Work Text:
In the end, it shouldn’t have surprised him that his final breath ended with the crunch-smash impact of his spinal column connecting with the pavement below.
That was how the story always closed with Graysons, wasn’t it? Icarus in all ways that truly mattered, they never learned from their pasts. They had to keep aiming higher and higher until something snapped and they came plummeting down. Dick’s parents weren’t fortunate enough to be met with the corded net drawing taut around their shoulders, and neither was he.
There was a woman at Haly’s that used to press Dick’s eyelids shut as her pungent candles flickered in her tent. Fortune-teller was what the tourists called her, but she just shook her head at the title. She was merely the one who read the cards. She’d humor Dick, letting him scrunch up his nose as he carefully picked through each of her offerings before settling on his choice. She’d never let him know what laid ahead of him, though. Only smiled this way or shook her head that way, slipping the card to his parents when they thought he wasn’t looking.
So yeah. Dick should’ve known that when it all came down to it, when the too-small rooftop swelled with shuffling bodies and every strike was followed by a retaliatory one, when he conceded that backup was necessary at the exact moment that one hired gun got a lucky hit in, when his world spun as he stumbled over his own feet, unbalanced, unsteady, everything his Bruce had taught him not to be, everything his parents had warned him again, don’t stay stagnant, don’t ever stop growing, be better, do better –
He’d trip.
Over a ledge that stuck out just so, he windmilled. He locked eyes with the man who’d done the deed in, mouth hanging open as the reality of landing an attack on Nightwing sank in. Momentum carrying him forward – backward, actually – he struggled despite himself as gravity hooked its claws on him, his enemy since the very beginning, dragging him down.
Off the roof. Past the twenty-third floor, and the twenty-second. Past the LED billboard advertising Bat Burger’s new Deadshot Deluxe meal. Past Red Robin hanging from the apartment building’s fire escape on the opposite side of the street, fumbling for a grappling hook that ultimately didn’t have the reach it’d need. Past the awnings. Past the storefront windows. Past the door, the door –
Splat.
There was no better word for it. When Dick collided with the concrete, collarbone making first impact, he felt his bones and muscles instantly fuse together. They shattered as one semi-solid mass as Dick’s skull instantly bent under the force of his own weight. He couldn’t even tell if he screamed, hearing cutting out for one quick instant, like hitting the mute button.
“Nightwing!” screamed someone. Red Robin. Tim. Tim, shit, Tim. Witness to three Graysons rising only to fall just as quickly, he didn’t deserve it. Lungs barely able to expand enough to be truly functional, Dick twitched, trying to get up, if only for Tim’s sake.
It didn’t work. Before the motion really started, Dick deflated. He hacked out something thick and bloody and far too large. He couldn’t see anything, he realized. When had that happened? He should’ve – He should’ve – should’ve noticed. Noticed the change. Why had things changed? He didn’t like that. Neither did Bruce. It was why they’d argued so much in Dick’s teenage years, both of them terrified at the prospect of unexplored territory. Dick didn’t know how to grow up, only that he had to, and Bruce didn’t know how to let him.
He wanted to see Bruce. Wanted to see anyone, really. He could feel frantic hands patting his skin, pushing down on this wound and that, but there were just so many. Too many to count. But Dick could try, if Tim really wanted him to. Or if Bruce did. That was what mattered in the end, wasn’t it? That endless approval that he’d spent years chasing. He didn’t want it anymore, he didn’t. He hadn’t, at least. Hadn’t he?
Hadn’t he? Hadn’t – shit, he couldn’t breathe.
“Hold on,” someone hissed. “Dick, hold on. Help is on the way, just – hold on, please.”
Dick held on. And held on. Kept his grip tight, knuckles turning weight as the intangible corporeality bucked in his hands, held on, held on, held on, until it slipped out from between his fingers and he was left panting, wheezing even through the distinct lack of air.
He should’ve known. He’d known when he was a child, head full of clouds and skies full of love. He’d known, deep down, as he should know, as his adult self should – any fate other than this just wasn’t in the cards for him.
Dick was born to fly. He was born to fall, too. No one ever mentioned that part.
“Dick!”
When Dick was a child, Bruce had always forbidden Robin from going out when Rogues like Scarecrow or Poison Ivy were at large. He didn’t want to stunt Dick’s growing brain, he said. Later, Dick learned that Bruce had wanted to shield him from the terrors that Gotham brewed in-house, at least a little bit.
Pollen. Venom. Toxin. Dick remembered poking his head out of the Batcave’s elevator as Alfred tended to a writhing Batman who screamed bloody murder at the antidote brewing in the centrifuge. Bruce, he came to learn, always woke up swinging. The moment he sensed anything to be amiss, his fight or flight instinct would kick in. Never let it be said that Gotham’s Dark Knight failed to pack a punch.
Dick, on the other hand, woke up thrashing.
