Chapter Text
DICK GRAYSON
He can’t get warm.
The bruises, he can deal with. The cut on his side, the banged-up knee—for Dick, that’s just the cost of doing business. But the cold. It’s like he’s still in the bay, like all that cold black water sank through his skin and soaked into his bones, and it doesn’t matter how many blankets he slept under, how hot he ran the shower this morning, how many cups of piping hot coffee he’s put into his body since he dragged himself out of bed, it just won’t go away.
There’s work to do, though. The attack on the bridge last night was just a cell; there’s others, and with what they got from the ones they caught last night, Dick thinks they can track the rest down. They just have to do the legwork.
It’s not like the movies. He still remembers the flicker of amusement in Bruce’s eyes the first time Dick got stuck on a lead. People said Bruce didn’t smile, but Dick knows better; he smiles in glints, in softened consonants, in nods from across the room. The answers don’t just fall into your lap. You have to do the legwork.
It’s soothing, in a way. Clues and associates and money trails—compared to everything that happened with Crane and Jason back in Gotham, this feels like something dangerously close to normal. Reminds him of that year back in Detroit, working his way through cold cases and pawn shop robberies. Sure, this is a little more … explosive, but still. Better.
If he could just get fucking warm.
He’s got a jacket on over his hoodie, and he’s debating whether it’s worth getting up out of the control room to snag a blanket from the lounge when his cell phone rings. This is really a one-man job, so half the others are still in bed, and the other half are out for brunch (brunch, because apparently when the world isn’t actively ending, that’s the sort of thing they do with downtime) so he figures it’s probably Kory or Rachel calling to see if he wants a doggy bag.
It’s Bruce’s name that pops up on his screen, though.
Bruce? It takes Dick two tries to accept the call. The cold’s sapped the dexterity from his fingers, and he’s telling himself his hands aren’t shaking, but the lie’s getting thinner and thinner by the minute. “Bruce?” Jesus, why does he sound so alarmed? Like he’s expecting Bruce to say the sky is falling, or the world is ending, just because he’s calling out of the blue. But Bruce has been better, lately, about staying in touch. And Donna told him what happened when she, uh, came back, so Dick’s been trying to be better about it, too. Weekly calls, just to catch up. Talking about books and Wayne Industries and shit that’s got nothing to do with putting on suits and fighting crime.
He clears his throat, and winces when it turns into a fresh round of coughs. Maybe he did take some of the bay with him. Felt like he swallowed half of it by the time he got that kid to the shoreline, and it turns out, Dick’s not really great at water acts.
“This a bad time?” Bruce’s voice is carefully neutral, like it always is; and Dick hears everything in it, anyway, like he always does. There’s interest, there—targeted, not the general sort of how’s everything going in your life, Dick? And underneath it, the faintest refrain of concern.
He clears his throat again, and thankfully, no coughs this time. “No, no,” he says, because it actually is good to talk to Bruce. There’s something sort of … fuck, he doesn’t know. Soothing? Soothing about it. Bruce has this way of making the world seem simple, and when Dick’s around him (or, to a lesser extent, talking to him) it feels like he gets to steal some of that simple for a while. “No, it’s good. Just watching the computer run some leads to ground.” Just because he has to do the legwork, doesn’t mean he can’t have help.
“Don’t suppose these leads have anything to do with the bridge last night.”
“Ah, you saw that.” Dick leans back in his seat, mug between his hands to try to leach that last bit of warmth from the ceramic. “Surprised they have room in the news cycle over there.” Barbara and Bruce had their work cut out for them, cleaning up Crane’s mess.
Bruce’s hum rumbles through the phone line. “Who says it was Gotham news?”
A smile tugs at Dick’s lips. “You checkin’ up on me, Bruce?”
“Just keeping apprised.” And Dick can’t see him, but he can imagine one of those Bruce Wayne smiles, tucked into the corners of Bruce’s eyes. “Nightwing made a noteworthy appearance. Titan pulls child from bay, more at ten.”
He’s not sure why it makes his cheeks heat. It’s not like Bruce is scolding him; he just sort of prefers to keep away from the cameras. “Slow news day,” he says. “You know how it goes.”
“Nothing wrong with a little good press, Dick.”
“Remind me, when was the last time Batman did a presser?”
“Funny.”
“You know me. I’m a funny, funny g—” His chest seizes suddenly, and even an acrobat’s grace can’t stop him sloshing coffee down his front when the coughing hits. Deep, wracking coughs, wet and dry in turns, and hard enough he almost gags before they let up again. “Shit, sorry,” he rasps.
