always did fall for that one,” he says under his breath as he wrestles Jason over, pinning his arms behind his back. This time, Hood shouts when he starts to struggle.
“I’ll handle him,” Batman says from behind him.
Dick’s gaze darts down to the hastily-wrapped gunshot wound on Batman’s leg, but he knows better than to comment on it. He climbs off Hood and neatly steps out of the way, just in case they start to brawl, but Hood doesn’t fight when Batman grabs him.
“Hood, I need you to think,” Batman says in a low voice, and Dick decides to leave him to it—better not to get more involved than he already has.
He makes his way over to the mayor. She’s been untied—probably courtesy of Batman—but she’s still leaning against the crate with her hand against her head.
Dick crouches down beside her and says quietly, “Are you all right?”
“Getting there,” she says, rubbing her forehead for a second longer before looking up at him. “Thank you.” She pauses for a moment as she takes him in. “You’re not one of them. A Bat, I mean.”
“No.” Saying it aloud hurts more than he expected it to, and he tries not to let it show in his expression.
The mayor frowns, but she doesn’t appear suspicious. “Who are you, then?”
“My name’s Dick. I’m a friend of Tommy Tevis.”
Her frown deepens, eyes flicking across his form in what he recognizes as a practiced threat assessment. “Sal asked for your help?”
“He asked for Tommy’s help,” Dick says. “I just happened to be there. I’m a medic—he might have called me Nightingale?”
“Blüdhaven’s Florence Nightingale.” The mayor’s stance relaxes, but just slightly. “Maroni’s mentioned you. Though I’d heard you were non-violent,” she adds, gaze flicking over his shoulder to where Batman is still bent over the Red Hood.
“I make an exception for kidnappers,” Dick says with a tight smile. “C’mon, we should get out before—”
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?” Hood yells from across the warehouse, and Dick turns to see that Batman has backed off, and Hood is snarling from a few paces away, dagger in hand.
“The last thing you remember,” Batman says, a cadence to his growl like he’s repeating himself. “It’s important.”
Hood snarls. “Everything’s important with you, you old—” He cuts himself off as his gaze drifts over Batman’s shoulder, landing on Dick and the mayor. “What the hell?” He clutches his head. “What the hell did you do to me?”
“Hood,” Batman snaps.
“Fuck off!”
Dick sees the pellet in Hood’s hand a second before he lobs it, and he turns, pulling the mayor to the ground. “Close your eyes!”
She does as the smoke spreads in the room. He squeezes his eyes shut as the sting hits—usually, he’s protected by his mask. Not anymore.
Batman’s cape swishes beside them and Dick takes a deep breath of the air left in its wake as Batman herds the both of them out of the building.
They emerge coughing, just as Dick hears sirens in the distance. The mayor’s face stiffens, and Dick recalls Tommy’s suspicion that GCPD might have been involved in her kidnapping in the first place.
He turns to Batman. “Do you have anywhere safe she can stay?”
The mayor’s gaze snaps to Dick, frown still on her face.
“Not without attracting attention,” Batman says.
That makes sense. The mayor is a public figure—harder to just hide away than an average civilian, and probably not someone Batman wants with knowledge of his safehouse system.
“Then, can someone stay with her?” There’s no shortage of Bats who may be able to put her at ease in a hotel room somewhere.
Batman stares at him for a second, and Dick realizes belatedly that his questions may have come off as implicit commands. He opens his mouth to apologize, but before he can, Batman says, “There’s no one tonight.” Batman turns to the mayor. “Is there anywhere else you can stay?”
“What happened to Audre?” she says. “My bodyguard. She was in the apartment with me.”
“She was taken to the hospital,” Batman says. Then, with warning in his voice, he adds, “If you’re expecting danger, that’s the first place they’ll look for you.”
The mayor’s eyes dart down the street, in the direction of the fast-approaching sirens.
Dick thinks fast. “The Tevises—”
“Where do you live?” the mayor says, looking directly at Dick.