It was in his lungs. He couldn’t make out the space two inches from his own face, yet he flailed all the same. The water was as murky as it was thick. His limbs were heavy enough that he half-expected weights to be tied to them. The surface wasn’t far away, but each attempt at reaching it only made him sink further down.
His heartbeat was loud enough that he felt it pulse in his ears. It’d never been this fast, quick step like a drumbeat. It was inhuman. It couldn’t – He couldn’t – He gagged, only for more water to sneak in. Unable to truly process anything, he clawed at his own throat. He needed it out, out, out. It was bad.
Unprompted, he jerked forward. Something around his chest tightened, a corded harness of some sorts. It dragged him face-first out of the depths, kicking and screaming. Because he was. Kicking and screaming, that was. He felt like Bruce on those awful early days, heart full of such unending confusion that it made him sick.
His knees connected with the mosaic tile with a crack that made him howl. Fingers brushed over him, fiddling with the harness. He wanted to shove them away, but he didn’t have the energy to. He just kept crying and crying, wailing for reasons not even he knew.
His skin felt raw. Every little graze against it made him shriek with baseless pain. The world was too bright, too loud, too much. It hadn’t always been like this, had it? How had it always been like this?
With a sob, he was pulled forward, into a kevlar suit more familiar than his own bones. Arms wrapped around him, confining and comforting in the same breath. “You’re okay,” someone shushed. “I know, I know. But you’re okay. You’re alright.”
Dick was not alright. Dick was very much not fucking alright.
What had – How had he gotten here? He’d been on – on patrol? With Tim. Tim. Tim, whose eyes were wide even behind the domino. They’d always been like that. Since before he was Red Robin, since before he’d ever seen the Batcave, since he’d been at the circus, the circus, they all knew what happened at the circus before the strongmen and ventriloquists took their final bow. Dick had taken his final bow. Lowered himself closer and closer to the ground until that was all there was.
Footsteps pounded against the floor, noisy enough that Dick buried his face into Bruce’s chest with a wince. Make it stop. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Bruce tensed. It was small, imperceptible enough that most wouldn’t pick it up. Dick saw it coming a mile away. “You’re supposed to be taking down a smuggling ring in Tricorner.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly where you want me, isn’t it?” The voice was calm, deceptively slow. Then it flipped on a dime, transforming into a cracking scream. “‘Cause if I was there, I wouldn’t have to see you put my brother in the fucking Pit!”
Pit. The Pit. The Lazarus Pit, noxious and intoxicating and everything Dick had spent years trying to forget, even as Jason showed up on his doorstep, unprompted, near tears, needing someone, anyone, to listen to his butchered, incomplete descriptions on what it was like to live drowning.
It melts you, he’d said once, wrapped in a blanket Dick didn’t remember owning. Brings you to your bare parts and builds you back up in a new form, again and again, until you forget that you ever used to be anything else. But it’s so cold, at the same time.
Dick didn’t feel cold or hot or angry or insane. He – didn’t feel anything, despite the heaving cries that choked him even now.
“Hood, stand down.”
“Fuck you. You don’t get to tell me that, not now. Not after you pulled shit like this.”
“I followed the contingency plans.”
“He didn’t want this. You read his will. He never asked for this.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“That’s not your choice to make!”
Dick shut his eyes tight. He remembered Damian crawling up next to him on the couch, quietly asking Dick to promise to never, ever dunk him in the Pit. Not even if it was the only choice. He remembered Cass’s dead-eyed stare as she conveyed in no uncertain terms that she’d rather see it destroyed than approach it at all.
This was the same as those house-shaking arguments he’d have with Bruce way back when. Bruce, at the end of the day, never understood how to let go. Whether it was about a case or one of his goddamn children, he just couldn’t loosen his grip from that suffocating hold. He’d hold on, listening to Tim’s requests as his chest swelled. He was always so devoted to his mission. Failure, loss, they just weren’t options.
Dick pushed away from Bruce. Bruce protested, clutched tight as always, but Dick kept fighting until he was released. He tumbled onto the ground, hands against the title, breathing heavy. Though it felt like his body weighed thousands of pounds, he raised his head Hood’s way. He couldn’t voice the thoughts into syllables, but one moment of eye contact between him and his brother was enough to bring Jason kneeling in front of him.
Dick raised his arms. Jason picked up on the rest of it, bringing him in a close in a hug they hadn’t shared for fuck knew how long. Dick’s chin was brought to rest on Jason’s shoulder. It was – nice, considering the situation. Dick hadn’t thought he’d ever get to have this again. That didn’t mean he was satisfied, though.
“Don’t let me hurt them,” he whispered into Jason’s ear.
Jason stiffened. He understood. Jason always understood when it came to the Pit. He was such a smart kid. It was honestly a tragedy that no one had ever told him that until it was far too late for him to believe them. Give him ten minutes and a library, and he’d come out with the keys to the goddamn kingdom.
