Chapter Text
Dick doesn’t think. He doesn’t plan. There is absolutely no time for that.
He dumps the contents of Damian’s laundry basket into a duffel bag and sweeps the items on Damian’s shelf in the bathroom into a backpack. He takes two hundred dollars out of the wallet lying on the table in the front hall. He pulls on the baggiest, darkest sweatshirt he can find, and shoves his feet into a pair of sneakers that pinch his toes.
He tries not to get blood on anything in the process. He doesn’t think he succeeds.
He goes back into the living room. Damian is perched on the edge of the couch, exactly where Dick left him. Neither of them look toward the kitchen.
Dick hoists a smile onto his face. It feels strange. He feels strange. Dreamlike.
“Ok, sweetheart,” he says to Damian. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”
They walk out the door into smoky California darkness. Damian looks back at the house, once.
Dick doesn’t look back at all.
+++
Talia had started out sweet.
She’d stepped in as the substitute French teacher halfway through Dick’s last year of high school. She’d been younger than many of the other teachers, and gorgeous. When she spoke French, it sounded like poetry.
For the first few months, it had been a harmless crush, or so Dick had thought. She’d smiled at him a lot, even though he’d been failing the class. She’d stayed after school to help him prepare for the midterm. She’d touched his arm, then the top of his leg, but never anywhere else.
Dick, whose foster parents barely touched either other, let alone any of the children in their care, had savored every bit of human contact he received. She had never let it go any farther, though. He’d felt safe with her. Believed that she wanted the best for him.
The school year had ended. Dick had graduated. His foster family hadn’t even come to the graduation ceremony – go figure – but Talia had taken him out to celebrate. She bought him a martini, even though he was still only seventeen. She told him that he was destined for great things. He leaned over and kissed her and thought that he was being very forward, very bold. She kissed him back, her hands twisting in his hair.
+++
At the bus station, Dick buys two one-way tickets for the next bus out. That leaves them with a little over one hundred dollars and thirty minutes to spare. He takes a deep breath, fighting down panic, and steers Damian towards the convenience store tucked into the corner of the bus station.
“Pick two,” he urges, nodding toward a rack of baseball caps, and leaves Damian perusing the options while Dick picks up a bag of trail mix, a bottle of pain meds, and a small first aid kit. Damian comes over with two hats and solemnly hands one to Dick. It’s black, with the outline of a dark blue bird stamped across it for some sports team Dick doesn’t know. Damian keeps the green one with a wolf on it for himself. They pay at the register. Damian doesn’t have to be told to put on the cap and pull it low over his eyes.
They go into the family bathroom, which is a single room with a door that locks, instead of the rows of stalls in the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Dick lowers himself onto the covered toilet and bites back a groan.
“Let me see, Richard,” Damian says, and Dick grits his teeth. He carefully raises the hem of his sweatshirt.
The kitchen towel taped onto the side of his torso had been white. It’s red now, saturated with blood, although thankfully the blood is mostly dark at this point. There’s only a bit of bright red when he unwinds the tape and the towel falls away. Dick lets out a shaky breath, looking down at his side. She’d clearly been aiming for his stomach. If she’d had another chance –
As it is, he feels like a slab of meat that’s had a bit cut away. The wound is shallow, though, and not as wide as it could be.
“Tt.” Damian clicks his teeth as he reaches for the medical kit, and Dick is hit with a wave of agony that has nothing to do with the pain. No seven-year-old should be this unfazed when they see a caretaker bleeding. No seven-year-old should know exactly what to reach for in the medical kit to disinfect and bandage a wound.
“I’ve got it, Dami,” he says quietly, but Damian shoots him a look.
“I do not want you to get an infection,” he says sharply. “I will do it.”
Dick subsides, grimacing, but he watches Damian closely as the kid cleans the cut thoroughly and starts to disinfect it. Dick lets him do as much as he can before the shaking in Damian’s hands clearly starts to overwhelm him.
