Chapter Text
Work had been a good distraction from everything else. He didn’t have time to think about Kori when he was at work, and he didn’t need to see Peter’s heartbroken face either. He loved Peter. He was Dick’s little boy, but Dick couldn’t be the person Peter needed to mourn the life they had envisioned when Dick’s heart ached for every second since she left after the wedding.
He was usually the most available between himself and Mary with both his time and patience, but at least his failings had been lessened by her stepping up more for the past few weeks. She had even taken half a day off to take Peter to have his vision checked, and she made sure Peter wasn’t suffering while Dick distracted himself with work.
“Calling all available units. Attack at Blüdhaven Elementary. Seven or more armed attackers. The leader is suspected to be the Joker,” the radio screeched.
White terror hit Dick like a wave before realization took over. Nothing was okay about anyone attacking children, but at least Peter wouldn’t be there today.
Dick glanced at the road ahead of them and his colleague, Officer Hansen, before turning the police car toward the school.
Peter would be devastated when he heard about this. Devastated but physically well, and perhaps with a new prescription for glasses that he would wear without complaining about headaches.
A lump grew in Dick’s throat at the thought of informing Peter. He just hoped that he could save everyone Peter knew. No kids deserved what was happening to them right now, but at least none of them were Peter’s close friends, and hopefully, none of the teachers would be fatally injured either.
“You’re from Gotham, right?” Officer Hansen asked from the passenger seat. His voice was young, too young, and his cheeks still held on to the last bit of childhood roundness. He was a rookie, and someone Dick was supposed to form into a competent cop, and he was probably a few years older than Dick had been when he had Peter, but it was sometimes hard to see him as anything but a tall child.
The sirens were blaring and making Dick’s heart race more than it already was. It was necessary to tell the cars to get out of the way before the reinforced police cars took their side-view mirror. “Yes.”
“What is he like?” Officer Hansen hesitated for a moment. “I’ve heard some, but what can I expect?”
Dick inhaled deeply. There were a lot of things to expect. Mainly, the sadistic ways the Joker tortured people and seemed to find joy in taking the lives of children, but the bigger question was whether Dick could trust this twenty-something next to him. Most of his colleagues were loyal to the station, but that didn’t always mean being loyal to the law or its citizens.
“Expect the worst,” Dick eventually settled on. “He has been legally insane for decades.”
They were almost at the school, but Officer Hansen seemed to take his time to ask. “But isn’t he really old by now? He can’t possibly be that dangerous anymore?”
Dick took a sharp turn. “You will be eaten alive with that belief, and no, he’s not that old. He’s only in his fifties or early sixties, and unfortunately, he only needs to speak to poison others if he ever becomes too old to swing a gun around himself.”
Officer Hansen opened his mouth, but Dick didn’t spare him a single glance as he hazardously stopped the car and jumped out into a cold wave that almost toppled him. His eyes widened, and his whole body froze until he let out a tiny whisper, “No.”
He was right in front of the gate, but he still had to run before any of his other colleagues tried to stop him. It had been almost personal before, but it was entirely personal now, and Dick wouldn’t let anything stop him from saving the reason he woke up every morning.
There were other pieces of happiness in the world, but they all paled in importance compared to the sight of Peter crying with a bit of blood falling from his lips, and his eyes were already swelling up into painful black eyes.
The Joker looked right at Dick as he loosened his grip on the reason plants grew and the birds sang in the morning. Dick didn’t have time to understand why the Joker would let go of Peter. He could only focus on Peter’s hurried and unsteady steps and his strangled voice screaming. “Tati! Tati!”
Dick’s chest felt concave, and his legs barely moved. He had to move. He had to get close enough to protect his son, but there seemed to be cement around his feet.
“Tati! Tati! You came!” Peter’s eyes were wide. He threw his arms out in front of him as he ran on his slim legs, quicker than Dick had ever seen him do before.
Dick had always told Peter to be careful not to expend himself too much. He had asthma. He couldn't run away quickly. He would get another asthma attack, and Dick didn't carry one of Peter's inhalers when he was on duty. He should have. Another person’s child could have an asthma attack.
The Joker nodded, and someone nearby pulled a trigger.
It was not one of the Joker’s sick jokes this time despite the unhinged laughter.
Peter jerked sideways and fell. Limp. Lifeless. Gasping for air.
Dick finally ran. The Joker could shoot him, but he didn't. Maybe Dick's colleagues stopped him, maybe he just enjoyed the show. Maybe he was waiting for Dick’s entire world to end to decide if he was worthy of a mercy kill.