He nodded, once. Dick returned the motion. Then he let his eyes flutter shut, the room growing dim in the edges of his vision.
“Tongue out, please. Say ah?”
Dick obeyed, even though he’d been sitting through Tim’s medical examination long enough for his ass to go numb. Why they always needed to stay parked on one of the Cave’s many cots during these things, he never understood. It wasn’t like he was in danger of fainting, anyway. Not again, at least.
Tim pulled the depressor out. He frowned, thoughtfully, before scribbling something down onto his clipboard, as if he had any sort of medical degree. If any of them seriously pursued med school, Dick thought dully, Bruce would probably cry. They’d be proud tears, but he wouldn’t be able to attend their graduation without losing it.
He’d never said a damn word when Dick completed the police academy. Not like that was something to feel accomplished in. With the kind of people who walked the streets with a badge and a gun these days, it was harder to fail the course than pass it.
Dick should be angry about that. He knew that he had been, in the past. Spitting mad, that’d been the subject of at least half a dozen of his house-shaking fights with B. But now, every breath weighing heavy in his chest, he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck. Bruce’s approval was something he’d always been desperate to earn, but actually gaining it was something he rarely accomplished. It didn’t matter, not when it was so pointless.
“What’s twelve times twenty one?” Tim asked.
Dick barely had to think about it. “Two fifty-two.”
“Tell me the months backwards?” By the time Dick finished with January, Tim already had another prompt at the ready. “When was the last time you dealt with Freeze?”
He paused for a moment, looking back. “February. He made a stupid joke about six more weeks of winter, and Jason nearly gave himself whiplash freaking out that Calendar Man was gonna show up.”
Sprawled on another cot for no particular reason, Jason wrinkled his nose. “I owed him thirty bucks, and my ass was not about to pay up.”
“Give me three books you’ve read recently.”
“Harley’s newest biography, the first of the Princess Diaries, and Bruce’s novel-sized list of Watchtower protocol updates.”
“Capitol of Georgia?”
“State or country?”
Tim raised an eyebrow. “Technically, they’re both states.”
Jason scoffed, hurling a roll of bandages Tim’s way. Tim ducked the projectile without looking away from Dick. “Ugh, I forgot you got a 5 on your AP human geography exam, you little dweeb.”
“You’re ruining the psych eval, Hood. Quit it.”
“If this is a psych eval, then Alfred’s next in line for the Genovian throne.” Jason sat up from the cot, hopping off and coming closer to Dick’s own personal bubble. He flicked Dick in the forehead, so Dick aimed a kick at his shins. “He knows his ABCs, Replacement. Move on with your life, or we’ll end up spending the rest of our lives down here.”
Tim just rolled his eyes. He’d never done that when he was younger. Dick had always privately thought that he’d been too scared of rocking the boat in those months when he was more than a guest but didn’t treat his room as anything but space for a spare bed. Had he been scared of being sent back home the way Dick had been? ‘Cept the difference was that home for Dick didn’t exist. Gotham didn’t give two shits about its orphans, and they sure as well weren’t willing to shell out the money to ship him overseas back to Haley’s.
He remembered crying softly to himself at night, too terrified of setting off the great Batman, fearing being considered too much of a hassle. As capable as he was of holding his own, he’d loathed the possibility of going back to juvie. That hellhole had made his heart feel dirty just like the space underneath his fingernails.
It was weird. That worry remained with him to this day, rearing its ugly head whenever he and B had a particularly bad bitchfight. Usually, it piqued whenever he remembered those early days in the Manor. But not now. Now, he just probed the memory with an almost curious sense of apathy. Whatever anxiety he’d had previously, it stayed so weirdly disconnected from him, until he hardly believed it was his anymore. It reminded him of ghosting his hand over the stove, waiting for the burn. Alfred had been so sad the few times he’d caught Dick doing that.
Dick jolted. The muscles in his hands he didn’t remember clenching untensed as he instinctually caught the plastic toy Tim had tossed this way. He blinked, uncomprehending for a second, at the scrambled Rubix Cube sitting in his lap.
“Solve that,” was all Tim said. Then he ducked behind a storage cabinet, mumbling underneath his breath as he looked around for something.
Dick’s fingers were flying across the dyed surface without him making much of an effort. Wally had been obsessed with these things as a kid. He kept saying he was going to go to nationals, be one of those kids who solved them in three seconds flat. Barry had almost let him do it, even, before Iris had talked some sense into him.
“You’re good at that,” muttered Jason a second later, when the yellow side came together. “You like doing those?”
Dick just shrugged. At the moment, he didn’t much like doing anything. He was tired. Really tired, actually. Had Tim mentioned how much longer this was going to take? Dick was tempted to just toss the cube over his shoulder and go to sleep, regardless of how scratchy the cot’s sheets were compared to the Manor’s million-count blankets.
