Chapter Text
As a general rule, vigilantes like himself didn’t really have all that much time to themselves. There were only so many hours in the day, and if Dick wanted to get more than three or four hours of sleep every night after patrol and before work, then he couldn’t really afford to waste any of that time. Not if he wanted to get anything done. He couldn’t afford leisure time. Or breaks.
He thought that he might be a little bit too much like Bruce in that way. Taking the world upon his shoulders and thinking he was the only one who could bear it. He tried not to take after his former mentor in that manner. It was part of the reason he’d formed the Teen Titans back when he was still in the short shorts. But, well, it was hard when B was the man who’d raised him. Old habits die hard, and all that.
At any rate, with only twenty-four hours in the day, and over thirty hours of work to get done per day, Dick had become an excellent multitasker in his lifetime, something he’d first picked up from his Daj, though being The Bat's partner he’d definitely picked up a few tips and tricks. Like time-management.
Time management was really important for billionaire vigilantes like Bruce. It was equally important, Bruce had told a hyper-active nine-year old one afternoon so long ago, for wards of billionaire vigilantes who jumped around on roof-tops in green scaly panties at three in the morning on a school night. Dick was just glad that, for whatever reason, he’d paid close attention to that particular lesson.
Multitasking was something he was glad he’d taken seriously from such a young age. That skill had grown more invaluable to him over the years as more and more things piled up on his plate other than just school and Robin-ing.
Things like Nightwing and the Titans and the BPD and being an heir to a billion dollar company, and later little brothers and sisters, and that one, God-awful year taking on all of Bruce’s responsibilities and raising his father’s son.
He didn’t think he’d ever been as grateful for his lessons as Robin as during the time he’d spent as Batman. Bruce was back, now, of course, but Dick was never not using some sort of lesson the man had taught him, much to his own chagrin.
Take now, for instance. Dick had discovered, over his seventeen years of vigilantism and hero-in and whatnot, that the absolute best, most productive time for ruminating on his life choices was during life-threatening circumstances.
Preferably when he was mid-dodge of a bright red laser beam as big around as Killer Croc’s neck. It really made the best use of his time, that way. Though, as his life flashed before his eyes for probably the eighty-thousandth time, he did realize that there were definitely better things for him to be reflecting on than what he was currently thinking about.
He should have been thinking about his relationship with Bruce, or Tim or Jason or Damian, or some of the many regrets he’d had in his so-very long twenty-four years of life. Or maybe even like a highlight reel of his greatest hits. That’d be a cool way to go out. Make the most of the last two seconds of his life.
Instead, Dick found himself grappling with an extremely disappointing last thought, one he never would have thought would be his last ever thought while he was still alive. Like, ever. As in, he’d happily eat Jason’s leather jacket before he ever admitted that this was his last ever thought while he was still alive enough to do something about it.
It was a “wow, maybe Bruce was right” thought. And damn, did he hate having those. They were such a bitch to have.
A BWR, as he liked to call them, because for as much as he hated having these thoughts, he had them often enough that he’d sort of needed an abbreviation for them. Because for as much as Bruce was an uptight, conniving asshole, he was also a genius tactician and a successful billionaire vigilante of an asshole.
And it wasn’t that Dick never thought he’d ever have another BWR. Bruce was just as good a reluctant teacher as Dick was a stubborn student. It was just that Dick really wished that he would have had a better last thought than a BWR, considering that he’d built basically his entire vigilante career as Nightwing on his very firm belief that Bruce wasn’t always right. Which he wasn’t. Dick had proved that a hundred times over.
Yet, here he was, Nightwing, and thinking that maybe he should have listened to Batman. That ruffled a few more of his feathers than he was comfortable with.
It wasn’t even a good or productive BWR. One of those instances where he was just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn, because he was still Dick and Bruce was still an asshole, and sometimes—okay, most of the time—they butted heads just to butt heads because it was familiar. It wasn’t one of those BWRs where he’d disobeyed orders, yet again (“Robin, I told you not to jump in without me,” Bruce’s gruff voice bounced around in the back of his head.), and would learn a valuable lesson about stubbornness but also obeying orders because Bruce did have like years of experience on him still and then they’d hold hands and sing Kumbaya around a tray of Alfred’s cookies.
