Chapter Text
The first thing Dick does when his eyes snap open is turn to the side and vomit.
He whacks his head on something metal, and the resounding clang worsens the painful throbbing in his head. Someone moves the round thing away, giving him more room to throw up over the side of… whatever it is that he’s laying on.
“Easy, chum,” he hears beside him, right before a hand comes to rest on his back. “You’re okay.”
There’s commotion around him, but Dick can’t hear anything they’re saying. He struggles for air as his stomach revolts. His head feels so heavy he’s afraid that, if he were to lift it even an inch, it would snap right off his neck.
He’s not sure what’s going on. The last thing he remembers was being in the middle of one of Bruce’s charity galas. He has a distinct memory of feeling like he was being sucked away, and now he’s here — wherever here is — laying on top of something and projectile vomiting.
Damn. How much did he have to drink?
When his stomach no longer has anything inside it to expel, he dry-heaves for another few seconds before he’s finally able to suck in a lungful of air. And then another, and then another.
He spits, trying to get rid of the taste of bile in his mouth. A gloved hand appears in his line of blurry sight, holding some sort of cloth. Whoever it is doesn’t even offer it to Dick; instead, they wipe his mouth off themselves, cleaning the spit and throw up and tears off of his face with careful wipes.
Dick wants to feel embarrassed for essentially being treated like a toddler, but he doesn’t think he would have had the strength to clean himself up. And, honestly, it feels pretty nice.
“That’s it,” the voice says again, once Dick’s face is clean and he’s lying backwards, on his back. “Deep breaths, Dick.”
Dick groans, struggling to focus his eyes. “‘ruce?” he mumbles, turning his head towards the sound.
A dark figure hovers above him. Dick blinks and blinks until his vision starts to clear up. Bruce is looking down at him. Even through the cowl and the white lenses, he can see the concern written across his face.
… cowl?
“It’s me, chum,” Bruce replies. He rests his hand on Dick’s chest, gentle. “We’re all here.”
We?
Dick averts his eyes from Bruce and gazes around the room. It’s an unfamiliar room, definitely not part of the manor or the hotel that the gala was hosted at.
He sees the bright red of the Red Robin outfit first. Directly beside him is Robin, and a few feet behind him is Red Hood. When Dick weakly turns his head, he sees Black Bat sitting on a metal table directly beside him.
They’re all in uniform. In a strange-looking room. Surrounded by some sort of… tech. A machine, maybe. When Dick looks down at himself, he finds he’s in his Nightwing suit.
What the hell did he miss?
He tries to get this across, but all he manages to get out is, “B’huh?’ Bruce frowns even harder. Dick is worried for the structural integrity of his face.
Bruce lifts his hand and raises two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Dick takes a moment to process the words coming out of his mouth, then obediently says, “Two.” He can tell that he answered correctly by the way Bruce’s shoulders slump, ever so slightly, but the frown remains on his face.
“When is… your birth-day?” Cass asks in her quiet, stuttered speech.
“March twentieth,” Dick answers automatically.
“Can you count backwards from twenty?” questions Tim
Head trauma tests, Dick realizes. He counts back from twenty without argument. Something bad must have happened if they’re all pitching in.
“I’m okay,” he says, holding a hand up before Jason can take a breath to ask him what the date is. Carefully, he gets his other hand behind him and pushes himself up so that he’s sitting.
“Do not strain yourself, Richard,” Damian orders.
Dick jerks, staring at Damian with wide eyes, but Tim throws up his hands and says, “We disabled the cameras. Don’t worry.”
It eases Dick’s panic a bit, but the identity paranoia from over a decade of this job still bubbles nervously in the back of his mind.
“Been here… long time,” Cass tells him, gracefully slipping off the table and coming to stand beside Bruce, carefully avoiding the vomit on the floor. When she knows that he’s watching her, she signs to him, We thought we lost you forever.
Guilt eats at Dick from the inside. “I am okay,” he assures. “And I’m feeling a little better. I think throwing up got the bad stuff out of my system. Like after you throw up from heartburn.”
“What kind of heartburn do you get?” quips Jason. His voice sounds weak.
Dick tries to smile, rubbing his head where it hurts the most but is slowly easing up. “So, what happened, exactly?” he questions. “Last thing I remember, we were at Bruce’s charity gala for the Police Reform Foundation.”
