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Dick had always had a precarious relationship with safety, specifically with trust. The first few years of his life, he’d been a child, of course, trusting that his parents would always be there to help him when he fell down. When a trick didn’t work, there was a net beneath him and a warm stew and tight arms that made him forget all about his worries.
As an acrobat, especially in a circus, you have to trust yourself and your abilities, if you think you can’t do it, it will fail and you’ll land in the net or on the ground.
Maybe that was why it was so devastating to see his parents fall. Their utter trust that they could do it, that they’d done it a hundred times before. And this time, as they crashed into the hard ground, there was no net to protect them, just a bone shattering, neck snapping landing that left the people around them screaming and Dick stuck to his place waiting on the sidelines. His safety net had disappeared in seconds, metaphorically and literally and he didn’t know what to do anymore. He was alone, on his own, and for the first time in his life he doubted himself, wondered what would have happened had he spoken up sooner, if his parents would still be alive then.
It was the first time he would be confronted with insecurity and the screaming of the people, the blood on the floor and the tremor in his hands all sang the same melody; A death march, perhaps.
But, standing on shaking legs, one foot in front of the other, just like his father taught him once to walk the tight rope, he persevered. He went on and found a new home, new safety even if his trust would never be so unerringly loyal again. He acted out to see how hard he could hit the ground, he watched as Bruce grew and grew and Dick did with him. Only, the moments of joy and love, of partnership and the adrenaline rush of a new act were interspersed with shouting matches and going to bed with tears in his eyes. There was still stew sometimes-different, never seasoned like the one he knew to taste of home-but the arms disappeared more and more until all that was left was a shadowy reminder and the ghostly sensation of what-once-was.
It escalated and escalated until he was captured and hurt, still a boy at heart, looking for his father, his partner and not finding anything. Logically. He could understand how scared Bruce must’ve been, but his safety net he’d thought he could fall back on, was gone. He was kicked out, standing on the grand steps of a house he once called home. Dick hadn’t been living there full time anyway, had been splitting his time between Gotham and New York where the Titans were waiting for him, but the knowledge that he couldn’t return, couldn’t trust Batman to be there anymore—it was terrifying.
He wasn’t an adult, not in any sense of the word, but he was alone and he survived. He thrived, found safety and love in his friends and slowly rebuilt what once made him feel home. New York was great but Bludhaven was more familiar in a sense, Gotham-Yet-Not, new but old and his sense of duty made him stay. His net has holes the size of states, but it is there to cushion his falls.
He curls up on Wally’s couch, the night he gets the news. A new Robin has appeared after a few months of absence and Bruce had a new ward. Jason Todd, a blue eyed, black-haired child that reminded him so much of his younger self, he couldn’t decide wether to cry and rage or laugh hysterically. Had he always been this replaceable, had he only been B’s partner because it was convenient—because he looked like him? His anger made him quiver and his short return home was a symphony of screaming, betrayed looks and hurt feelings. He wasn’t a good brother to the child looking up at him with wide eyes but he couldn’t help it.
(He would regret it later, their relationship, how he’d lashed out; but by then, Bab’s would be in a wheelchair and Jason would be in a grave. Nobody had caught him either)
He works in Bludhaven mostly out of convenience, his charm earning him plenty of tips as a bartender. And yet, his apartment isn’t exactly in the best of areas, so a child in an expensive looking sweater knocking on his door is not what he expects when he opens it one Friday afternoon.
He knows, he knows that Bruce hasn’t been doing too hot lately, but selfishly he cannot bring himself to care. Bruce had never had the courtesy to do the same for Dick, so why would he come back to a home he’s not wanted in.
(Flashes and pain, a fist in his face, head wheeling. He’d returned from a mission to find a boy dead, the funeral already passed and a father drinking in the dark. The aggression is expected, the hit not so much. Bruce had never touched him like that, had always been distant before he’d been outright mean and it shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does)
But the boy looks at him with all the naiveté of the child he is, but the intelligence of someone far older, blue-eyed and black haired, stubborn like you wouldn’t believe and no safety-net in life. He knows what should happen; what would happen and he doesn’t make a move to block it. Dick has his own life and he’s not ready to confront a man who is a dichotomy of resentment and love, just yet.