No, it was one of those stupid BWRs. It was such a boneheaded BWR thought that it caused Dick to forget, mid-dodge, that he was supposed to be avoiding the laser beam, not jumping into it out of sheer shame.
It was a “wow, maybe Bruce was right, and I should have gone to college for business” thought.
See? Stupid. Especially considering that Dick had pretty successfully managed to run a multi-billion dollar company for a year with only Lucius’s help (ok but, come on, Bruce had a degree or two in business, and he still used Lucius’s help, so it didn’t really count for Dick’s internal competition with Bruce when he was still doing a lot of the work). He’d even managed to screw Luthor over once or twice in his free time. He hoped Clark had gotten a laugh out of that. He’d been too busy to check up on him at the time. He still needed to ask about that, honestly.
Dick’s refusal to go to business school was one of Bruce and Dick’s most frequent topics of argument back in those late-Robin days and early-Nightwing days. It was something he’d never budged on, not until he’d been trapped in the cowl and cornered in WE, and had completed an online bachelor’s and graduate’s program just to get the hounds at WE off his back so he could focus on everything else in his life.
He was proud of his stubbornness on that fact. And of the fact that he was fairly certain that only Alfred, and maybe Damian, since that kid had an unusual ability to sniff out when Dick was hiding something from his Robin, knew that he wasn’t actually degree-less anymore. Bruce was still clueless, though, which was the most important thing. After all, why would Bruce look for something like a secret degree when Dick had been so obstinate about never getting one in the first place?
The wool was still pulled over Bruce’s eyes even now, over two years later. Dick had won both the battle and the war, and after Bruce found out, he’d rub it in his face all over again with no small amount of satisfaction.
So why was he thinking a BWR about why he should’ve gone to college for business? Well, Dick had eventually completed a degree, but it was in law, not business. He was a detective, after all, and he’d still held a grudge against a then-dead Bruce that he was not going to acquiesce over.
The reason was because, in this moment, he really thought that maybe he should’ve gone to business just so that he could take a page out of Tim’s book and draw up a stupid but apparently totally necessary contract for the next time Dick took over Bruce’s Batman duties. Namely, one that stipulated that attending boring League meetings and taking care of Gotham was fine, but fighting in a city-wide battle with League members he hadn’t trained with against a mystery cult with small, funny ray blasters that he couldn’t properly dodge in this stupid, clunky Batman suit?
Not fine.
Not fine at all.
He was going to have some very strong words with Bruce when he came back from this.
Because it was a “when” and not an “if”, now, considering that he’d very narrowly managed to avoid getting burnt to a crisp by these purple cult creeps with old, sci-fi-looking guns that packed a bigger punch than they looked.
Dick couldn’t help the groan that escaped him as the Flash slammed him into the ground at the last second. The laser skimmed his armor, but just barely enough to penetrate. He wouldn’t get more than a carpet-burn from it, he knew, thanks to Barry’s timely intervention.
Barry flopped off of him, letting out a groan of his own. “Damn,” he huffed, apparently as out of breath as Dick was from their very sudden encounter with the broken sidewalk. “That hurt,” he hissed.
Dick found himself nodding in agreement as he gasped air into his lungs. He wasted no time sitting up. Dick checked the graze in his bicep through the exposed spot in his armor. It was bubbly and red and hurt like hell, but it was a minor scrape in the grand scheme of things. He’d seen how even Diana had gone down for half a minute after getting hit straight-on by one of those things. If Barry hadn’t super-sped him out of the way, he’d probably have lost his arm instead of just getting a little burn.
“Thank you,” he said in a really great approximation of Bruce’s gruff Batman voice, if he said so himself (which he did, and so did all of his siblings), turning to Barry and inspecting him. He’d also suffered a burn from the beam. He was worse off than Dick was, but the skin was already starting to stitch together thanks to Barry’s advanced healing factor.
The speedster nodded, sitting up as well. “No problem,” he said with a grin that reminded Dick of Wally. Dick barely held back a smile in return, offering a grateful twitch of his lips like Bruce would have. “Besides,” he added wryly, “I prefer my teammate not well-done,” he chuckled.