Jason took a seat next to him. Both of them were far too large to fit onto the same itty-bitty mattress and rickety support system, but Dick definitely wasn’t willing to let his little brother take his spot, so he stayed parked right where he was. Shoulder-to-shoulder with each other, when Jason sighed, Dick was able to feel the motion instantly.
“You bought me one of those when I was a kid,” Jason said, unprompted.
Dick twisted the green side a full three hundred and sixty degrees counterclockwise for no real reason other than to spark sensation in his hands. “You’re still a kid.”
“I’m old enough to vote.”
“Just a wee babe.”
“Whatever.” Jason rolled his eyes. “Do you remember that, though?”
“Nope.” Dick didn’t otherwise comment as Jason paused, visibly recalculating. Then, dryly, he added, “Let me guess, it was after I nearly tore Bruce a new one during our blow-outs?” He knew he’d done as much before, promising Jason to take him train surfing or stick around for dinner if only to quell that guilty pit in his stomach.
Jason fixed him with a rather odd look, one that Dick couldn’t bother deciphering. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, would you look at that.”
He sighed. “It wasn’t a post-brawl bribe, or birthday gift, or anything like that. You just – showed up one day in the Manor. I think you needed to drop off a tox report in the Cave or something, I dunno. But you stopped by me in the dining room while I was doing my homework and handed it to me. Fresh out of the box.”
Dick tried to think back on that. He could make out the faint impression if he really pushed. Passing by the plastic packaged toy on a shelf, hesitating as an idea came to mind. It hadn’t been hard to get it. He’d even considered mailing it to Central City, for old time’s sake. But he’d hopped on his bike and delved back in the city, armed with a manilla folder whose contents could have easily been emailed over.
“You said that you saw it and thought of me,” said Jason. He looked down at his palms. In that moment, he reminded Dick of that young, bona fide kid he used to be. “It was the first time you didn’t act like a complete and total dick to me. It was weird, but you know. Nice.”
Dick swallowed. He tried to dislodge the tight, sticky feeling in his throat. “I think I won that in a bullshit raffle at the station. There was a half-off sticker I peeled back before I left Blud. It was orange.”
Jason blinked. That too-young, too-soft quality to him faded as he deflated into something harsh and sharp and familiar, Dick’s brother in ways that the previous version just wasn’t. “Oh. You – never told me that before.”
“Yeah. ‘s pretty shitty of me, huh?”
“You’re acting weird,” piped up Tim from behind Dick. Dick snapped his head toward the new voice. Shit, when had Tim gotten there? “You passed your psych eval but you clearly aren’t behaving normally.”
Dick just shrugged, no real response at the ready. “Oh. Weird.”
At that, Tim gave him a long, hard stare. Genius since long before he got his hands on a domino, he looked at Dick like he was some sort of puzzle missing its pieces. Like a rubix cube plastered with smudges of glue that foretold past meddling, because people never really knew how to leave things be. “You’re not – mad? Angry? Upset?”
“Those are more or less synonyms, Timmy, and I can’t say I am.”
His eyes flashed. In a quick motion, he set down the clipboard on a side table with enough force to send the set of surgical stools rattling. Hmm. Maybe he should be the one getting poked and prodded in the old noggin. “Then what are you, Dick? Because as much as you’ve always pretended to be, you’re not fine.”
That part was true, at the very least. Dick was not, in fact, fine. He hadn’t been in a long time. Since before his city came crashing down in a tumultuous tumble that still left him shaking to think back on. Since before the Titans or the trouble that came with them, and the uniforms, and the smoggy musk that’d hung overhead in Gotham even before the very first time he stepped foot within the town limits.
When he was young, he used to take forbidden peeks at the great big sun hanging above, despite his burning eyes. The performers would chide him and threaten to snitch on his parents, though Dick never knew if they actually followed through. He didn’t get the problem. All he wanted to do was see what hid behind that overwhelming glow. He never did manage to figure it out.
Dick blinked, slowly. “I’m tired. I’ve been tired for a while.”
And with that, he slid off the cot, onto his feet. No one said anything as he climbed the steps back up to the Manor. Eyes heavy, he found his way into one of the million guest rooms he remembered hiding in during the one-sided games of hide and seek he used to play with Alfred. He could go to his room, he knew, but which one? It’d been emptied and filled so many times, who knew which was really his by now? The ship of Theseus, and all that.
He’d always hated that metaphor. The ship of Theseus, he knew, never existed in the first place. The big dum-dum wasn’t the only adventurer on deck during their voyage. Orpheus, Telamon, Atalanta, Pollux – just because Theseus was long gone didn’t mean that the survivors had to suffer. It was a fate worse than death, really, to forever be appraised like rotting property before croaking yourself.
The Argo didn’t spoil just because one of its buddies bit it. Why was it that people were so quick to write it off as one and done without even checking the pulse?