Bruce doesn’t say anything for a second. “That cough doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah.” He coughs again, thankfully not quite so aggressively. “Turns out, water’s better for drinking than breathing. Although … not sure I’d recommend drinking the bay water, either.”
“You’re sure you’re alright?”
“Well, I’m feeling pretty humble about my swimming skills,” he jokes. He can just imagine Bruce’s stare, even from halfway across the country. Flat. Unimpressed.
“Nausea? Fatigue? Fever?”
Dick manfully swallows a sigh (and another cough) and frowns down at the coffee stains on his sweatpants. Awesome. “Sweet of you to look out for me, Bruce,” he says, because he’s missed teasing Bruce, and because it tends to be the most surefire way to divert his attention. Bruce has enough to worry about, and Dick is … he’s good. He’s fine. He’s getting shit done. “But I’m good, really. Things are good.” And he means it. The Titans are hitting their stride, and it really feels like they’re making a difference. Dick just wants to keep that going.
He also wants to get some dry pants.
“Hey—” Fuck, he stands too quick. His knee gives a sharp twinge and starts to drop him, and damned if he doesn’t knock the whole fucking mug over when he braces on the console. He sees it roll. It’s like time slows down, and he can catch it. He should be able to catch it, but it’s like there’s a lag somewhere between his brain and his arm, because by the time his hand’s in place to intercept, the mug’s already hitting the floor. “Shit, Bruce, I gotta go. Talk this weekend.” And he’s hitting the END CALL before Bruce can hear anything else.
Heart in his throat, and stomach somewhere not very far behind it, he stands there, staring at the mess he’s made, and he wants … fuck, he just wants to go back to bed. Change his pants, curl up under the covers, and sleep until his body’s back on track.
But there’s still work to do.
#
He doesn’t know what time it is.
After brunch, he thinks. He remembers … Kory and Rachel came home sometime, didn’t they? Brought back pancakes and bacon for the boys, but the smell made him too nauseous to leave the control room door open while the others chowed down. That was …
He doesn’t know when that was.
Earlier.
Before.
He’s so fucking cold.
There’s something he’s supposed to be doing. The screens are bright through the backs of his eyelids, burning, searing, prickling tears into his eyes like little pins drawing blood, but opening them would be worse. Was worse. The world turned to crystals and kaleidoscopes, and it feels like he’s been in this chair for an eternity, and he feels like he only just closed his eyes when—
He hears the door opening. The shwick of the metal, the sudden rush of cool into the room, because he remembers bumping the temperature up in the control room when he came back in from cleaning the coffee, and it’s had time to warm up. He just …
He doesn’t know how much time.
“Dick?”
The voice doesn’t so much startle him as confuse him. He’s not sure that voice could startle him, anymore; it’s as familiar as his own. Deep. A little coarse. A little refined.
Bruce.
He groans, reaching up to scrub a hand over his eyes. They feel like sand. His mouth feels like cotton. His lungs feel like swamps and stinging swarms, and when he inhales to speak, it stirs up the wasps. By the time the coughs taper off, his eyes are wet, and his head’s throbbing, and—
And Bruce is there. Right in front of him, a little hazy, but definitely there.
Except, not really.
“Shit,” he whispers, because Bruce isn’t here. Bruce was on the phone. Which means this Bruce is just … “Are you here to tell me to lay in the floor again?”
Confusion furrows Bruce’s brows, but there’s something else there. More of that worry, but concentrated. The other Bruce didn’t look so worried. Smug. Sad. Never worried. Maybe that’s a bad sign. “Why would I tell you to lay in the floor?”
Dick waves a hand. He’s Dick’s subconscious; he should remember this stuff. “To help me think.” He waves again, this time to the screen. “Cool down. Think clearer.”
“You’re having trouble thinking?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, frowning. Which, in hindsight, probably points to yes. “That’s what you said the last time. In the prison. Lay down on the floor. It was a thing.” Not-Bruce really doesn’t remember?
He doesn’t look like he remembers. His brows are furrowed even deeper, and he’s closer than before. A blink, and he’s even closer, hand extended, and the back of it is cool and dry and nice against Dick’s forehead.
“You’re burning up,” Bruce murmurs.
“I think I know that,” Dick replies, though he still feels like he’s freezing from the inside. “I guess I have to, if you know it.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Dick actually laughs a little, though he pays for it in another fit of coughs. He’s so tired, he can barely even work up the energy for a proper cough; the wetness just kind of sits there in his chest, bubbling and crackling. “Says the hallucination.”
“Hallucination?” That’s not Bruce. That’s Kory. Kory’s there, in the doorway, mouth all downturned and unhappy and arms all crossed. She looks—
Huh, she looks at Bruce.