Before he’s even done talking, Dick can feel the air around them shift. Tim and Jason share a look; Damian’s fists clench at his sides; Bruce’s mouth folds into a flat line; Cass and Alfred continue to stare at him, but their eyes hold a heaviness that has Dick sitting up straighter.
“What?” Dick asks carefully.
Bruce takes a long breath through his nose. “The Mad Hatter kidnapped you and put you in his dream machine,” he explains. “We’re not sure how long you’ve been under, but it’s been at least a day, if not more.”
Dick frowns. “What?” he repeats.
Bruce does not respond right away, which has Dick very alarmed. Jason, apparently sick of Bruce’s hesitance, cuts right to the chase.
“There was no charity gala,” he tells Dick. “There was no Christmas decorating, or circus performance, or anything else that happened over the last few days. That was all in the dream world you were creating while under the effects of the machine. You made it all up.”
“Jason!” Tim hisses.
“Have some tact, Todd,” bites Damian.
Alfred begins to chastise him, and Jason argues back in defense, but Dick doesn’t hear any of that. The headache that was once disappearing is now back at full-force. The blood in Dick’s veins has turned to ice. It can’t be. It can’t be.
“Hatter’s been feeding you dopamine enhancers. You’re stuck in your ideal world.”
“This whole thing? None of it is real. It’s all a dream. You’re dreaming.”
“The Mad Hatter built another dream machine and you’ve been trapped in it for days.”
“You are in a dream world, where everything here is perfect. You are lost in your mind.”
His stomach rolls over for an entirely different reason than before. If that’s all true, then that really was Bruce and Cass and the others coming to try to wake him up. His parents are still dead. His family haven’t forgiven each other, or him. Nothing has been resolved.
“Oh,” he says.
The others are watching him carefully. Dick shakes his head, ignoring the stabbing pain that shoots through it, and plasters on a fake smile. “Well, that’s definitely a mind-fuck,” he chuckles.
They continue to stare.
“Master Dick,” starts Alfred, “perhaps you should return to the Cave, so we may confirm there are no long-lasting side effects.”
Dick does his very best to never say no to Alfred, but this will not be one of those days. “Alright, but I can't stay long,” he says. “If I’ve been gone for a few days, I should really go check on the ‘Haven—”
“You must be out of your fucking mind,” Jason snaps. Bruce looks long-suffering. It would be funny, if Dick thought that look was directed at Jason’s manners, and not at Dick himself. “Each of us went into your mind and learned some of your deepest-darkest secrets, and you think you can just up and swing back to Bludhaven without talking about it? Mr. Let’s-All-Talk-About-Our-Feelings?”
All eyes are on him. Dick squirms uncomfortably. "And if I don’t want to talk about it right this second?” he huffs.
“When have I ever cared about what you thought?” Jason fires.
When you were Robin, Dick thinks, but doesn’t say. When all you wanted was a family, and I couldn’t even give you that.
Jason must be able to tell exactly what Dick is thinking, because his entire face shifts into something guilty, an exact mirror of what Dick is sure his own face looks like.
“Maybe we should do this later—” Tim suggests.
To Dick’s surprise, Bruce shakes his head firmly. “No,” he argues. “Jason is right. After everything that has happened today, we are going to start resolving this now.” He turns to look back at Dick. “We all entered different moments in your dream. We all saw something concerning,” Bruce tells him.
He pauses, then softens his voice — something he hasn’t done since Dick was Robin. “You’ve been hiding a lot of pain from us, chum. I think it’s time we talk about it.”
Dick looks away, ashamed. They weren’t supposed to know about any of this. It’s Dick’s burden to bear for the mistakes he has made. He never wanted them to know he hasn’t been strong enough to handle it.
Slowly, Damian steps into Dick’s line of sight. “Please,” he asks. “Richard.”
Little brat. Always knows how to tug at Dick’s heartstring to get whatever he wants, and he knows that’s not going to just stop any time soon. Dick wants to hug him, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed.
He doesn’t know anything, anymore.
“I don’t know why it’s starting now,” he admits quietly. “It’s been years since these issues happened. A decade, for some.” He glances at Bruce, and then away again. “I was fine. And then I wasn’t.”