Peter didn't respond as Dick pulled him up from the ground. His eyes moved around, but he didn’t react to Dick’s hurried strokes over his cheeks and chest. His eyelids fluttered, and his mouth was moving, but only gurgles came out.
Dick knew the rules about moving someone after a serious injury.
Never move someone if there's any chance that they have injured their spine. You could paralyze them.
But his son needed help. His son was unconscious. His limbs were twitching, and his face was tense.
Dick’s breath shuddered, and he stood up to run faster than he had ever run before. He felt like he was running faster than Wally had ever run, but it was still not fast enough. An ambulance would come eventually, and Dick had to catch it. Dick could hear his labored breath, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything but Peter’s twitches against Dick’s arms and blood seeping into Dick’s shirt.
Tires screeched, and Dick could finally breathe. There was someone to help him. There was someone to help his little boy. They were moving so fast that Dick didn’t even notice they had left the ambulance before they were in front of him.
“Sir, we have it from here,” one of the EMTs said, and gestured to a stretcher. “You can lay him here.”
Peter needed help, but he couldn’t place him there. It looked uncomfortable, and Peter was shaking. People shook when they were cold or frightened, and Dick could help with both. They didn’t know that Peter didn’t like strangers and that he was quiet when upset. He must have been very upset to be trembling and gasping like this.
“Sir, you need to lay him down now.”
Dick only held Peter closer. It was hard through the jerks, but Dick had been training almost his whole life. “No, he needs me. He’s scared. My son is just scared, and he doesn’t have his glasses. He doesn’t like it when he can’t see who’s with him.”
The EMTs shared a look before the same one as before took a step forward. “Sir, your son is having a seizure. He needs medical attention.”
Dick’s mouth went dry, and his lungs stopped. He couldn’t blink, but he managed to turn his gaze down at Peter’s half-open eyes and jerky movements. It was horrible. He was pale, and there was blood in his hair, face, and on his shirt. His lips were turning blue, and it felt like the world was eating itself.
Tears sprang into Dick’s eyes, and his breath shuddered. “Help.”
“We will,” the EMT promised and jerked his head a second before the stretcher was brought closer and Dick’s frozen fingers were forced open, and Peter was put on the stretcher.
The EMT put a gaze over Peter’s left temple and strapped a neck brace around his neck. It was almost too big. He was so small that the neck brace they had brought to an elementary school was almost too big for his tiny neck.
Dick moved with every inch Peter was pushed toward the ambulance as if Dick was a piece of metal and Peter the strongest magnet in the world.
“Don’t worry, Chavvi. Tati’s here. Tati is with you,” Dick cried when Peter’s entire body shook on the hard stretcher. Everything started and ended with Peter, and Dick was unsure if the EMTs had tried to stop him from jumping into the ambulance.
“Get the BVM. I'll administer Midazolam IM,” the EMT ordered so firmly that Dick almost looked around for it himself when the other EMT put a giant mask over Peter's face and pressed the attached bag at an even rhythm.
Dick’s hands trembled as they hovered over Peter’s prone figure. There was nothing he could do while a professional made sure Peter was breathing, then connected him to a monitor that displayed his pulse and oxygen levels. Peter continued to shake, and the EMT soon pulled a syringe and a large needle out of a drawer.
No one liked needles, and Dick couldn’t help thinking about every vaccination Peter had gotten as he cried, “Tati’s here. You’re safe, Peter. Tati will protect you.”
The only thing more frightening than Peter’s shakes and the thought of the giant needle being plunged into him was when all Peter's movements stopped before any medication could be given. One second, he was shaking, and the next, he was limp.
Dick held his breath and chewed on his lip as the EMT pressed Peter’s neck and face. “Seizure stopped without medication. Duration around three minutes since we arrived.”
“Three minutes noted,” the other EMT repeated with no inflection. It was as if nothing were wrong with that statement, even though Peter had been suffering for what felt like hours and seconds at the same time.
There were no frightening gurgling sounds anymore. There didn’t seem to be anything at all, and Dick didn’t understand anything. Peter was too still, and no one was doing anything. They were even pulling the mask off him, only to replace it with a smaller one.
Each of Dick’s inhales felt forced, and each exhale shuddered in his chest. “Is he- Is my-? What’s happening?”
Dick was an adult. He was someone’s parent, but he wanted someone to hold him. He missed his parents. He wanted his mami and papa to come back from the dead and tell him they weren’t taking his son. His mani had smelled like herbs, and his papa like leather, and they had both felt like muscles finally relaxing after an exhausting performance for hundreds of people. He wanted them to carry him and tug him into bed, with a kiss on his forehead and a promise that tomorrow would be even better than today.