“Wait,” he says slowly. Feels slow. Everything feels like syrup and molasses and like thousands of gallons of water crushing in around him as he fights his way to shore. “You see him?”
“Of course I see him,” Kory says. “He’s here, Dick. He’s right here.”
Oh.
Oh, that’s.
“No.” He shakes his head, blinking his eyes all the way open and sitting up straighter in his chair. His side burns like a brand as he moves, and that’s—no, that wasn’t like that before. None of this was like this, and he knows that’s a problem, but he can’t seem to hold onto the knowledge. Every thought is a thread slipping through his fingers, scattering under Bruce’s hand as he shifts it to Dick’s cheek.
“He’s feverish,” he tells Kory. “How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t understand,” he hears himself say. It sounds like a plea, even to his own ears. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me how you’re here. Tell me what’s wrong with me.
Kory doesn’t answer him, though. She answers Bruce. Of course she answers Bruce. “We got back about six hours ago. He looked a little under the weather, but he said he was fine.”
“I was.” He remembers that. “I am.” He knows that.
He just doesn’t feel it.
Bruce kneels in front of him, and Dick watches him because Bruce is the center point of the room. The loft. The world, or whatever small part of it Dick can wrap his brain around. He doesn’t know why he’s breathing so hard; he hasn’t even moved. But he can’t seem to catch his breath, and his head’s spinning, and—
“Dick, look at me.” Bruce’s hand is on his neck, now, firm and steady. His thumb moves up and down against the base of Dick’s head, slick with what Dick vaguely recognizes is sweat, and he has the strangest urge to apologize. Sorry he’s sweaty. Sorry he doesn’t know why. “I need you to breathe. Can you do that for me?”
It’s such a small request. Of course, he wants to say. Easy. No problem. Except when he tries, his throat sticks, and his lungs stick, and his ribs stick, and it’s all he can do to turn away as the next coughing fit crashes into him like a wave. But it doesn’t let up. It goes, and it goes, and the coughing turns to gagging, and he thinks he might be sick, but when he tries to stand to stumble to the trash can in the corner, his knee goes. Just. Goes. Buckles. Gives.
This is gonna hurt, he manages to think, and it does, but not the way he expects. He doesn’t hit the floor. One second, gravity’s asserting its dominance, and the next—
“I’ve got you.” Bruce’s arms are around his waist, and Dick can’t tell if he just moves that fast, or Dick’s processing that slow, but Bruce is there easing him back into his seat like he’d been there the whole time. “Easy, I’ve got you. I … ” He trails off, eyes drifting down to the hand he’s just pulled from Dick’s hip.
It’s red. A little red. Red enough.
“Right.” Dick tries for a smile, but his face feels detached. The edges of his vision are dark and getting darker, narrowing around Bruce’s face. “I think I got impaled.”
And that’s the last thing he remembers before the darkness swallows him whole.
#
He’s still cold.
It’s the first thought that comes together from the blackness he’s been floating in. There’s been voices. Movement. Flashes of pain that burst like fireworks and fade just as quickly. But everything’s been kind of far away and slippery, shrouded by a haze of blissful unconsciousness. But that … that one sticks.
He’s still fucking cold.
“You’ve got a fever, Dick. I can’t give you any more blankets.”
Bruce is there. That’s good. Some subconscious, animal part of his brain grabs onto that and settles, because if Bruce is there and calm, then everything’s got to be okay.
But.
Cold. Yes, it’s cold. And something’s beeping, and there’s something in his nose and on his finger, and everything’s heavy and hazy and so fucking dim when he finally peels his eyes open. At first, he can’t make anything out. Too blurry, and he knows he’s supposed to be able to function without that sense, but his ears are ringing, and everything smells like chemicals and plastic, and he can’t seem to feel anything but pain and heavy and cold.
“You’re in the jet,” Bruce tells him, like he can hear Dick struggling. Like he knows. His hand’s there, suddenly, over Dick’s shoulder, and it’s the first time Dick realizes he hasn’t got his jacket. Or his hoodie. Or his shirt. He might’ve thrown up on them. He hopes not. He’s not sure, but somebody took them all, and gave him a starchy thin sheet in exchange, and that doesn’t seem very fair at all. “Do you remember what happened?”
He shakes his head. The jet? “No, I was … you were … ” Fuck, he can’t think. It’s like his head’s been filled with quick-dry concrete and left to harden. It hurts, but Bruce asked, and he just … he can answer. He takes a breath. Focuses. “We were in the Tower. Control room, and I must’ve—”
“You passed out,” Bruce says, not unkindly. “Nearly earned yourself a trip to the hospital, but your vitals were holding steady. I’ve called ahead to Doctor Thompkins; she’ll meet us at the Manor.”