Dick allowed a small smile to grace “Bruce’s” face. “I think I prefer that, too.” He stood to his feet and helped Barry to his, checking out their surroundings in the process. The battle was still well in-progress, with only half of the cult taken care of so far. He checked Flash over again. “Are you okay?”
Barry nodded. “Right as rain. Just a scrape, really,” he said, checking the already-healing gash on his leg. “I’ll be good to run in half a minute without too much blood loss.”
Dick nodded in agreement with Barry’s judgments, having already come to that decision on his own. “Good.” He clicked his comm on. “Batman to League,” he began, before relaying a series of directions to re-coordinate their collective efforts. Barry stood beside him, taking in the information even as he surveyed the field to calculate where he’d need to be to carry out the plan. He wrapped up his instructions and then turned to Barry. “Ready?” he prompted.
The Flash nodded, a brusque affirmation. “Want a lift?” he suggested, a sly grin teasing Dick. Or rather, Bruce, who was well known for his general consternation about being “toted around” by teammates, as the man liked to put it.
Unfortunately for Flash, and probably for Bruce’s Batman image, Dick had never had any problems with being carried or tossed around. He’d grown up with Wally (even though Barry didn’t know that), and before that he’d been a trapeze artist. Not to mention Dick was a generally difficult person to embarrass in the first place, unless Bruce, much to the man’s general annoyance.
“If you’re offering,” Dick said, suppressing the un-Batmanlike shrug.
Of course, Barry didn’t know that Dick was Batman, and not Bruce, so he was a bit surprised when Dick took him up on his suggestion. Barry didn’t let his surprise catch him off guard, however, and only asked, “Where to?”
“The center,” Dick reminded him. “That’s where the device is located. We need to shut it down with—”
“The energy field,” Barry remembered, nodding. “Got it. A good shot of lightning should do it, right?”
Dick nodded. “Yes. I’ll handle the mechanics side of it, but we’ll have to hit the device at the same time. We need to disrupt the flow of energy without it starting back up again,” he explained. It was probably a few more words than Batman would’ve used, but Dick had always been more of a team player than B. And teams tended to perform better when they actually knew why they were doing what they were doing.
Barry nodded. “Only problem is staying in sync,” he pointed out. “If I’m carrying you, by the time I drop you off, I’ll lose my momentum and my lightning. There’s a good chance you’ll get used as a lightning rod, which I really don’t recommend,” he warned.
Dick nodded his understanding. “I’ll handle that part. Just focus on the lightning.”
Barry looked at Dick doubtfully, but nodded. “Okay,” he agreed, a level of trust in his tone that was meant for a different man under the cowl. Did he trust Bruce, or did he trust Batman? “Upsie-daisy,” Barry said, unknowingly echoing the same words that Wally had said to Dick so many times. Or maybe it was Wally who’d knowingly echoed Barry.
Whatever. He was thinking too much.
Dick jumped up, and Barry easily caught Dick on his back, forty extra pounds of armor and all. Barry settled his grip under Dick’s knees. Dick was probably lucky that Bruce didn’t care to be carried around by his teammates all that often, or he might notice that Batman had lost about thirty to forty pounds.
Then he sped off into the midst of the battle with Dick on his back.
Within seconds he skidded to a stop, his arm already hoisted back to direct a course for the lightning that followed in his wake. If Dick had been anyone else, if he’d been Bruce, even, then he mightn’t have been able to pull it off. He would’ve been run through with a speedster’s supercharged lightning, cooked from the inside out.
But Dick had been working with Wally for over ten years now. He was his best friend. He knew how a speedster fought. They were like light switches. Most people thought they existed in only two states: on or off. In the speed force, or out of it. Plain and simple.
But Dick had been a curious child; worse, he’d been a bored one. He used to try to balance the switch right in the middle to see if there was something else out there other than dark and light, a sort of gray area to the natural forces of the world. There was probably an analogy to be made there about Batman and Robin and finding his way to Nightwing, or maybe about how Dick was raised to be more comfortable in the gray areas of the world than a nine year old should have been. But Dick didn’t really care to look too deep into that then, and he certainly didn’t have time for it now. Time management and all that.