Dick stares at her. “Um. You’re not asking to stay with me, are you?” He glances at Bruce reflexively for help.
He realizes a second later that Bruce has no reason to help, and less reason to even understand what Dick is asking from him, but Bruce meets his gaze, then turns to the mayor and says, “He’s a civilian. He shouldn’t be involved.”
“He already seems involved to me,” the mayor says, without turning from Dick. “One night. I can make my own way back to Gotham in the morning.”
Dick hesitates, keenly aware that the sirens are close enough that they must have crossed the bridge to the warehouses already.
“Mayor Lin—” Batman says.
“One night,” Dick cuts in. “And I can take you back.”
The relief on the mayor’s face is profound. “Thank you.”
Batman looks between the both of them, lips pressed together in a familiar expression of disapproval, but there isn’t anything he can do about the arrangement now that they’ve both agreed to it.
Batman turns to the mayor and says, “I’ll get in contact with your bodyguard. If anything happens, press this button. Now go.”
“Your leg—” Dick says.
“Will manage.” Batman looks between the both of them, then nods. “Go.”
The volume of the sirens signals they’ve just about run out of time, so Dick doesn’t argue any further. He gestures for the mayor to follow him, and they climb into his ambulance and take off. They pass the squad cars from the GCPD on the way, and none of the officers give them a second glance.
The mayor finally relaxes somewhat, shoulders ticking down from her ears. “So—you said your name was Dick, right? How do you know Tommy Tevis?”
Dick glances at her sideways. She’d trusted him enough to seek safety with him, but she’s still nervous, which is sensible. He’s probably more of a lesser evil in her book, rather than someone she considers completely safe.
“I met his wife first, actually,” Dick says. “Saved her from a mugger and she invited me to family dinner. It all kind of went from there.”
The mayor raises her eyebrows. “Are you some sort of mini-Batman of Bludhaven or something? It would explain why you get along so well with him.”
“Him?” Dick parses that for a second. “You mean Batman? You think I get along well with Batman?”
“He listens to you,” the mayor says, “and you don’t seem scared of him. That seems about as well as anyone can get along with him.”
“You don’t seem all that scared of him, either.”
“We’ve had more than a few run-ins,” the mayor says, seemingly intentionally vague—which makes sense if some of those previous run-ins have been while she was on Maroni business. “How long have you been working with him?”
“We don’t work together. I only just met him tonight.”
The mayor stares at him, guard let down for the first time all night as surprise takes over her expression. “Really? It didn’t seem like that at all.”
Dick laughs incredulously. “I barely spoke five sentences to him.”
“Well, there’s that thing that happens sometimes, where the more two people understand each other, the less they need to say to get their message across,” the mayor says. “That’s why I thought...”
Dick’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. If someone Dick had never even met before in his life could see all that, then Dick can only wonder how much Bruce had seen.
It might be time to leave New Jersey, after all.
“He reminds me of someone I used to know,” Dick says. “It could be that I remind him of someone, too.”
“Could be,” the mayor says doubtfully but thankfully doesn’t push the subject anymore.
They drive for a few blocks in silence before Dick says, “I didn’t catch your name, back there.”
The mayor gives him a bemused look. “You don’t know?” She grimaces immediately after the words leave her mouth. “Wow, that came out way more conceited than I meant. I just thought, since you came to find me...”
“That I’d know?” Dick fills in. “Tommy doesn’t actually tell me all that much about the business. For my own sake, he says.”
“Ah.” She looks at him speculatively. “Well, I’m Melinda—Melinda Lin.”
“Nice to meet you, Melinda,” Dick says, as his mind makes connections. To be closely associated with the Maronis means it’s likely her family is the Gotham Lins—real estate magnates with an open secret of dubious dealings with various crime families. So then—
“How are you related to Maroni?” Dick says.
“Really long story,” Melinda says. “But in summary, my dad was a real piece of shit and Sal felt partly responsible for him.”