Dick pressed his own fingers to his wrists. There, faint as it could be. What a surprise.
“We have more tests,” said Tim from the doorway. His voice was tight despite the breathability of the room.
“Why?” said Dick, crawling into the bed. He pulled the sheets up until they just about covered his head. Muffled, he added, “It’s not like I’m getting any more less-dead.”
Dick laid starfished on the mattress, gazing at the popcorn ceiling through his eyelashes. This must be one of the only rooms left in the Manor that hadn’t been renovated recently. He knew that some sort of mold had started growing in the ceilings a few years back, and nearly all of the plastering had to be ripped away. In the process, Alfred had decided that they may as well remodel most of the layout anyway.
Bruce had found the mold problem hardly three weeks after Jason moved into the Manor. All those years with Dick under his roof, and he’d never bothered to check the underbelly of his own house. Fucking typical.
He raised his hand upwards, marveling quietly at the sensation of gravity pulling his arm back down. Then he bit the inside of his lip, hard, because boy was that stupid. Newton’s laws were just as applicable to corpses as they were to real people. Real people, with the same five-ten height they’d had a week ago, whose bones didn’t tremble like they were unused to their own weight.
It’d been a few days since the Pit, and he hadn’t mustered the courage to look himself in the mirror. He knew that his limbs had been stretched out, an extra dose of muscles flexing whenever he flinched, but he hadn’t caught sight of his own eyes.
There’d been jokes for years now about Bruce’s affinity for rounding up dark-haired, blue-eyed boys, and there was something funny to say about the trend of those same kids’ gazes turning sour, but he didn’t quite know how to word it.
The sound of the door whipping open startled Dick, ut he didn’t physically react. In fact, his heart rate barely even gave notice when the old oak slammed shut. There was the scrabbling of soles as the dresser was dragged across the hardwood to hold fast against the doorway. Dick turned toward the noise just in time to see Jason doubled over, breathing hard.
“Fuck,” he muttered, wiping his brow. “Damn kid’s fast.”
Like clockwork, the door gave a huge shudder. Fists pounded on the other side. “Jason! Fucking shit, open the door!”
“Like hell, Replacement,” he scoffed. Dick watched, mildly invested, as Jason yelled through the wood, “The window’s locked, but there’s a key hidden in the Cave’s med kit. Elevator’s disabled, so you’ll have to take the long way."
“You asshole!”
“Yep, that’s me. Better get running, or B’s gonna have to take another trip to the Pit.” Even at the mention, Jason’s eyes gained a green tinge. “And, Tim? Do me a favor and bring the kit with you. Fuck know’s I’ll need it.”
There was the smallest, slightest pause of hesitation. Then there was the sound of shoes slapping against the floor, and Dick could just picture Tim sprinting toward the Cave like he was being chased.
With that, Jason turned toward Dick. He didn’t comment on Dick’s absolute lack of mobility, only sighed. “Kid won’t be back for ten minutes. Looks like it’s just you and me now, big brother.”
Grumbling already, Dick pulled a spare pillow over his face. “G’way.”
Jason stomped over and snatched it away. Arms crossed, he said, “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Can’t oblige, I’m afraid.”
“Why the fuck do you talk like you’re friends with the Great Gatsby?”
He leaned close with a smarmy grin. “‘Cause I’m an annoying little piece of shit. But you already know that. You’ve known it for a while now.” In a quick motion, Jason’s fingers were wrapped around Dick’s wrist. He was yanked off of the bed before he knew it, ending up in a tangled heap on the ground. “So why don’t you show me?”
Dick shoved him. The push was stronger than he’d meant it to be, yet he took a small scrap of pleasure at the way Jason’s arms windmilled nonetheless. His brother regained balance a second later. “Leave it, Jay. I’m not in the mood."
“Neither was I.” Jason stepped closer again, and closer, until he was towering over Dick’s seated form. “When I came out of the Pit, I didn’t know which way was up. Couldn’t tell you where I ended and the Pit began, or if that even mattered. Nothing mattered, Dick, I was raw. If Talia wasn’t there, I might still be that way. She pointed me in a direction.”
“A direction meant to leave Robin ripe for the taking for her own blood.”
He shrugged. “She’s not perfect. Neither am I, or you, or any of this. All of this is such shit, I’m not going to try to pretend that it’s not. But it was something. I wasn’t numb anymore. That’s – something.”
Dick blinked. “I’m not going to kill Tim.”
“And I’m not going to ask you to. That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, then?”
“For you to feel something. Anything. And while I would prefer to get you excited rather than what I’m about to do, I don’t have much of a choice here. It’s not like I can take you to Disneyland like this.”
Dick frowned, just a little. “Like what?”
“Like a zombie.”
