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When Dick was nine he was punched in the face for the first time. He'd been Robin—officially Robin—for two months when one of Riddler's goons got a lucky hit in. Nothing was broken—well, aside from his pride, but as Batman used far more force than necessary on the unlucky man, Dick could taste the copper of his own blood filling his mouth mixing with the tears running down his cheeks, an involuntary response caused by the sudden trauma of his nose being hit. By the time Batman was done with the poor man he needed to be taken to the hospital and not GCPD lockup. Nowadays, he's used to the taste of blood; it's hard to be a vigilante and not get hit in the face from time to time—his latest incident from a spar with Cass that they let get a bit out of hand, but that first time was a shock in more ways than one.
He'd tasted blood before. Children are, after all, prone to injury, and his first split lip happened far too early for him to remember—a botched somersault, or tripping over a tent stake. But something about that first time after hit all the more hard. It brought to mind the hole he almost bit through his lip as his parents fell, the tears that came without warning as the realization hit him.
It's in many ways the clearest memory he has of that night, something that he knows is true, a memory that to his core will stay with him. Even now, two decades and more later, the taste of that night lives in his memory, in the copper of his blood and the salt from his tears.
When Dick was eleven he and Batman responded to an apartment fire, thirteen stories. They learned later that the fire started on the ninth floor, but by the time they got there at least three of the floors were enveloped in flames. Dick was put in charge of evacuating the bottom floors, starting on floor six and working down. He'd just helped a single-mother get her toddler and newborn out of the building and was running back in for one last check when a shower of broken glass sprinkled onto the ground; it was loud: sirens blaring, people shouting, babies crying, and yet over everything he'll never forget the sound of the woman hitting the pavement. The sound of her neck breaking on impact, spine snapping in multiple places, the flames she'd been engulfed in smothering themselves on impact with the pavement.
Sounds in a crowded big top tend to be lost in the sheer amount of noise present. Hundreds of people laughing, the animals, the music, the ringmaster, all of these things competing for top billing. When his parents fell it was no quieter. Pop Haly's voice fading out to be overtaken by the screams of the crowd, the screams startling the animals, the music still playing its cheerful tune despite the somber mood that washed over the tent. Dick, however, heard none of it. It was like his ears stopped working because of his terror, more than just his body freezing in response to the tragedy.
His first nightmares after that night were silent, mimicking what it felt like in the moment—quiet horror, the spotlight moving from the peak of the tent to their broken bodies. That night, after watching the woman fall, things changed: the silence of the manor and his nightmares replaced by the echoing sound of bones breaking, the wet sound of a body in motion coming to a sudden stop.
When Dick was twelve years old one of the girls in his class stuck herself on a loose pencil in her backpack and weeks later she still had a small dark spot on the palm of her hand. Some of the kids thought that meant that she actually had a piece of pencil lead under her skin. The teacher finally had to explain that, no, there was no graphite under her skin, but just the pigment. The graphite leaves behind a mark, a stick-and-poke tattoo, harmless but something that can remain behind for years and years. She moved away at the end of the year, her father losing his job when another factory on Tricorner closed. He can't remember her name now, but he can still picture the little dark grey dot on the palm of her hand beneath her thumb.
He sat at the desk behind hers the whole month of March. Sometimes, he'd watch her rub the spot on her hand, like she could still feel a bit of pencil lead stuck in her palm. Her mind convinced that there was something under the skin, the spot of color from the pigment left behind further reinforcing the thought. There was never anything there. He remembers helping her up after she fell on the playground, palm to palm and not even the slightest hint of a bump.
Sometimes Dick can feel bits of the nylon rope from that night under his skin, from where he caught the rope and tried to pull them up. He knows this can't be true; he was nowhere near the ropes when it broke, the opposite platform and half a world away. This can't be true because if he thinks hard enough about it, he knows they used a cotton blend rope in their act, nylon was for practice only; a side effect of his adult mind trying to make sense of a tragedy he believes he could have prevented. A phantom sensation created from a fabricated memory; his body's way of conceptualizing his shame over his inaction—from not speaking up when he had the chance, from not being fast enough, not being strong enough. The knowledge that this never happened doesn't stop him from scrubbing his hands raw in his bathroom sink, desperately trying to get the fibers out.
When Dick was sixteen Bruce forced him to attend a themed gala; the themed ones were, more often than not, offensive in some way or another and Dick happened to be the offended party for this one. A carnival theme hosted by the Crowne family, it was for a good cause, but that was always the excuse. Mrs. Crowne herself would have been reason enough for him to avoid this one—he can still feel the pinch of her too sharp nails in his cheek from the last time he bumped into her at a function—the offensive theme was just adding insult to injury at that point.