“I can finish up,” Dick says, quiet but firm, and Damian steps back, his head snapping up and his hands clasping behind his back. In the next moment, he softens, shooting Dick another look. This one is wary, a little embarrassed. Dick just smiles at him tiredly.
“Long night,” he says, and Damian nods, once. They don’t say anything else as Dick finishes bandaging the wound and tucks the med kit into the backpack.
He takes two of the pills for pain and tucks the rest of those away, too. They get to the bus with five minutes to spare.
+++
Dick had moved out of his foster placement the week before he turned eighteen. His foster parents hadn’t cared. His social worker had never reappeared. Talia said she had sorted everything out and that Dick wouldn’t need to worry about anything ever again. Dick had moved across the country with her. Haly’s Circus had been heading to California, nine years ago. It had felt like a sign. Like his parents were giving him their blessing.
The first night, he’d unpacked his belongings into a gorgeous, expensive-looking wood dresser in a huge mansion. Transferred what little money he’d saved from part-time jobs into a joint account so Talia’s personal money manager could take care of it.
Met Talia’s two-year-old son.
By the time Dick had looked up and realized he hadn’t been allowed out of the house in almost a year, Damian was three and running into Dick’s arms with the brightest smile Dick had ever seen.
By the time Dick started going to bed with bruises every night, instead of just some nights, Damian was four and learning how to apply bandages to that hard-to-reach spot on Dick’s back.
By the time Dick was healing from his third broken ankle in six months, Damian was five and knew exactly where to go to stay out of the way when Mother was angry.
Dick had to hand it to Talia: loving Damian was the most effective trap of all.
+++
Dick feels a little breathless thinking about how quickly their money is disappearing as he buys Damian a breakfast sandwich from a fast food restaurant next to the bus station in Flagstaff and considers their next move. He ends up going up to the restaurant counter and asking about hotels that rent by the hour, which is humiliating but effective. He’s decided that they’re going to try to travel only at night and lay low during the days, though, and he’d rather not pay for a whole night at a hotel that they’re not going to use.
The bemused cashier directs them to a dingy motel a few blocks away. Dick feels like his skin is prickling as he hustles Damian out the door. Every movement that he glimpses from the corner of his eyes has him controlling a flinch. Damian slips his small hand into Dick’s bigger one, which helps a little, until Dick looks down and sees Damian’s worried frown looking back at him. Then he just feels bad for making Damian worry.
“You excited to get to our hotel, sweetheart?” he asks, in an effort to keep them both calm.
Damian thinks about the question, like he always does, then nods solemnly.
“I have never been to a hotel before,” he says, as if Dick doesn’t know this, as if Dick hasn’t been with him every day of his life since he was two years old. “I am intrigued, but also slightly anxious at the proposition.”
His overly-formal wording would sound odd coming from any other seven-year-old. It probably sounds odd coming from this seven-year-old to anyone who’s not Dick, but Dick is used to it. Dick thinks it’s adorable, frankly. Dick also hates it, hates where it comes from.
“Do not mumble.”
Talia’s voice was like the lash of a whip.
“You sound like an idiot. If you cannot speak properly, do not speak at all.”
Dick wonders if Damian would measure his words regardless. He’s a thoughtful, careful child who takes things seriously and considers ideas from all angles.
Dick hates that he’ll never know exactly how much of this is Talia’s doing, and how much of it is just Damian.
They reach the hotel and Dick pays for the cheapest room until 7 pm. It’s too much. Next time, they’ll have to find somewhere else to hang out for most of the day, somewhere like a library, where Dick can tuck Damian into a corner and make sure no one gets near him.
Right now, though, Dick thinks they could both use a break. As soon as they’re alone, he locks the doorknob, flips the deadbolt home, and slides the small chain into its locked position. Damian is already seated primly on the single twin bed, toeing off his shoes. Dick opens the duffle bag and takes out Damian’s toothbrush and toothpaste, his green flannel pajamas, and the mouth guard he uses when he sleeps to keep his teeth from grinding together. Dick lays these things on the bed and Damian picks them up without comment and shuts himself into the bathroom. After a moment, Dick can hear the shower turn on.
