Chapter Text
It’s been exactly a year since Dick’s heart had stopped and started again, around a month and a half since he got back from Spyral, and a very long time since he’s felt alright.
Every morning he wakes up alone in his new apartment in Blüdhaven (his old one was rented to new tenets after his death) with an aching back and a persistent headache that never seems to go away, despite his newfound habit of going through a small pill bottle of Tylenol each week. In the back of his mind, he can almost hear Alfred’s scolding voice each time he reaches for the cupboard.
He might not be “alright”, but he’s fine, not that anyone was asking. He tells himself so repeatedly.
He’s fine when he can’t eat much because he’s nauseous half the time, fine when he barely gets any sleep because every time he closes his eyes he sees the corpses that have been added to his ledger, and he’s fine when he comes crawling back to the cave in an utterly pathetic manner each time Bruce calls on him.
Like this morning, for example, when he wakes up to a summoning text that reads Work in Gotham today. Rumor of new drugs on the South End. from Bruce.
He had been looking forward to sleeping in. His clock tells him it’s 5:00 in the morning, meaning he totaled a grand two hours rather than his usual four.
On his way to the manor, he stops for coffee. He buys Tim one too, just in case. He probably (hopefully) wasn’t awake, but you never know with Tim. Even if he is awake, it’s nearly a given that the younger won’t even look at him and will probably ignore him as much as he can within professional capacity. Dick will still offer. Maybe, just maybe, if Tim is awake, and desperate enough for the caffeine, he might take it.
It might be wishful thinking. Dick figures that if Tim doesn’t want it he can probably drink both anyways.
The cave is empty when Dick arrives, aside from Bruce. He begins to inform Dick about the case and what to look out for, and as always the two of them ignore the scathing fight that had occurred a few days prior.
It wasn’t anything new, just the consistent cycle that had been happening for years. Dick comes from Blüdhaven to help with a mission and see the kids. They complete said mission. Dick hangs around until his presence is no longer tolerated. Bruce and Dick fight, exchange words that they would never aim at anybody but one another. Dick once again flips his bike’s kickstand, and drives out of the cave in an act of preservation for both himself and Bruce.
Dick knows he’s not supposed to bring it up. If he does, he’ll find that his welcome is overstayed far sooner. He’s become good at reading when it’s getting close to his time to leave. Bruce has only officially kicked him out twice, but the only difference between now and then is that now Dick knows how to keep that number where it’s at.
All in all, it’s a good system.
Bruce gets his anger out, Dick gets to come back and see his siblings, with the added bonus of being able to negotiate (read: argue) with Bruce when he’s being too hard on them, putting too much pressure or assigning too much work.
This is why, despite Dick having called Bruce a “Heartless man who doesn’t give a damn about his children,” and Bruce having called Dick a “Worthless coddler who was going to get another one of my sons killed, just like you did to Jason!” the last time they saw each other, Dick doesn’t want to bring any of it up.
This time, however, he needs to. He’s seen the patrol schedule, knows that Bruce didn’t cut back on Damian’s late night hours as Robin. How was he supposed to go to school when the rest of his day consisted of only Robin and a mere nine hours to sleep and eat? He needed to have friends, hobbies!
“Listen, Bruce…” Dick starts, cutting Bruce off from his monotone explanation of the new case, “I saw that Damian is scheduled for the next three days.”
Bruce frowns, and sighs in disappointment, “Dick, I thought we had gone over this. I am not going to raise him all soft like you seem to want me to. You know what that does in this line of work.”
“He needs time to be a kid, Bruce! He shouldn’t have to work, he’s in middle school!” Dick’s voice is raised now, and normally he’s not the one to be escalating like this but Bruce wasn’t listening.
“I am preparing them,” Bruce snarls, “They need to be ready to face the real world. I’m protecting them!”
Any other day, this is where Dick takes a deep breath and placates Bruce, tells him that he knows the man only wants the best for all of them, but that he isn’t expressing it correctly.