The roundabout admission has everyone in the room in a silent standstill. Dick keeps his head down. He knows it’s a coward’s way out, but he doesn’t want to look any of them in the eye. He doesn’t want to see their faces.
“That’s how it works, chum,” Bruce tells him. “You don’t have to have a reason to feel that way. Sometimes it just happens.”
“Old bandages rot off if they are not taken care of,” Alfred reminds him, resting a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Broken bones can heal incorrectly. Some wounds aren’t as healed as you thought they were.”
Dick’s lips wobble into a small, watery smile, glancing up at him. “I get it, Al,” he says. “Thank you.”
Clearing his throat, Bruce steps forward. Alfred moves to the side, letting his hand fall off Dick’s shoulder. Dick doesn’t have time to mourn the loss of comfort, because Bruce puts both of his hands on Dick’s shoulders in replacement.
His hands are much bigger than Alfred’s. They’re broader, and stronger. Their warmth seeps into Dick’s skin. His fingers squeeze around the curves of Dick’s shoulders, desperately holding on.
Dick remembers how they felt around his arms when Bruce would pin them at his sides and toss him around like a football. He remembers them running over Dick’s head when he woke up crying for his parents. He remembers how small his own hand was clutched in Bruce’s, when Dick would fall off the side of buildings before he’d mastered the art of the grappling gun, and Bruce would catch him.
“Dickie,” Bruce whispers. Dick can hear his broken heart in his words.
A sob comes racing out of Dick’s chest, but gets lodged in his throat as it swells. His eyes sting with tears. He hasn’t cried in front of Bruce in so long. He’s never cried in front of Jason, and he’s only ever cried in front of Tim once. Damian has seen him at some low points, but nothing ever like this. He’s the big brother. He’s supposed to be strong for them.
Bruce stares at him a little longer, obviously noticing Dick on his breaking point. Without another word, Bruce grabs both sides of his cape and flings them over Dick, wrapping him up tight. Just like he used to when Dick was Robin and he would shield from bullets, or shelter him from rain on patrol, or when he would hide inside of it during Justice League meetings.
What a bastard. How is Dick supposed to hold back, after that?
He clings to Bruce with all of his might — which, granted, isn’t that much; he’s still weak from being under the effects of the machine. He rests his head on the cool armor of the Batman suit, letting it all out, until his cries turn to sobs, and his sobs turn to wails.
He’s vaguely aware of a small body clambering up onto the table and burrowing under the cape. Damian settles at Dick’s right, letting him stay pressed up against Bruce’s front, and wraps his arms around Dick from the side.
That starts a domino effect. Tim and Cass descend on him in a matter of moments, making their way into the cape as well. A tall body comes around to Dick’s right side and drapes an arm around Dick over Damian’s body. It must be Alfred, because Alfred is the only one Damian would allow to do that.
The only one left is Jason, who hesitates for only another few seconds before taking Dick’s left and slipping under the cape as well. “You’re so stupid, Dickface,” he mumbles as he lays his head on top of Dick’s. “How can you think you don’t belong when you’re the only thing that kept this family together?”
Of course that just makes Dick cry harder. Stupid poetry nerd. He cries and he cries, more than he has in a long time. His team — his family — holds him through it. When he shakes, there are hands there to soothe him still. When he sniffles, a handkerchief appears under the cape to dry his eyes.
It’s not a fix-all. They all still have a lot of work to do, forgiving each other and healing from the hurt they’ve all been through. (There is no way Alfred isn't booking them all group therapy sessions after this.) But this is a start — an opened line of communication, a promise to each other that things will change.
His tears have nearly dissolved the glue keeping his mask on. He should be concerned, because they’re still in public, in a warehouse owned by the Mad Hatter nonetheless, but he isn’t.
Here, underneath the protection of his father’s cape and surrounded by his family, he knows he’s safe. He knows that he belongs.
The Mad Hatter returns to the warehouse with the few remaining goons he has. He swings open the doors to the emergency exit of his Dream Room, expecting Batman and his team to have left by now.
He is wrong.
When the doors hit the wall with a resounding crash, Batman lifts his head up and twists it to the side to face him. From inside of his cape, five sets of white lenses stare at the Hatter through the dark abyss, unblinking. The death-stare he gets from the old man beside the Bat is just as terrifying.
Hatter gets to his stomach without another word, crosses his wrists behind his back, and gives up.