Only then does Dick let himself sit down on the bed. He props a pillow against the wall behind him – there’s no headboard – and leans back against it, stretching his legs out in front of him. There’s a small TV on the opposite wall. Dick picks up the remote. He doesn’t turn on the TV, though. Just sits, staring straight ahead, turning the remote over and over in his hands.
+++
Dick hadn’t noticed, that first night in California, that each of the dresser drawers into which he’d unpacked his clothes had a small key hole at the top.
He’d thought it was a little exciting when she’d shown him the next day.
Just a little game I thought we could play, she’d said in her smooth, gorgeous voice. Be a good boy and you can earn clothes. Be a bad boy...
She’d trailed off, her grin turning wicked. He’d laughed and kissed her deeply, heat pooling in his groin. They’d had a lot of sex, in the early days. He’d even initiated it, sometimes.
And it wasn’t like he hadn’t had anything to wear. She gave him a pair of exquisitely soft boxer shorts that hugged his ass and made him feel incredibly sexy. There was a pair of silky-soft lounge pants that he wore whenever he was around Damian, which was pretty much every day during the day, if Talia was at work and if she hadn’t given him other things to do. When it got cold, she let him open the drawer that held his outerwear and pick out one sweatshirt of his choice, which felt incredibly generous.
It was all very exciting, really, and different, and adult. And there was also Damian, who was adorable and cuddly and laughed when Dick made funny faces at him.
All told, the restrictions and the discipline and the sex had been mostly pretty exciting for about five months.
The excitement hadn’t lasted, but the restrictions and the discipline – and the sex – had.
+++
They fall into a routine, of sorts. Traveling at night, staying out of sight during the day as much as they can. They need money, though. Dick takes odd jobs that pay in cash whenever he can find them, unloading shipping containers in Albuquerque and acting as an extra pair of hands for an event by small catering company in Wichita. He gives fake names each time, apologizes for forgetting his ID card at home, flashes his smile as much as he needs to make it work. They get the cheapest bus fares on offer and ride passenger trains without tickets more often than Dick would prefer, his heart in his throat the entire time.
Dick gets on his knees for the first time somewhere in Oklahoma. After that he keeps doing it. Not all the time, not everywhere, but it gets them tickets a few times when they don't have any other options, gets them food a few times when they really need it. Dick only does it when they've already booked a hotel room where Damian can wait behind a locked door. It's familiar, in a terrible kind of way. Damian watches him closely every time he comes back, green eyes wide. Dick lies, tells him it was another catering job, or a delivery gig, but they both know Damian doesn't buy it. They both know Dick would have let Damian come with him, otherwise.
Damian checks Dick for bruises every time, and Dick lets him. It's an old routine of theirs, and at least now, there aren't usually any to find. That means this is better.
That has to meant that this is better.
Exactly three months after their escape, they make it to Memphis. It feels big enough for anonymity, and far enough from California that Dick feels safe finding a slightly steadier job. He ends up working at a dingy café on the edge of town, getting paid under the table in cash. They rent the spare room of Ms. Morrel, a kindly older woman. She takes an instant liking to Damian, which endears her to Dick immediately. Dick starts thinking about what it would take to get Damian back into school safely.
Then, one afternoon, two men come into the café. They look innocuous enough at first: rough workman’s jackets, baseball caps pulled low over their eyes, sturdy boots.
One of them takes off his baseball cap halfway through their meal. Rubs a hand through close-cropped hair that is far neater and cleaner-cut than the average trucker or construction worker.
Dick walks out the back door of the café, grabs Damian from his perch in the kitchen, and buys two one-way tickets on the next bus out of town. Ms. Morrel isn’t home when they stop to grab their two bags, and Dick doesn’t leave a note. He hopes she won’t worry too much.
Two nights later, Damian is flicking through TV channels in a grimy hotel room somewhere in Mississippi.