Today, Dick is too fed up. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he registers that he shouldn’t have come in to work today.
“I told you from the start that if you ever even began to train Jason the same way you trained me, I’d take him away. Then I told you the same about Tim, then Damian, and every other kid you ever brought into this household. Yet I’m still back here every few days reminding you that if you give Tim three case files he’ll stay up all night working on them or Damian needs time to eat between school and training,” Dick is fully yelling by the end of the sentence, pushing his pointer finger into the chest of the Batman suit.
“Coming from you?” Bruce meets Dick’s volume, “Don’t forget that at Damian’s age you threw a pathetic little fit when I took Robin from you! God knows why I didn’t do it sooner.”
Dick recoils in shock, disbelieving that Bruce could be so cruel as to say such a thing. To take Robin away sooner?
Robin, after everything, was still his symbol. One of the last things he had left of his parents.
He thought Bruce regretted taking it. He thought… well, he thought that Bruce cared about him still, even just a little. But to take Robin, to send him to Spyral, to turn him into an outcast in every way possible from the one thing that mattered the most to him - his family - meant that Bruce might not have ever cared in the first place.
All at once, everything is too much. The lights are too bright, his head is hurting, and Dick has nothing.
It’s the truth.
Here he is, in the Batcave, yelling in a futile attempt to convince a man that he’s sure doesn’t hold even a shred of love for him that his siblings, of which two out of three hate Dick’s guts, deserve to have some semblance of a normal childhood.
To his horror, he feels the telltale lump in his throat and stinging in his eyes that signifies the threat of tears.
He hasn’t cried in a long time, and he isn’t about to start now.
So, just as Dick has been taught to do all his life, he throws up his walls.
“I’m not asking you to make Damian give up Robin, I’m only telling you that you need to stop raising fucking child soldiers! Is that all we are to you?! Pawns in your screwed up fucking mission? You don’t deserve to call yourself a father, in fact, you don’t even deserve to call yourself human you-!”
Bruce’s fist makes a resounding crack! as it hits Dick’s face.
Dick topples to the ground, and is left to stare up at Bruce while the man towers over him.
“You have no right to have any say in how I parent my sons. Or have you forgotten that you’re not even one of them?”
…
…
…
Now Dick is crying, his tears mixing in with the blood that drips from his nose. There is silence, filled only by heavy breathing, as they remain frozen like that - Bruce with clenched fists, and Dick, slumped over miserably.
Bruce seems to register that he has gone too far. Regret fills his eyes, and Dick can tell that he is going to say something more. Not an apology, but maybe an offer to help Dick up, or a few words on whether or not the first aid kit has been restocked before he leaves.
He opens his mouth to say whatever it is, but doesn’t get a chance to. At that moment, Tim enters the Batcave.
Dick knows who it is without looking, would know any of his siblings the bats by the sound of their footsteps. He doesn’t raise his eyes any higher than Tim’s shoes, looking at the ratty sneakers through the dark hair that sweeps across his vision and trying to regain control of the tears.
He is struck by gut wrenching shame, strong enough to make him wish he hadn’t returned from Spyral, hadn’t been born-
“What the fuck?” Tim says, tone cold and utterly unreadable.
Dick breathes. In. Out.
He smiles.
Raises an arm, wipes the blood away from under his nose with a sleeve and a sniffle.
“Hey Timmy! Good morning, or at least it better be. Did you sleep?” Dick asks with a wide and happy as he can muster grin.
“What the fuck?” Tim asks again, and Dicks smile falters a bit before he pushes an even brighter one onto his face.
He raises himself off the ground shakily, trying not to sway when he stands. Both Tim and Bruce watch him the whole way.
“Want coffee? I brought you coffee,” Dick makes his way over to the table he had set the drinks on when he entered. “Black, double shot espresso,” he pauses, because taking a hit to the head definitely didn’t help his headache nor his sense of balance. He plays it off as concern, “only if you actually did sleep though.”