Oh. Dick remembered calling Jason that, tugging at that snippy white strip in his hair as Tim made yet another skunk joke. It’d been funny, at the time. It wasn’t funny now. Not when, for all intents and purposes, that was what Dick was. Just a green sack of skin with its own brains spilling out.
“I’ve been sleeping with Kori,” said Jason, and the suddenness of the statement was strong enough to make things a bit more sharp, if only for a moment.
“What?”
“And Roy,” he added. “And sometimes both at the same time, if we’re in the mood. And I know that they were your first girlfriend and first time. And I haven’t told you, because I haven’t wanted you to know.”
Dick stared at him, hands balling up into something rougher. He turned over the news in his head. Kori, who he used to spend hours sweating with, swapping stories and spit alike in that too-close way only teenagers thought was a good idea, and Roy with his bottles of booze that an underaged Dick had set his lips on, before deciding that Roy’s own were a better option.
And his little brother.
“What the shit.”
“Hmm,” Jason mumbled, almost to himself. “Wasn’t expecting shock, that’s for sure.”
“Why’re you telling me this now?”
“Just feel like being honest,” he said brightly. “Which reminds me, Bruce knows that you check everyone’s lines once a week, but since he’s so much of a control freak, he always makes sure to look them over himself the day before.”
Bruce – Fuck, he knew how important that was to Dick. Knew that if he ever had to stomach the sound of spines and skulls snapping against concrete with a gut-churning crack again, he’d just about kill himself. And he still refused to budge even the slightest in his all-consuming, bullshit mission. Only Batman was capable of giving the final say-so, only Batman had enough experience to know better. As if he hadn’t been doing this much longer than Dick had.
“Oh, and in other news, Tim was going to give you a Father’s Day gift last month, but Bruce didn’t let him ‘cause he’s an emotionally immature ballsack of rampant insecurities, and he threw a baby fit until he returned it.”
Dick swallowed. “Stop it.”
“Constantine’s been telling anyone who listens about how much he’d like a ride on you. I used to tell him to shut it, since I don’t need to heard that shit at seven in the morning, but hey,” Jason shrugged, and Dick couldn’t tell if the sickly green tint to him was from his eyes or his face, “can’t go around getting mad at the truth forever.”
Dick shoved him again, hard enough that Jason’s shoulders connected with the wall hard enough to make a harsh thud. When had he gotten to his feet? “I’m not a slut,” he growled. He hated how familiar the words were in his mouth, among other things. Why was it that it always came back to this? Fuck, even his brother?
Jason pushed him back, grinning like a little shit. “I didn’t use those words, but it’s funny that you did. Freud would have a field day with you.” He chuckled, shaking his head softly. “You think I should ask Roy and Kori who’s better?”
He was hurling himself forward, fists tight enough for his nails to sink into his skin, but he stopped himself. Lurched halfway there but paused, adrenaline thrumming in his veins. It’d be so easy to grab the back of Jason’s head and slam it into his own knuckles. He could grab the curtain rod right off the wall and bury it right in those stupidly straight teeth Bruce had spent a fortune on fixing. But he didn’t, because as horrible, awful, terrible as he was, he knew –
“You’re baiting me,” he breathed. He backed away, though he didn’t quite know why. “Why the hell are you baiting me?”
Jason snorted. He matched every step Dick took, one after the other, until he was close enough that Dick could feel his hot breath on him. Fuck, he needed new toothpaste. “I’m not baiting you, Dickface. I’m just telling you the truth, and the truth is that I know you killed the Joker. I know. And I don’t care, because it doesn’t make up for all the shit you’ve put me through over the years. You hear me? I don’t forgive you.”
Dick couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything more than gawk at the too-easy way Jason’s words slipped from his mouth. Like he’d had them had the forefront of his mind for years, and now he’d finally let them loose.
“You know,” Jason continued, “you’re such a shitty big brother, you haven’t even bothered to ask where Damian is.”
Dick froze. Shit, he – he was right. Dick hadn’t asked. He’d looked after that kid like he was his own blood, yet hadn’t bothered to check in on him when everything went sideways.
And it was his little brother who pointed that out to him. The kid that straightened dog-eared pages with a gentleness otherwise foreign to him, that protected the city from rapists and traffickers. The only Robin that could well and truly see magic for what it was. Dick had failed him again and again and again, would never stop disappointing him, because that was the curse of paving the way; you never could live up to those starry-eyed kids who thought you did no wrong. It was suffocating.
“Thing is,” he finished, “we sent him away. Far, far away, because the only thing people like you know how to do is send kids six feet under.”
Dick’s fist was sending Jason’s head snapping back before he realized it. Jason stumbled, and Dick didn’t so much as pin him down as he hurled himself at him, tackling him with enough force to splinter the hardwood. Jason’s limbs jerked out like a squashed bug, but Dick just gripped them hard enough to bruise and yanked, twisted, practically cleaved the bone right off the skeleton.