“Tennessee woman found dead in her Memphis home,” intones a solemn, blonde news anchor. “Local law enforcement officials say the only clue of foul play is what seemed to be the guest room, which was completely torn apart. No suspects at this time, but – ”
“Turn that off, Dami,” Dick says sharply. Damian turns it off immediately, and Dick feels terrible. The way that Damian follows orders from adults without question makes Dick’s stomach turn.
Dick orders them a pizza that night, as an apology and a distraction. Damian eats his two slices in small, neat bites, his face the polite, blank mask that means he is anxious about something. He doesn’t even roll his eyes when Dick uses a pizza crust as a makeshift moustache and talks to him in an extremely overblown French accent, which is usually a slam dunk on the Damian eye-rolling front.
“Richard,” he says that night, low.
“What, love?” Dick says blearily, curled around Damian in the single hotel bed and already half-asleep.
“She helped us,” Damian says quietly. “And now she’s dead.”
Dick – suddenly very much awake – doesn’t known what to say to that. What can he say to that? To this child, who has already seen far too much?
“Ms. Morrel was a very kind woman,” Dick says finally, voice breaking despite himself. “We’ll remember her forever, ok?”
“Ok,” Damian says softly.
He curls his small body into Dick, then, which is rare enough these days that it makes Dick’s breath catch in his chest. Neither of them says anything else, but Dick knows it takes both of them a long, long time to get to sleep that night.
+++
“Who’s Damian’s father?” Dick had asked one night, early on, early enough that Talia would still sometimes answer his questions instead of hitting him or locking him away from Damian for days.
“No one, beloved,” Talia had replied, her smile lazy and warm. “No one that need concern you.”
Dick had wished many times, in the years that followed, that he had pressed, even as he also knew it wouldn’t have done any good.
+++
Damian loses his first tooth in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“Put it under your pillow,” Dick says, grinning. “Maybe the Tooth Fairy will come.”
Damian looks up at him scornfully. “I am aware that the Tooth Fairy is a myth, Richard,” he says disapprovingly. He’s holding his tooth in his hands, exquisitely careful. “And anyway, I do not have a pillow at this time.”
Dick has gotten good at having panic attacks quietly – while Damian is sleeping, or looking out bus windows, or focusing on his food – but he can’t hide this one. Damian has to talk him through it, his small hand on Dick’s back, until Dick can breathe again, which makes Dick feel even worse.
I’m failing him, Dick thinks that night, not for the first time. Dick isn’t sure what happens to the tooth, but Damian doesn’t mention it again.
+++
Talia had never told Dick what, exactly, it was that her father did. Business, she’d said once, her words as sharp as her rings. Stop asking questions. Ungrateful whore.
Dick had met Ra’s only once, at a gala: one of the only one’s he’d been allowed to attend, with Talia’s hand on his arm and whispered threats of what she would do to him if he tried to run in his ears. Ra’s was the host, dressed in a deep red suit that would probably have looked tacky on anyone else.
It made him look sleek. Dangerous. The way his eyes had followed Dick through the crowded hall hadn’t helped. There had been men in dark shirts with ear pieces spaced around the room. Dick had chatted with other guests, topped off Talia’s drink any time it got too low, and laughed at all the right places during the toast.
Ra’s had brought Damian up to stand beside him at the end of the toast. My grandson, he’d said, voice low and cool and, somehow, still carrying to the back corners of the room without a problem. My heir. His hand on Damian’s shoulder had looked paternal. Caring.
That night, as Dick had tucked Damian into bed, the five-year-old had flinched back from Dick’s customary good-night kiss. Dick had drawn back immediately, retracting his hand, looking frantically for the source of Damian’s discomfort until he he’d realized.
Dick had been leaning, very slightly, on the same shoulder that Ra’s had been holding.
He’d gotten Damian an ice pack for the bruises. Then he’d held Damian gently, rocking him back and forth and singing softly, until Damian had finally drifted into sleep and Talia’s heels had clicked down the hallway toward her room, calling Dick to his other set of duties.