He remembers walking into the ballroom with Bruce, the normal cloying scent of a hundred different perfumes and colognes masked by the smell of hot oil and the too sweet scent of deep-fried Oreos. His next memory of that night is of Bruce finding him at the top of the servants staircase as far from the ballroom and as high up as he could get. Bruce understood and Dick knew it was from the way Bruce always avoided Lucy Parrish at these events, not for anything she had done to offend him, but because she wore the same perfume Martha Wayne wore.
He remembers the smell of Haly's better than anything— popcorn and cotton candy, sweat and the smell of the animals, sawdust and the hot plastic scent of the tent—it makes sense, memories are tied most closely to scent. Smells are processed in the front of the brain, the olfactory bulb that goes on to send that information to other areas. They travel quickly to the body's limbic system, the system that includes the amygdala and the hippocampus—memory and emotion—it's why certain smells trigger strong emotions, while the memory itself might have faded. The smells individually were never enough to take him back; there was something unique in the way they all blended together. Haly's never served deep-fried Oreos while Dick was with them, they'd yet to even be invented when he left, and yet the smell of them alone now is enough to send him reeling.
Dick is all too familiar with the inconsistencies in memories. He learned the right and wrong ways to interrogate and interview people from Batman himself, ways to ask questions that don't lead, and how to get more accurate answers. But presuppositions and trauma aren't the only things that can affect a person's recall. The overlapping scents of circus foods at the gala were covered by the smell of the Oreos, but still present underneath, linking them forever in his mind.
When Dick was nineteen he was walking with Donna on their way to dinner after a photography gig of hers ran late. He'd only just settled into his new apartment in New York, still getting used to this new version of the Teen Titans, one without Roy and Garth and with a variety of new people he was still coming to know. They were passing along the edge of the Financial District when the sharp crack of a gun interrupted their conversation. A man half a block ahead of them hit the pavement and with nothing more than a glance at each other Dick had darted towards the man as Donna took off in the direction the gunshot came from.
He knew the moment he got there that it was far too late for the man, the hole between his vacant eyes all the confirmation Dick needed. Conscious of any evidence that might be on the man, Dick took a moment to slide his eyes closed before he glanced around. The block had cleared as soon as people realized what had happened, people ducking for cover in alleys and shop fronts. Dick knew none of them were at risk, this was a professional hit, but it did make searching for the bullet easier, spotting it on the ground about ten feet away. Making a mental note of it for when the police finally got there he continued looking around, checking the faces of the startled New Yorkers, looking for anyone who didn’t belong.
Nothing caught his eye as out of place and he turned his attention back to the man. The blood pool underneath him had grown on the grey concrete, but it was the glint of something else that caught his eye and as he turned to focus on it. The realization that it was a chunk of bone hit Dick like a tidal wave; far from his first body, far from even his first time seeing a head injury of this degree, and still there was something about the way the man was crumpled on the ground.
Screen burn-in is a process that can occur in certain types of displays; when an image is displayed for extended periods of time the phosphors over-heat, they lose luminosity, leaving behind a shadow of the image. When he was first starting out as Robin, liquid-crystal screens were still far from common for standard computer use, mostly used only in laptops at that time, which meant that the Batcomputer was still using a plasma screen. Plasma screens were especially prone to screen burn-in hotter than even the older modeled cathode-ray tube screen displays; they're obsolete now, abandoned for the cheaper LCDs of modern technology.
Batman used to have one of the monitors permanently set to show the mugshots of all active rogues in Gotham. Much of the list changed weekly—near daily every October—but the top row never changed, regardless of arrest status. It stayed on that screen for months until Bruce finally needed to use the monitor for something else. The lingering grin of the Joker and Poison Ivy's leer were left seared into the screen permanently, a ghost image left behind from leaving it static for too long. The knowledge of why wasn’t enough to fully prevent the horror of seeing the faint image of the Joker grinning over the coroner's report and autopsy photos.
When he dreams of his parents' deaths now, he's left with two versions fighting for prominence, like when you have unfocused your eyes and everything begins to blur together. A ghost image of the poor man on the sidewalk surrounded by bone and blood replaced with his parents and the view of their broken bodies from thirty feet in the air. He knows he never got a close look at them: the moment his feet hit the sawdust Bruce was there, scooping him into his arms, turning him away, using his bulk to block the view from him. But he can picture it so clearly now. His mother haloed by blood and brain matter; his father's bones catching the spotlight where they broke the skin.
Dick is no stranger to false memories, time, trauma, and physical injuries just a few of the things that can affect a person's recall. It doesn't make the knowledge that he can't truly remember the most important night of his life any easier. He was there, he could have stopped it, he should remember it. He brought it up with Bruce once, an in-passing mention of something unrelated reminding him of that night, Bruce's confusion over the detail shocking Dick into uncharacteristic silence.
What do you do when the moment that shaped who you would come to be as a person is a hazy memory filled with inaccuracies? What are you supposed to say when someone else remembers it better than you do?