He thought about the way that his parents’ skulls had shattered against the floor, cracking twice, thrice, eight times over as bits and pieces broke off smaller, like those bits of eggshells that always slipped into the bowl. Alfred had dropped a watermelon one June day, and it’d taken Dick six hours to stop scrubbing the kitchen tiles.
Dick tangled his fingers into Jason’s hair and slammed the crown of his head against the floor. Forced it down harder and harder. He – He wanted to see, wanted to see if it was the height that’d done them in or the blunt force of marrow against concrete. If his parents had tripped rather than fallen, would they meet the same fate they had today? Connecting with the ground was inevitable, that was all there was in store for Graysons, just the skies and all that laid below. What came up had to come back down at some point.
“Shut the fuck up!” he screamed.
Jason clawed at Dick’s arms, sunk his nails deep into the skin. Dick didn’t even hesitate before he was letting his grip slacken, the momentum carrying Jason forward far enough that he couldn’t do a thing about it as Dick slammed his knee into his ribcage. There was a resounding crack that made Dick’s ears ring.
The moment Jason’s eyes slipped shut, Dick was on him. He pounded his skull against the hardwood again, again, again, quicker, harder – hit him harder, send his teeth swimming in his brain matter as he choked on his own blood, fuck, there was so much blood. It made Dick’s palms slippery, and a loose growl rushed out as he struggled to keep his grip.
He couldn’t breathe. Everything was upside-down, twisted topsy-turvy, he’d never felt like this before. He’d been angry enough to make rash decisions but this? This was lightning wrapped around his limbs, sending them jerking out in quick motions not even he understood. There was so many colors, fuck, how was he meant to parse through them all when his heart was at his feet and his lungs hit the front of his mouth with an awful slosh? All he could keep track of was the twitching form in his hands, and even that was fragile in his bumbling.
This rage after such a long bout of apathy – it was drowning after a rescue from the desert’s edge.
“Stop!” yelled someone, just as an icy needle buried itself in the back of his neck. He pawed at it weakly, but his skin was already turning rubbery. His grip slackened, and Jason’s half-conscious body was ripped away. Dick gagged, and even though he was on his knees, he crumpled to the ground nonetheless.
His heart pounded hard enough in his chest for him to feel the pulse in his ears. Inexplicably, he found tears welling in his eyes. He never used to be this sporadic. When he was a kid, he was deliberate with his anger. He was smart, and he was precise, and he was so damn talented. Everyone had liked him more than a kid. Hell, even his anger was more palatable back then.
He hadn’t thought like that in years. Not since he was black and blue, screaming himself hoarse at Bruce as his suit was ripped from his stinging palms. But all of a sudden, he was seventeen again, and he felt so damn small.
Awfully, he found himself sobbing, curled up in a little ball, as his eyelids went heavy. He tried to keep them open, but it was no use. In a haze of confusion he could barely parse through, the only thing Dick knew for certain as everything went dark was that, undoubtedly, his dad hated him.
Dick was halfway surprised that when he woke up, he wasn’t tied to the cot.
Then he filled up on that other half, solely due to the fact that he was capable of being surprised.
His head swam with it all; that heart-stopping grief, only to be followed rapid fire by cold apathy and engulfing rage. He felt like an hourglass, shaken half a dozen times just to see what would happen this time he was displaced. The Pit, he was quickly learning, gave one hell of a mood swing.
Dick was in the med bay again. He wasn’t hooked up to much compared to his usual post-blackout setup, with the only visible monitor measuring his heart rate. Just a few feet away, though, Jason was a much different story. He could’ve given a mummy a run for its money with how many bandages were wound around his body. More of his skin had turned an awful purple than not. As Dick’s gaze trailed up and down his body, he could practically remember how it felt to inflict each and every injury on his body.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “Jason, I’m so sorry.”
Jason just sighed, one hand weakly waving him off. “‘s fine. My own damn fault for baiting you like that.” He grimaced. “Wouldn’t have pissed you off so much if I knew the Replacement was going to be so slow, though. Damn kid took his sweet time.”
“You bet on me taking ten minutes,” Tim cut in from the doorway. Dick jumped at his sudden appearance. “I was there in eight.”
“Tell that to my kidney, dipshit.”
Tim scoffed. “You’re such a baby. So what if you’re a little bruised? At least you have all your organs. I don’t, and you don’t see me complaining.”
“A toddler sneezed on you this morning and you flinched like you’d been shot.”
He wrinkled his nose. “That had nothing to do with being immunocompromised. Kids are just nasty.” Tim turned Dick’s way, nodding to him like the elephant in the room wasn’t there at all. “I can’t understand how you teach them gymnastics without taking a sick day every week.”
“Lots of multivitamins,” Dick mumbled. He glanced from Tim to Jason, then back to Tim. “I don’t – What happened?”