Translation: her father was a Maroni but not by name, and after things went south between her parents, Maroni realized the Lins weren’t a family to piss off and dropped Melinda’s father in favor of strengthening ties with her mother’s family.
“I’m sorry you had to grow up with that,” Dick says. “But I hope things are better now.”
Melinda shrugs with one shoulder. “Sal’s family. We may not get along all the time, but at the end of the day, I’m lucky to have someone. It’s more than a lot of others get.”
And that’s a sentiment Dick can’t help but envy.
“It’s not much,” Dick says, showing Melinda into his studio apartment, “but you did invite yourself over, so what you see is what you get.”
Melinda smiles, a little chagrined. “I am sorry to impose, for what it’s worth. It’s hard to find people I can trust lately.”
Dick raises an eyebrow. “Which is why you’re trusting a complete stranger?”
“Who fought off Red Hood, and is on good terms with Batman,” Melinda says, then, before Dick can protest at that adds, “Plus, Tommy Tevis has always seemed like a good guy, if a bit old-fashioned.”
Tommy has also brokered an arms deal with Black Mask, but Dick supposes the definition of good is relative—and it’s not really like he has a leg to stand on, as far as Tommy’s concerned. He’s done some bad things—and is probably currently doing more bad things Dick wouldn’t approve of—but it doesn’t make him a bad person.
From all that Dick’s seen so far, he thinks the same might be true of Melinda.
“I’m just saying that if I were a bad guy—which I’m not—you might be in some trouble right about now,” Dick says as he kicks off his shoes.
Melinda gives him a look, like she thinks his posturing is cute. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I know a bad guy when I see one.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Dick says lightly.
“Trust me, I know,” she says, “but I’m usually a pretty good judge of character, and if you’re actually a bad guy, I’ll eat my shoe.” She holds up the black ballet flat she was wearing.
Dick snorts. “All right, keep your shoes for now. Let me get some fresh sheets and you can take the bed.”
“Really selling the bad guy shtick there,” Melinda says.
“I’m not trying to convince you I’m a bad guy,” Dick says. He sighs. “Forget it. Just—stay here for a minute.”
Dick goes to the closet beside the bathroom and pulls out the second set of bedsheets, along with an extra towel, just in case. He doesn’t really have guests over anymore, but when he went and replaced all his things, he bought a second set of everything out of habit—you never know when something might happen to the first, after all.
Sometimes he wonders what happened to everything from his old apartment, after his “death”. There are some things he hopes Bruce shoved into storage somewhere—a handful of mementos and pictures that he likes to carry around from place to place—but as things are, Dick supposes he’ll never find out.
He takes his load of sheets to the bed. Melinda is standing on the other side of it, studying something on the wall with a serious expression on her face.
Dick’s mind blanks as he rounds the bed, scrambling to recall if he’d left anything out that he shouldn’t have—not that he has much to leave out in the first place. The only really personal thing he has—the thing that Melinda is examining—is the Flying Graysons poster he’d bought on a whim from an online shop. It’s the one thing that seemed safe to keep from his past, and the least depressing, in a sense: his parents, at least, can’t have forgotten him.
“Did you know them?” Melinda says when Dick comes to stand beside her, and he wonders how familiar she is with the case. Zucco was once Maroni’s man, though not at the time he killed Dick’s parents, and Melinda would also have been a child when it happened.
“My parents, actually,” Dick says. It’s not something that can really be proven or disproven, so he’s always felt safe telling the truth about it. Tommy had accepted it with barely a shrug.
Melinda frowns, though—first at him, then back at the poster. Then her hands fly up to clutch her head, startling in its suddenness, and she screams.
“Melinda!” Dick had seen this reaction before, and panicked every time—but he has no idea why he’s seeing it now. Why would Melinda even have memories of him to trigger in the first place?
But he can deal with that later—first, he has to make sure Melinda won’t be hurt by his mistake.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing her wrists and turning her around. “Listen to me for a minute, okay? I need you to focus on what’s here in this room. Can you name three things for me?”