But that neutral zone of the light switch? There wasn’t really a third state in between light and dark; it was just the reach and strength of the light source. But there was a sort of neutral zone of the light switch where the conduit did its work. Where the energy flowed to cause the light to be on or off. It wasn’t an in-between state, but it was a state of change.
And that’s where Dick made his action. He waited for the exact moment that Barry flipped the switch to the Speed Force, where he stopped mid-run, arm thrown back and directing a stream of lightning to the device. The energy still crackled around him, and the lightning moved fast to follow its master’s direction, but Barry had disconnected himself from the Speed force just enough that the lightning wouldn’t cling to him, but would continue on the path he’d sent it.
For the split second that Barry was in neutral, Dick used the man’s already-reversing momentum as an opportunity to vault off the speedster’s back, twisting in a tight, efficient flip (curse the Bat-armor, he wished he was in his Nightwing uniform… that would make this so much easier) around the current of lightning. Three batarangs arced after the bolt of lightning, and all four projectiles hit their marks at the exact same time.
The device crackled with excited energy before it imploded on itself. A mushroom cloud of smoke bellowed out from the device and flung Dick several meters backwards. He hit the ground hard, and barely had enough sense to protect his head as he curled into a ball.
Dick’s ears were ringing, and he felt like Bane had thrown him through a wall. He was also pretty sure his entire body was black and blue at this point. He groaned, and for once he was grateful to be wearing Bruce’s heavy armor.
Damn, did that hurt like hell. He really was flung to the ground way too often in this vigilante business, he thought.
Dick slowly uncurled from where he’d laid crumpled on the ground. He stifled a pained groan and did a quick once-over on his body. Definitely bruised, and the burn from earlier was stinging with a vengeance, but the suit hadn’t been compromised so he was probably fine.
He blinked, and Barry was standing over him with an outstretched hand. “You okay?” he asked. Dick clasped his gauntleted hand into Barry’s and allowed the man to help him up.
“Yes,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. He knew the man was asking about any injuries he might have had, which numbered more than he thought he’d have. But nothing that he couldn’t keep going on. He just felt like he’d been knocked into last week after a League Assassin (or six) had gotten a few good hits in, more than anything.
Barry nodded. “Good, good,” he said, and dusted off his hands and uniform, looking around again. Diana and Clark were finishing up with the heavy-hitting, wiping out the last remaining cult members. The battle was mostly over now. Jordan had even started to get ahead on the clean-up with that ring of his, using the green structures to clean up whatever collateral damage they’d left behind. “Looks like we’re wrapping up,” he noted.
He was holding his arm sort of weirdly. Dick looked over his teammate, and while his suit was mostly intact, an exposed flap of the man’s suit revealed a chemical-looking burn on his skin. “Report,” he ordered in Bruce’s voice, but worry colored his tone.
Barry looked down at himself. “What? Just a few scrapes, I think. Bruised up a bit, is all, but I did just get flung— oh,” he said, his voice dropping in confusion as he noticed what Dick did. “That’s weird. I didn’t get hit by any more of those beams,” he said. “But it explains the pain, I guess.”
Dick furrowed his brow in thought. “The explosion?” he prompted.
Barry shook his head. “No, it would’ve had to break through the suit. And it’s not just here,” he said, lifting up the part of his arm where the skin was exposed. He used his other hand to peel back the suit and reveal more of the affected skin. “It’s all over,” he said, dropping his arm back down with a twinge of pain creasing his features at the sudden movement. “Ow,” he muttered under his breath.
Dick hummed. “Speed Force side effect?” he proposed, to which Barry shook his head.
“I would've encountered it before this, I’m sure. Not my first explosion,” he added wryly, then shrugged. “At any rate, I think I’m still good to run, and it’ll heal up soon—”
“No,” Dick shook his head. “Head back to the jet,” he ordered gruffly.
Barry didn’t want to go and leave his teammates to clean-up, but he nodded his agreement. “Okay, stay safe, Bats.”
Barry only sped away after Dick gave him a curt nod. Dick turned back to survey the battlefield. It was all clear around him, cultists groaning after having been thrown back from the force of the blast. He couldn’t help the snort of amusement he let out as he tied one of them, considering his own aching body. You know, the vigilante usual.