He remembered. He did. He just – didn’t understand how they’d gotten from then to now. Last he knew, he’d been whaling on Jason like there was no tomorrow. Tim had needed to pry him off, even. Dick should be sitting in a containment cell right now, not bearing witness to whatever the hell this was.
They shared a look. “You were a zombie,” Jason said, fast. “Nothing snaps a zombie awake like a fight. I can vouch for that.”
He took in a shuddery breath. “I hurt you.”
“You did. But I was asking for it, so don’t feel too bad.”
“I hurt you.”
“You’ve done it before, Big Bird. Don’t sweat it.”
He stared at Jason as if his brother had grown another head. “I hurt you on purpose, because it felt good. How the fuck is that okay?”
Jason opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes flitted Tim’s way. “Replacement, give us a minute, will you?” His shoulders were held tight close together. Tim nodded, tense, and cleared the room. As soon as he was out of earshot, Jason turned toward him, grimmer than he’d been the moment prior. “You’re not a slut.”
Dick shut his eyes tight. “Jason.”
“You’re not a slut, and you’re not a bad brother. I don’t think that about you, and anyone who’d say that is an asshole.” He rubbed his temples. “I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to get you as mad as you could possibly be, because anything was better than nothing. That probably wasn’t the best way to do it, but it worked. It worked.”
“It worked,” he agreed, “and it hurt.” He hadn’t felt so raw since he was a kid. It’d burned with how cold it was. “But I hurt you too, so I guess it evens out.”
“Guess so.”
It didn’t. Not even close. But in their line of work, lying to themselves, lying to others – it was as common as breathing. They’d never claimed to be the healthiest of people, and this sure wouldn’t help such an allegation. It was a band-aid over a bullet hole, and it oozed at the slightest bit of pressure.
“Do you – always feel like this?” Dick asked. He flexed his hands, trying to ignore the sickly feeling in his stomach. He could remember the way his brother’s blood had stuck to his skin.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re on a precipice,” he said, “and you don’t know which way you’re going to fall.”
Fuck, he was tired of falling.
“Yeah. But I’ve been like that since I was a kid. The Pit just – made that edge a little smaller to balance on.”
Jason, he knew, had been such a passionate kid. Angry, yes, but fierce beyond that. Where others looked at the decomposing corpse that was their city and turned away, Jason only dove deeper. Even when he’d been half-rotting himself, he kept insisting that it was worth saving. Sometimes, Dick figured that Jason would be the best Batman of them all. He was the common Gothamite, born and raised. Anger was as typical to someone delivered into this place as was that drawling accent.
“I don’t want to hurt them,” Dick said. “Jason, how am I not going to hurt them?”
“There’s things you can do so that when you feel like you’re going to fall, your head can be a little clearer.” Jason tilted his head, smiling wryly. He looked oddly serious, despite his casual words. “I won’t let you fall, Dickface.”
Dick sighed again. Every time he thought he had things figured out, something always came along to shake them up. He’d call it Murphy’s Law if it wasn’t so helpful, in a sort of roundabout way. Because as much as he bitched about it, he was alive. He was alive, and without the rage in his veins, without the extra inches packed into his figure, without the Pit – he wouldn’t be. He wasn’t thankful by any means, but – well. Maybe it was for the best.
“Have you gotten a look of yourself yet?” Jason said. When Dick shook his head, he nodded toward the silver-backed mirror laying on the side table between the two of them. “Don’t be shy, pretty boy.”
The mirror was old, the kind of thing likely bought by Thomas Wayne decades ago. Why they’d decided to bring it down here, rather than a cheap plastic thing picked up at a CVS, Dick didn’t know. If he caught it down here, Alfred would likely bring the house down, insisting that it’d take hours to polish it back to its former glory.
When Dick lifted it up, he gasped.
There wasn’t that emerald shine he’d expected and even dreaded seeing. Instead, a ring of off-white circled his eyes. Not quite gray but not quite paper white, it made him look inhuman, like all he had to him were his bones. Sprouting out of his hair in a uniform tuft was a shock of green capable of giving Gar a run for his money. It was dark enough that it more or less blended in with the rest. If Dick hadn’t been looking for it, he didn’t know if he would’ve noticed.
“Woah.”
“Yeah. Shittier look than mine, right?” Jason’s grin faltered as he grimaced. “Fuck. They’re gonna call us Thing One and Thing Two, aren’t they?”
“That’s if they don’t go for the throat first, Tweedledum.”
He groaned into his open palms. “We should’ve kept you smeared on the sidewalk.” Dick frowned and hurled the mirror his way. His brother caught it without blinking. “Relax, Goldie. First post-Pit lesson: make all the jokes about your own death that you want. No one’s got the heart to call you out on it.”
“That kind of thinking explains so much about you.”
“Thanks.”
“Not a compliment.”
“Maybe to you. But to me? Best damn thing a guy could hear.”