“Dick, stop. Stop,” Tim says his hands hovering outstretched in the air in front of Dick like he’s not quite sure what to do with them. Dick doesn’t stop, presses the cup into Tim’s hand and holds it there for a moment to make sure Tim has a hold on it.
“Why don’t we go upstairs?” Dick asks, doing damage control as always, “Alfred’s probably not awake yet, but we can see what I can do about breakfast?”
Tim’s gaze flickers up and over Dick’s shoulder almost imperceptibly to where Bruce is still standing in the middle of the room.
“Yeah, okay,” Tim says, then sets the coffee right back on the table where it came from in favor of grabbing Dick’s shoulders and steering him towards the exit. This, to Dick’s horror, is a completely transparent method of placing himself between the two of them.
Tim wasn’t going to let this go. The shame and guilt returns twofold as they leave Bruce in the Batcave. Neither of them speak as Dick leads them to the kitchen, and Dick immediately sets to work grabbing pancake mix when they enter to avoid facing Tim.
Surprisingly, Tim takes a seat at the island table and allows Dick to rush around the room making food for the two of them. Something in the way Dick looked or held himself up must have told Tim that he needed a minute to recollect himself.
As he stirs the batter, he momentarily pauses to sneak a glance at himself in the reflection of the microwave, grabbing a napkin to clear the new blood off his face. His nose has stopped bleeding fully now, and the red on his cheek has begun to bloom into a deep and angry purple.
Bruce hadn’t held back. From the look of it, there would be a mark for a while. The positioning could easily be explained away - some crook in Blüdhaven got a lucky swing.
Again, not that anyone was asking where his bruises were coming from these days.
To Dick’s chagrin, his time seemed to be up after the pancakes had been cooked and passed down the table to Tim.
“Has he hit you before?” Tim begins by asking.
Dick purses his lips and prods his food with a fork.
“Jesus, Dick. How often?”
“Very, very rarely. Only when I push him, alright? You caught us on a bad day. I… oh god, I said he wasn’t human,” Dick buries his head in his hands a moment, the familiar horror and regret already starting to plant itself in his stomach as a toiling nausea, “Listen, me and Bruce will sort this out, just like we always do. It’s not worth mentioning to Damian or Jason, okay?”
“Just like you always do? What the hell does that mean, Dick? That you always argue like this before you leave?” Tim is getting louder now, and Dick shushes him gently, worried that someone else might come through the door at any minute.
“No. Look, I knew that he wasn’t ready to talk this morning, and I still brought things up,” Dick admits, and then shoves a bite of pancake in his mouth to make it clear he wasn’t going to say anything else on the matter.
“Dick…” Tim says, voice dripping with pity, “You know that there’s nothing that you could have brought up that should have resulted in what I just saw.”
And Dick knows that family aren’t supposed to hit one another. He knows, but Bruce had made it abundantly clear that Dick wasn’t a part of the family.
He’d been avoiding the implications of not being adopted for years, telling himself that Bruce forgot, or that it didn’t really matter because he was an adult. Stupid, because of course it mattered. Dick wasn’t a son, or a brother, or wanted. He was a leech, worth only as much to them when he was in his Nightwing suit.
It was true. Both Jason and Tim could barely stand to be in the same room as Dick these days. Actually, Dick was pretty sure this was the first time that Tim and Dick had actually sat down and talked since he got back. In any other circumstance, Dick would have been thrilled! His brother- Tim talking to him for longer than a snide remark or an instruction of some sort? Yesterday, it was his dream. Today, all he wants to do is go back to Tim dodging him.
“Just like when Jason hit me?” Dick snaps at Tim, without really meaning to. Shock spreads across the younger’s face, and Dick winces.