He set to work making sure they were all unconscious before he called Lantern to pick them up.
Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkwoman finished with the last of the cultists by the time Dick finished gathering the surrounding cultists into one pile. Hal and Barry had cleared the area of civilians at the beginning of the battle, so luckily they hadn’t suffered any casualties. Dick had also already called for ambulances early on in the fight to cart away the bystanders who had been injured, so he didn’t need to deal with crowd control.
Hal flew by to put Dick’s cultists in a construct before bringing them to the police cars and prison vans that had already shown up.
A few hours after Barry left, Diana and Clark landed beside Dick, who’d been addressing a nearby police officer. Clark clapped a hand on Dick’s shoulder (ow) before they all turned away to walk to the nearby jet, prepped and ready to return to the Watchtower. And boy was Dick ready to return to the Watchtower. He really wanted a shower.
They entered the jet. “Flash?” Diana queried once the doors shut behind them.
Dick looked over at her. After sending Barry back, he’d radioed the rest of the team to inform them of the Flash’s location. “Minor graze from a beam, then blown back by the device’s blast. But neither explain his injuries,” he said.
Diana furrowed her brow at Dick’s not-much-of-an-explanation. “But—”
“He’s probably in the infirmary, still,” Clark volunteered. “We can ask him ourselves.”
Diana nodded, worry creasing the lines of her face. They made a beeline for the infirmary doors, which Diana opened with a press of her palm to the door scanner. Once they opened, they were greeted with the sight of Barry sitting on one of the infirmary beds.
The bright red of the Flash’s costume contrasted with the white linen of the bed, but more concerning was the state of the man’s skin. He’d taken off the top half of his costume to expose the upper half of his body, revealing more burns like the one Dick had seen earlier, except all over his skin.
Barry looked up at their entry. “What happened?” Clark asked, not unkindly.
The speedster had been tending to his wounds as well as he could when they’d walked in. He shrugged, hiding a grimace at the motion. “No clue,” he said. “One minute, I’m fine, the next? This happens.”
“Batman said you were hit by both a beam and the blast from the device.” While she was speaking, Dick moved closer to Barry to examine the man’s injuries. He made a questioning gesture with his hand, to which Barry gave him permission as he passed over the supplies he’d been using. Dick started working on the chemical burns, taking note of their appearance as he applied a salve and bandages. “Surely that would explain the extent of your injuries?” Diana continued.
Dick shook his head before Barry could answer. “No, look. These are two different types of burns,” he said, pointing out the burn on Barry’s leg and the burns covering all of his torso. “This one—” he gestured to the speedster’s leg “—is from the ray guns. The rest aren’t.”
Barry nodded in agreement, and Dick stepped back after taking care of the worst of the burns that Barry wouldn’t be able to reach. He hated wearing his Batman suit; it wasn’t as sweat-wicking as his Nightwing one, and now he felt all sticky. “In fact,” the Flash continued, oblivious to Dick’s internal dialogue), craning his neck down to examine the difference between the two more closely. His face crumpled in concentration. “These sort of look like—” His face paled in realization.
“Look like what?” Clark prompted.
“It feels like frostbite,” Barry supplied. That caught Dick’s attention. Because there certainly wasn’t any opportunity for Flash to get frostbite in the middle of summer while they were fighting ray-gun firing cultists. And it didn’t make sense for the Speed Force to mix with either the device or gun blasts to cause an injury like frostbite. Maybe an electrical burn? But that still didn’t make sense. “From Snart’s gun.”
“Snart?” Clark asked, to which Dick briefly answered, “Captain Cold.” He was still trying to think through the situation. He and Diana hadn’t shown any effects from the ray guns, and Dick hadn’t shown any effects from the blast other than the general soreness and misery he typically attributed to being a vigilante.
Diana shifted uncomfortably. “And you didn’t have these prior to the battle?” She asked. “Captain Cold wasn’t present to my knowledge. So where could these have come from?”
Barry shook his head. “I don’t know. They could have popped up at any time. I don’t think it was the ray gun, since you’re not feeling any similar effects,” he said to Diana. “So I guess it had to have been the device explosion,” he said, though he didn’t look very satisfied with that explanation. “Though I don’t know why it would affect me like this but not Batman.”