Melinda takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and says, “I’m not having a panic attack.”
“Just making sure,” Dick says lightly, watching her closely for any sign of a relapse. Dick doesn’t know what would happen if he let the mental damage from trying to fight Somnus run its course, but he’s seen the extent of what psychic damage can do in general, and he isn’t willing to take the risk.
The last person he’d triggered was Tommy, after he accidentally made a passing reference to growing up with Bruce that left Tommy thinking a bit too hard about whether or not Bruce had once taken in another kid named Dick Grayson. That time, it’d been easy enough to deflect and distract Tommy to get him to believe he’d misunderstood Dick, since none of the information was from personal experience—this time, Dick isn’t so sure.
He searches for a way to change the topic, but before he can, Melinda turns her gaze toward the poster again and says, “I didn’t know they had other children.”
“I was born on the road so there isn’t any official paperwork, and that’s why I’m not in any of the news,” Dick says, slipping into his practiced story before Melinda’s words catch up to him. “Wait, other children?”
She gives him an unreadable look. “I realize this is about to sound completely insane, but my father—my biological father—was John Grayson.”
Of all the things Dick might have expected her to say, none of them were even in the realm of that. “I’m sorry?”
“My mom and your parents had a... thing,” Melinda says, and laughs almost helplessly at the expression on Dick’s face. “That’s what I thought, too, when she told me. Your parents helped hide her, while she was running away from her husband. She always makes it sound like love at first sight, when she tells it. But, given her... situation... she couldn’t stay without putting the Graysons in danger, so eventually she had to leave—but not before she got pregnant with me.”
It sounds completely unbelievable, but Dick can’t think of a single reason why Melinda would have this lie at the ready for him. There’s no reason to construct a story this elaborate for someone who doesn’t even exist.
Which means, impossibly, that it’s likely to be true—or that she’s likely to believe it’s true, in any case.
“You’re right,” Dick says. “This does sound completely insane.”
“I’m sure you have questions,” she says. “I wish I could answer them, but my mom... she passed away, a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Dick says. He’d suspected, based on the conspicuous lack of mention of her in the car on the way over, but he doesn’t enjoy having that suspicion confirmed.
“I’m sorry,” Melinda says, gesturing to the poster. “You must have been so young.”
“I still miss them,” Dick says, “but it’s been a long time now. And I—” He cuts himself off, suddenly overcome by a wave of sadness. Bruce and Tim and Cass and Damian and the rest of them went a long way to making him feel like he had a home and a family again, and now they’re lost to him forever, too.
“Do you like hugs?” Melinda says, and that’s how Dick finds himself standing in the middle of his living room as the clock strikes midnight, wrapped up in the arms of someone who may or may not be his half-sister, and who most definitely is a mobster’s sort-of-daughter.
Not how he thought he’d be spending his twenty-fifth birthday, at all.
Dick’s cell phone rings on the nightstand, and he pulls himself out of the hug with a brief smile of thanks. It’s not any number Dick recognizes—not even one of Bruce’s burners—but it’s not like he often gets calls at midnight, so he picks it up. “Hello?”
“Hi,” says a wary alto voice. “Is Melinda there?”
Dick frowns and looks at Melinda, who raises her eyebrows in question. “And who’s speaking?”
“This is Audre,” she says, and Dick recalls it as one Melinda mentioned earlier in the night—her bodyguard. “Batman gave me this number, in case you were wondering. Or in case it’s wrong. He said to tell you his leg is fine?”
It seems like a reasonable identity verification phrase, given Bruce wouldn’t expect Dick to know any of the standard Bat ones. “It’s the right number,” Dick says, and passes the phone to Melinda. “It’s Audre.”
Melinda’s expression lights up immediately, and she all but snatches the phone from him. “Audre? Thank god. You scared me—” She lets out a helpless laugh. “I’m fine, really.”
Dick walks away to the other side of the apartment to give her space. It’s not real privacy—they can’t exactly get any of that in his tiny studio—but he can at least give her the illusion of it by not being right next to her as she talks.