Leslie? Wait, but she’s … “Gotham?” His tongue’s too heavy; everything sounds drunken and slurred, but Bruce seems to understand him anyway.
“The Manor has better medical equipment,” Bruce says. “Your chest needs an x-ray to rule out an infection, and we’ll want to get an MRI scan for that leg.”
Which all sounds true and sensible, but Dick knows Bruce. Even bleary and addled, he knows him, and he knows there’s something he’s not saying. “Did they—” he starts, but the words stick in his throat. Did they want me to go? Because he wasn’t trying to keep this from them. He wasn’t. Didn’t even occur to him to say something, but maybe it should have, and maybe they’ll think he was lying, and he’s worked so hard to regain their trust that losing it now would—
“Dick.” Bruce squeezes his shoulder and holds the pressure. One. Two. Three. Release. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop.” And before Dick can protest, Bruce gives the heart monitor hanging over his cot a meaningful nod. Shit. “Right now, all you need to do is rest.”
“It’s not that easy,” Dick rasps. It’s never that easy. Because every time he tries something, he fucks it up. He keeps fucking up, and he’s burned through so many chances, and he doesn’t know how many more they’ll have the grace to give. “I wasn’t trying to hide it.”
“You think that’s what they were upset about?”
Dick’s chest gives another painful spasm. “They were upset?”
“Of course they were upset,” says Bruce gently. “You were bleeding, and you collapsed, and they didn’t know why. But they weren’t upset with you; they were upset about you. You understand the difference, don’t you?” And Dick hates how sincere the question sounds.
He hates even more that he doesn’t know how to answer it.
He sighs. “I tried to close it up,” he says. That’s easier to focus on, and he remembers that. Coming home from the bridge, wrestling out of his wet uniform, trying to clean out the graze. Puncture? It’s a gash along his flank on the right side, long as his hand and thick as his middle finger. Clipped by a piece of rebar from the bridge, maybe, or stuck on one of the mangled cars while they were trying to get everyone clear. He shrugs, desperate not to dislodge Bruce’s hand. He needs it. Doesn’t like feeling like this. Sluggish and disoriented. Dizzy. Weak. Bruce helps. Bruce makes him feel steady again. “Just couldn’t really reach.”
“You could’ve had help.”
Dick shrugs again. “Didn’t think it was that bad.” He means that, but maybe … maybe he shouldn’t say that. Maybe he should’ve known better, and the thought that he’s miscalculated so badly that Bruce felt the need to fly out to San Francisco….
He sighs. “Shit, Bruce, I’m sorry.” And he hates the way his eyes burn, but blinking them doesn’t seem to help. “I didn’t mean to—”
“To get sick?” Bruce’s expression softens, at once unbearably fond and uncomfortably pained. “To get hurt? Dick, this isn’t your fault. These things happen.”
They didn’t used to. Getting hurt, maybe, but whatever this is? Dick’s been shot and beaten and stabbed, but it’s been a long time since he’s been so fucking ill. It’s worse than the prison, like his whole body’s tied down with weights, and it feels like it came out of nowhere, but it’s been almost a day. He should’ve known something was wrong. He should’ve done something, before it got this bad. “Guess it’s good you called.”
“You can thank the San Fran nightly news,” Bruce says. He tips a finger toward Dick’s knee. “The footage from the bridge—you looked like you were favoring your leg.”
Dick almost wants to ask how he noticed. How he could pick something like that out in a two-second video clip. But he’s Bruce, and he knows things, and Dick realizes that he’d gotten used to that, before he left for Detroit. He didn’t have to say he was hurt; Bruce just knew. He didn’t have to bench himself when he needed rest; Bruce did it for him.
In hindsight, that’s … probably not great.
“’s probably fine.” He needs to get up. Sit up, at least, and do something about the thing in his nose. But when he starts to push himself up, Bruce presses his shoulder a little harder.
“What are you trying to do?” Not stay down. Not stop moving around. Just a question.
That’s almost worse.
“Need to get up,” Dick manages.
“Why?”
“Because.” He doesn’t have more than that.
“You need to piss?”
Dick shakes his head. Honestly, he’s parched.
“You going to puke?”
Dick shakes his head again, though he’s a little less certain about that.