Tim hadn’t done anything to warrant the bitter tone in his voice. Neither had Jason, for that matter. It had been a bad time for all of them, right after he had returned from Spyral. Dick hadn’t been able to give them the explanation they deserved, the wounds from his mission still fresh in his mind, and neither of them had been interested in hearing it after the fact - which was perfectly reasonable.
Even if he hadn’t wanted to, even if Bruce had made it clear that it was either Dick went to Spyral or he went into the dirt where everyone already thought he was, he had still eventually agreed, knowing the hurt it would cause.
(He didn’t want to. He begged. Pleaded. Prayed, even. Bruce’s fists were unforgiving. Did he really have a choice?)
Jason had been justified in taking a swing. Tim had been justified for his cold words, for thinking nothing more of it.
“That’s- that was different, and you know it, Dick,” Tim says sharply, and Dick sees a flash of the anger that he knows Tim’s been hiding for months under all the cold and uncaring demeanor.
He’s making the exact same mistake he had with Bruce. - making Tim angry. He hadn’t meant it to sound the way it did. Really, he must have a talent for always saying the wrong thing. No matter how much or how little he plans his words before he says them, he never conveys what he wants to.
This conversation is barreling towards an argument, and it’s the last thing Dick can handle right now. He backtracks as quickly as he can.
“What if it wasn’t different? You don’t know what happened. It was the exact same. I messed up, I learn. It’s okay, Tim. Just… forget about it, okay?” Dick sighs, defeated and done.
He deposits his plate into the fridge, with only the single bite of the pancake he’d eaten gone. He’d known when he was making them he wouldn’t be able to stomach them, his nausea rearing its head at the smell. They’d been more for Tim anyways.
“I’ll see you tonight,” Dick says, grabbing his keys off the counter, knowing that by then, things would be back to normal.
Tim would go back to his detached and harsh attitude. Bruce would probably cut back on Robin’s hours just enough such that Dick would accept it in his version of reconciliation, and Dick would give him a nod and a smile of appreciation. They would all be civil.
They still needed him. He was Nightwing. As long as he dawned a mask, they needed him.
The drug case could a few hours.
The next time Dick woke up, he was actually feeling a bit better. After retreating back to Blüdhaven to lick his wounds, he’d collapsed back into his bed, pathetically exhausted despite having done nothing.
He’d justified it in his head by telling himself that since this was the first time he had pushed Bruce too far since Spyral, he needed to take time to reflect.
Maybe, he thought, if he hadn’t been so off his game, it wouldn’t have ended like that in the first place. Maybe he would have noticed Tim entering the Batcave sooner, and could have avoided the horribly awkward conversation that ensued.
Turning over, his eyes widened when he saw the time, and he shot out of bed.
12 hours!
He’d intended to take a half-hour nap, not to sleep the entire day away!
He hopped around the room a bit as he pulled his Nightwing suit on in a hurry - he’d been scheduled for patrol a few hours ago.
Flicking on his comms, he announced his presence.
“Look who finally decided to show up,” Jason remarks, voice dripping with contempt. Dick cringes at the thinly veiled anger.
“Nightwing, report,” Bruce demands, and Dick bites his cheek harshly.
What was he supposed to say? I fell asleep without an alarm set because I haven’t slept more than five hours a day in the past week, and I already had two this morning so I thought I’d be good?
“I was held up with civilian responsibilities,” Dick says instead, and he knows that normally such a vague response wouldn’t fly with Bruce, but that he won’t demand answers this very minute since they are in masks. Jason’s comm picks up his scoff.
“Go handle the planned route you were assigned. Robin and Red Robin have been covering for you,” Bruce says, and Dick blinks in surprise.
Tim had been covering? Damian wasn’t a surprise - the youngest had never held a grudge about Spyral. But Tim?
Tim borderline despised Dick, which leaves Dick to address the only possible reason why: his argument with Bruce and subsequent talk with Tim.
It was pity.
Tim pitied Dick for being such a screw up that Bruce didn’t want any claim over him.