The three of them looked to Dick in an obvious question. Dick barely suppressed a sigh at Bruce’s tendency to hide his injuries from his team, evidently.
Bruce wasn’t exactly known for being very open with his family when it came to showing any sort of weakness, but Dick had hoped that he wasn’t like that with his own team. You know, a team of metahumans (not humans) his age (and not his own children) who he was supposed to trust with important information that could hinder their effectiveness. Guess not.
“I don’t have frostbite,” he said in B’s usual deadpan tone. They looked away, Clark with no small amount of sheepishness. Dick rolled his eyes
“It’s weird, though. . .” Barry began hesitantly.
“What’s weird?” Dick prompted.
The speedster looked around at his friends before returning his scrutiny to the wounds on his torso. “The burns . . . they’re familiar, in a way.” Familiar? Odd choice of words, Dick thought. “Almost . . . no, not almost. They are in the exact same place that they were when I last faced off against Captain Cold.” That was weird. What sort of coincidence—
Fuuuccccckkkkkk. There were no coincidences when you’re a vigilante.
Dick closed his eyes and tilted his head back in exasperation, his fingers finding their way to the bridge of his nose before he realised they couldn’t penetrate through Bruce’s stupidly thick cowl to ease the migraine he was sure was forming. He felt like he had a concussion. Or two.
He suddenly felt very bone-tired. He was very acutely aware, now, of every minute shred of pain in every crevice of his body. And, fuck, it actually did feel like he’d been knocked into last year, when he really did go two rounds with Bane. He hated being right.
“I think it happened about—”
“Let me guess,” Dick interrupted tiredly, drawing the other three’s attention to him. “A week ago?”
Barry looked at him in surprise. “Yeah. How did you know?”
Dick couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. “Just a hunch,” he said, but then because he was supposed to be Bruce the suspicious asshole and not Nightwing, the magnanimous and trusting leader of the Titans, he added, “But I need to run some tests before—”
Clark looked two seconds from rolling his eyes at Batman, something that Dick could heavily relate to. Though he didn’t realise his Uncle Supes was capable of sass. He supposed being around Batman for this many years would cause even Earth’s Greatest Hope to stoop to pettiness and exasperation at some point. “Come on, Batman,” Clark said. “We both know your hunches are usually right.”
Dick narrowed his eyes at Clark in amusement and irritation. Amusement because he was Dick, and irritation because he was supposed to be Bruce right now and B hated being interrupted.
“Fine,” he said, then turned to address Barry. “Flash, have you felt any other unexplainable pains in the last few hours?”
“I mean, yeah, but nothing that’s shown up like—”
“You have a healing factor,” Dick interrupted, “It wouldn’t get a chance to.”
“What wouldn’t?” Diana asked, crossing her arms at the lack of a real explanation, if Dick had to guess.
Dick wondered how he was supposed to break the news. “I think that your body’s physical clock is being reversed,” he bluntly stated, “causing you to regress through past injuries. However, since you have a healing factor, it is erasing all outward physical signs before they have a chance to manifest and exacerbate the pain.” Lucky about the healing factor, Dick thought a little bitterly, not for the first time envious of his speedster friends’ tendency to fast-forward through the pain of being human. He shuffled in place to ease his aching bones. He really wanted a nap.
Barry blinked as he processed that. “Wait,” Clark started, “What do you mean, his physical clock is being reversed?
“He’s getting younger, isn’t he?” Diana asked, to which Bruce nodded. “But what could cause this?”
“For that, I’ll need to run tests. Until then, all we have is a hunch.”
“Do we know how long—” Clark began, but Dick interrupted.
“I’ll need to run tests.”
“But what about—”
“Tests.”
Clark side-eyed him, probably calling Batman a bitch in his head. Which, valid. Dick had no qualms about putting his surrogate father in a bad light for inadvertently causing him to be on this mission in the first place. That was going to be B’s problem later, not Dick’s.
Superman sighed. “Fine. Let’s just get back to the watchtower. Lantern’s staying for clean-up, the rest should already be in the hangar of the jet.”