“Then you don’t need to get up.” Bruce’s grip lightens again, but his hand stays. He’s sitting next to Dick’s bed—he used to think it was over the top, having an actual bedroom with a twin-sized flatbed on a jet, but he’s since warmed to the idea—and it occurs to Dick he doesn’t know how long he’s been there. He thinks it’s been about a day since the bridge, but it’s just a guess. There’s no light peeking through the window blinds, so. Night, or close to it. But how that translates into hours? How long he was out, how they got him on the jet, why they put him on the jet to begin with—he doesn’t know any of it, and he’s not used to not knowing. It doesn’t sit right. None of it sits right—not the IV itching in his arm, or the tubes itching in his nose, or the thin fucking sheet that’s not fucking doing anything.
“Can I at least—” He reaches for the tubing (nasal cannula, that’s it, that’s the words) looped beneath his nose, but Bruce intercepts him with his other hand.
“Leave that.” It’s not chiding. It’s barely even stern. Maybe it’s the setting, or the hour, or the fact that he’s apparently flown halfway across the country on a hunch from a news clip, but he seems so … soft. “Leslie’s orders, until we know more about that cough.”
As if summoned by the word, another round of the miserable, hacking things comes tearing through Dick’s chest, and each one feels like the strike of a pick behind his eyes. Ching. Ching. Ching. Bursts of white. Bursts of pain. He doesn’t remember curling onto his side, but he must’ve, because Bruce’s hand is between his shoulder blades, rubbing slow, soothing circles over his skin.
“Breathe,” he says, and Dick tries. “Breathe.” And Dick does, one breath after the other, deep as he dares, until the spots start to fade from the edges of his vision. Fuck, it really is worse than the prison. He feels worse than the prison, fingers twisting in the thin, sad sheet to tug it tighter. Bruce’s hand is a singular point of comfort, and Dick tries to focus on it. Not the burn in his chest, but the faint roughness of calluses; not the chill gnawing at his bones, but the gentle pressure of Bruce’s palm along his spine.
“Bruce,” he rasps, swallowing thickly. There’s still some part of him that thinks this can’t be real. That’s sure, when he opens his eyes, he’ll be alone in the control room. Maybe that’s why it feels okay to say what he says next. “I don’t think I’m okay.”
He doesn’t think he’s been okay for a while. Trying to strike out on his own, failing. Trying to lead, failing. He’s just … tired. He’s so fucking tired.
And it’s like Bruce hears all that, too. His expression softens, saddens, as he reaches up to brush a few sweat-matted strands from Dick’s brow. “It’s all right, little bird.” It’s been years since Bruce called him that. Years and lifetimes. Hearing it now … it feels a bit like coming home. “You don’t have to be.”
It’s not true; somewhere in Dick’s scattered thoughts, he knows better. He has to be more than okay. He has to be right. Has to be strong. Has to be perfect, or the people he loves will die.
But just for now, as that blissful, floating blackness starts to creep back in at the edges … just for now, he lets himself believe it.
#
There’s someone prodding at him. Cutting at him. Voices washing over and into and against each other, and he knows he knows them, but he doesn’t know how. The world’s nothing but blurred lights and shadows when he opens his eyes, and they move and shift like monsters grasping at him from the dark. Like two faces laughing at him, snarling at him. Like a whispering, whimpering nightmare.
“Stop,” he tries to say, but he can barely make a sound. No air. Feels like there’s no air, and the hands keep pressing, knife keeps cutting. He’s on his side, and he tries to twist away, but something holds him in place. More hands. More shadows. They catch his wrist when he tries to bat them away, and the world pitches violently when he raises his head to try to see them. “Stop.”
But they don’t. They won’t. The hands hold tighter, and his own limbs won’t listen. Clumsy. Weak. He tries to kick out, but his legs won’t move. Panic starts to climb in his throat as the voices get louder, more insistent. He hears the words, but he can’t understand them. There’s something wrong with his head, too slow, too hazy. “What—what’d you do?” he rasps. His throat feels dry. Sticky. Something’s pushing air down it, and it tastes like chemicals and ozone.
This isn’t right. None of this is right. There was—he was in the jet. He was in the jet, with Bruce, and Bruce wouldn’t let this happen. Bruce wouldn’t let someone do this, not again, not after—but if he’s not there, then where?
“Bruce!” He fights harder, fights with everything he has, but the hands are everywhere. Like the pavilion, choking on his own blood, boots and fists and tangled voices, and the world’s gone gray around the edges. It hurts. Every twist, every tug, every thrash, it feels like knives in his bones, and he can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe, but he can’t fucking stop. “Bruce, please!” He wouldn’t leave him. Bruce wouldn’t leave him. He’ll help him. He’ll save him.
This time, he’ll save him.