The EMT’s gaze turned toward Dick. “The seizure stopped. I’m monitoring in case there’s another one, and my colleague is driving us to the hospital. A lot of things are going to happen very quickly when we arrive.”
Dick could barely see anything through the tears in his eyes. “He’ll be okay?”
The silence was thick enough to choke a lesser man as Dick followed the EMT's gaze to the monitor. Peter's pulse was 112, and the oxygen level next to it went from the early nineties to the late nineties when the EMT turned up something on the wall where the mask was connected.
“We’ll do our best,” the other EMT said as he moved toward the front of the ambulance.
Dick knew what that meant, but he didn’t want to. He wanted Peter to be okay already and leaned toward Peter’s scraped cheek. “It will all be okay, Chavvi. Everything will be fine. You’ll be fine.”
Peter didn’t respond. He was frighteningly still, even when Dick touched each scrape from his temple to his jaw where he had scraped over the rough asphalt. There was blood, and Dick knew there would be bruises, but it was nothing compared to the other side, where the EMT was pressing a quickly reddening gaze over Peter’s temple.
Everything on that side was pink or red, and the EMT removed only the outer layer of the gaze before putting new ones on top.
“What is that?” Dick asked in a whisper.
The EMT next to Peter looked up briefly but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to when Dick’s brain was already figuring out the worst scenarios and finding no reason for them to be untrue.
“Is there a hole? Is there a hole in his head?” Dick asked after a few seconds, and then he could hear nothing but sirens when the EMT answered as he put an IV in Peter’s still hand. "We're managing it."
Fuck, no. A hole in his skull? Peter’s brain could be exposed. That was bad. That was so fucking bad, and Peter started to shake again. His face tensed, and Dick could only pray that he wasn’t aware of the trembling in his whole body or the shouting Dick was too far away mentally to hear.
The ambulance stopped abruptly, and the EMT behind the wheel came to the back and pushed Dick away to get to Peter’s scraped side. They were shouting, but it sounded as if they were underwater. They looked it too when tears sprang into Dick’s eyes.
"0.5 mg midazolam IV being administered." One of them plunged something into Peter's IV, but none of them reacted to the heavy cloud lying over everything Dick saw when nothing happened.
Peter continued to shake and make horrible sounds behind his mask. The monitors told Dick that his oxygen level was still in the mid-nineties, but he sounded like he was being strangled.
"Are the convulsions slowing down?" The EMT who had been driving asked after what felt like an eternity.
The other EMT's eyebrows furrowed for a few seconds. "Yes, they're slowing... And stopping. Two minutes and thirty-two seconds."
Everything was still for a few moments, and one of the EMTs jumped out of the back of the ambulance and into the driver’s seat again before the sirens blasted once more.
Dick gingerly grabbed Peter’s hand. One of his fingers was bent wrong. It was objectively not a serious injury compared to everything else, but Dick’s chest tightened, and he could feel the sounds escaping him. They weren’t human. They weren’t animalistic either, but just grief.
Dick wanted his mani and papa to hug him, and he wanted Peter. He wanted Peter to be okay enough for him to take him into his arms and never even let anyone look at him.
The sirens outside stopped, but the ones inside Dick’s head kept blaring as they pulled Peter out of the ambulance and toward doors he couldn’t follow through. He was strong, but several other strong men were holding him back, and someone was shouting through the mist.
“They’re taking him to surgery. They’ll do everything they can to help him. The surgeons have been preparing themselves since your son was put in the ambulance, Mr. Grayson.”
The words should have calmed the storm inside of Dick, but they didn’t. They could be the best surgeons in the world, and that didn’t always mean it was enough. Nothing should have happened to Peter, and now he was scared and alone with strangers. Peter didn’t like strangers, and he needed his tati to protect and calm him.
Someone came into the hospital. Someone young and possibly not corrupt. “Grayson! The sergeant told me that the boy is your son. He let me come over until they can get someone over here for you. It will be okay. I’m sure that the doctors will do everything they can to help him.”
Officer Hansen was either in his early or mid-twenties and too young for Dick to react to like this, and an almost stranger, but he let go of everything when he heard his voice. His words meant that this was real. Peter had been shot. Peter had had two seizures. Peter was in surgery. Peter might not survive.
Dick might be alone for the rest of his life.
“Come on, Grayson. Come sit while the hospital staff calls someone for you and your son.”
Officer Hansen didn’t even know Peter’s name, but he was right. The staff could call whoever they wanted, and Dick had to sit and try to understand how everything had turned out this way.