He gets the futon ready for sleep, doing his best to tune her out, though a lifetime of training means that he can’t help the way he’s unconsciously keeping an ear out for anything that might set off flags. Nothing about her conversation catches his attention, until he hears her talking about him.
“He’s safe, I promise. No. No, tonight was the first time, but—look, you’ll understand when you meet him. C’mon, even Batman likes him.”
Audre isn’t on speaker, but Dick can still hear her muffled displeasure at that. It’s fair of her. Melinda could definitely stand to be more suspicious of him—but, probably, Dick could stand to be more suspicious of her. He is, to a certain extent—he doubts everything she’s doing in her position as mayor is clean, given her ties to Maroni; and, given her ties to Maroni, he’s certain she has other questionable activities in her past.
But even with that, and even with her insane story about being his half-sister, there’s still something about her that Dick can’t help be drawn to—the same way he was drawn to Tommy, despite knowing his background.
Something that makes him feel like he can still belong.
There’s a bit more discussion—mainly from Audre’s side—before Melinda says, “Okay, you sound like you’re about to pass out on me. Go get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning?”
They say their goodbyes, and Melinda emerges from the other side of the makeshift screen, holding out the phone with an apologetic expression. “Someone’s been calling.”
It vibrates in her hand as she says it, and Dick takes it from her to see Tommy’s number.
He picks it up in front of her—there’s nothing to hide here. “Hi, Tommy.”
He sees Melinda frown slightly at the name, but she otherwise doesn’t react.
“Finally! You all right, kid?” Tommy says, sounding genuinely worried. “I didn’t know where you were, but the cops ended up crashing the area. Heard the Bat showed up and everything.”
“I’m all right, promise,” Dick says. Then, because he knows Tommy’s going to ask, “The mayor’s with me. We were going to head back to Gotham in the morning.”
“You sure?” Tommy says. “One of my boys can take her. Or I’m sure Mr. Maroni would send someone right along—he’s been worried about her all night.”
Dick’s pretty sure Melinda wouldn’t trust any of the men that Tommy or Maroni might send—and without knowing more about the situation and exactly what’s feeding Melinda’s threat assessment, Dick isn’t sure that he trusts them either. “It’s all right. Gotta be in Gotham for something tomorrow anyway, so I can take her with.”
“Always thought you hated that place,” Tommy says, more conversational than suspicious. “Not sure I’ve heard you even mention crossing the bridge since I’ve known you.”
“It’s definitely not my favorite place, but I can handle a quick trip,” Dick says. “She’s safe with me, don’t worry.”
“Never doubted you for a second, kid,” Tommy says. “That being said, mind if I have a chat with her real quick? Not that I don’t trust you, but have to be sure I can check my boxes when I talk to the big man, you understand?”
“Don’t worry, I get it,” Dick says. He lowers the phone. “Tommy wants to talk, if that’s all right.”
Melinda holds her hand out for the phone. “Hi, Mr. Tevis. Not the best night, no, but I’m all right. Yes.” She pauses for a moment, then laughs, quiet and polite. “Don’t worry, I feel very safe with Nightingale. You definitely don’t need to send anyone else. Yes, of course. Thank you. Have a good night, Mr. Tevis.”
She hands the phone back to Dick, but Tommy just seems to want to say goodbye.
“I’ll catch up with you later, kid,” Tommy says, sounding in a marginally better mood than before. “Stay safe, all right?”
“Will do,” Dick says. “Good night, Tommy.”
“You really do get along well,” Melinda says after he’s hung up. “Mobsters and mayors and Batman—is there anyone you don’t get along with?”
“Not sure your bodyguard’s a big fan,” Dick says.
“She thinks I’m too trusting,” Melinda says. “Which I’m not, by the way.”
Dick keeps his expression neutral. “I have no idea why she would accuse you of that.”
Melinda rolls her eyes. “Yeah,” she says. “Trust me, you guys will get along great.”