+++
They run out of money completely somewhere in Georgia.
Dick hasn’t landed any odd jobs in nearly two weeks. He also hasn’t eaten a full meal in over a week, and they haven’t spent the money on a hotel room in almost a month, instead spending their days in libraries or parks. Still, Dick hands over the last dollar bills that he’d saved from Memphis for a Happy Meal for Damian, desperation pounding in his chest. He’s already seen men in dark suits walking down the street outside the bus station when they’d pulled in, and had only avoided them thanks to a large group of college students who had been disembarking at the same time. He knows they can’t stay here. They can’t hitchhike, either. Ms. Morrel’s face floats in his mind.
They can’t go to the police. Dick is a kidnapper.
That evening, Dick teaches Damian how to hop trains.
That night, Damian falls asleep with his head on Dick’s lap and his feet tucked against a crate of grain as Dick stares into the inky, rumbling blackness and tries to remember how to breathe.
+++
Dick should have known it wouldn’t work. His plans had never once worked.
That evening, though, Talia had hit Damian for the first time – actually hit him, instead of just yelling at him or shaking him or locking him in his room – and it felt like a line had been crossed. So Dick had tried again.
“He’s only seven years old,” Dick had whispered frantically to the police officer on the other end of the phone. “I’m afraid, she’s never hit him before but she just did, I’m afraid it’s going to escalate and that he won’t be safe here anymore, he’s just a kid, please, you have to help him.”
“Thank you for the tip, sir,” the officer had said calmly. “We’ll send someone right over.”
Dick had hung up the kitchen landline, his hands shaking. Then he’d just stood there, frozen. Time slipped and slid around him. It had been doing that a lot, the past few years.
Her voice knocked him back to consciousness, as it often did.
“You thought you could report me?” she’d asked, amused. “In my own house?”
“They’re on their way,” he’d said, voice shaking nearly as badly as his hands. “You can do whatever you want to me, but they’ll come and take Damian away and you’ll never be able to hurt him again.”
Talia had laughed: a rich, warm sound, a sound that Dick had fallen in love with. “Beloved,” she’d said sweetly. “The man you spoke with? He called me, told me someone was trying to prank me.” Her smile turned predatory. “Honey, we own these police. No one’s coming.”
She’d advanced on him, her smile turning predatory. “No one will ever come for you.”
It might have continued, then, just like it always had, if it hadn’t been for Damian. Damian’s face at the kitchen door, Damian’s small, frightened voice. “Richard?”
“Please,” Dick had gasped, pinned under her. “Not – not in front of –”
Talia had choked him, Dick gasping for breath.
“Damian, hand me that knife,” she’d said, and Dick could just barely hear her over the ringing in his ears. He saw a shadow move – Damian, holding a knife – and then Talia was holding the knife. Dick heaved himself to the right as much as he could under her hands, but then there was a pain unlike anything Dick had ever felt before –
And then he could breathe again, and Damian’s small, frightened face was swimming in front of his eyes, Talia was sprawled on the floor, her eyes were closed but she was breathing, she looked unconscious, why was Damian holding the big cutting board, why was Damian’s mouth moving without making any sounds, why was the pain a living thing, licking up his torso like flames, why was the world going dark –
The world hadn’t gone completely dark, though. Damian was afraid, so Dick had to keep it together.
Damian had brought him the tape and the towel. Dick had gotten them both into the living room.
“Please, stay here for a minute,” he’d said to Damian, his voice cracking.
Then he’d done what he should have done years ago.
He takes Damian and runs.
+++
The only train leaving the tiny Maryland town that evening is a passenger train. The conductor realizes they don’t have tickets halfway to Boston and kicks them off at the next stop.
It’s raining, because of course it is. Dick hustles Damian off the dripping platform without even looking at the sign showing where they are.
He doesn’t realize they’re in Gotham until they’re in the station hall, and no more trains or buses are leaving that day because it’s Sunday, and it’s altogether too late.