The Titans are the people he loves most in the world, Koriand’r at the very front. He loves her and the way she differs, the way she loves, the fire inside and out. She’s been a stone to find stability on recently, and it shouldn’t surprise him that she too, disappears—but not before the violation eats him whole. His beliefs in his own mind, his trust that he could decipher good from bad, right from wrong is shaken to the core. He’s tricked and the others don’t seem to understand. Kory doesn’t understand.
Mirage laughs and smirks and every time Kory runs her fingers down his chest he wants to scream and shout and throw a tantrum. His skin is rubbed red in the shower and he almost throws up the first time they fool around after. But he’s the one in the wrong, right? Kory clearly thinks he cheated, feels betrayed because he didn’t recognize her, couldn’t differentiate Mirage from his own girlfriend. He can feel the shakes running through the rock and in one last, desperate move, he proposes.
(It doesn’t work out, which marks the first on two times his proposal is accepted then rejected. No, he’s totally fine, definitely.)
His world quite literally begins to shake again when the Quake wrecks the core of Gotham and Bludhaven, houses are destroyed, people die and it marks the beginning of the end of one of the cities. At least, at first. He sees the desolation everywhere, bears witness to the corruption in the system that swore to protect its people and decides he needs to become more proactive.
Slowly, he hems and fixes his net, builds up trust and relationships, Tim is a wonder of a little brother who’s so close to losing everything and he’s so so young. So Dick makes himself into the net he’d wished for in his teenage years and in the process he mends the sharp edges that run through Bruce’s and his history liked cliffs through the sea. He gets adopted, officially accepted and maybe, this is a sign, maybe he can trust that someone will be there for him in the fallout— he fucks it up.
But Tim, poor Tim, had been captured by Joker, he’d thought another brother was dead, he couldn’t— just how was he supposed to… Bruce obviously disagrees. The villain remains alive and ready to attack again, his brother is scarred and Dick can still see the blood dripping from his hands. (He’s unsure wether he regrets it or would do it all over again. He knows it’s both)
His downward spiral is brutal. Batman is no longer on speaking terms with him and it strains his and Tim’s relationship. Then, Donna Troy dies, one of his closest friends, a sister at heart. It’s closely followed by the escalation of the Blockbuster conflict, getting him fired, working with Tarantula, breaking it off with Bab’s and his very first home burning to the ground.
The light ignites something in him, something dark; something angry. He’s not in the right headspace to soldier on and yet there’s no other option. And yet, when Tarantula asks him to step aside, to let her deal with it, he does. It will be a flip point in his life, the decision that he will regret until he dies. The blood on his hand drips and drips and its as if he can hear the shouting from that night picking up again in chorus with the blood pooling, he can’t think he can’t breath, the rain is drenching him and therearehandsonhim—
Tarantula never takes no for an answer and leaves him behind on that rooftop, violated and dissociative. He doesn’t understand how it happened, how he let it happen and he’s reached the lowest point in his life. He’d crashed and burned and all that was left of him and that little boy that trusted the net and his parents and that stupid stew is left in ashes, scrambling to find away to collect it in an urn at the very least.
Dick isn’t sure what happens after, how he gets back up, if he ever comes home at all; what even is home?
Between that night and the bomb that drops on Bludhaven wreaking destruction like never before, he’s vaguely aware of Red Hood and the threat it poses, but he falls into a lethargy. He does things he will regret later, but his life isn’t his own to live. He just stares and stares and watches himself act like it happens on a screen.
He’s aware he is not the only one to fall into a depression, he knows that Tim takes Superboys death hard, knows that he should be returning as the safety net he’d once built himself into, but he can’t. Not really. He has no words or reassurances left, all he has is tired eyes and mono-sibyllic answers.
He returns to New York in the hope that the familiarity might get him out of his funk and briefly debates therapy. He’s alone, hopeless and he’s distanced himself from anyone that could help him. There’s another little brother out there but he can’t say he likes him very much. Tim has become a shadow of what he once was and it violently reminds him that a lot of people have lost others. He knows that Tim had become an orphan recently, vaguely remembers the little spunk that had been Spoiler and the boy that had followed in Wally’s foot-steps as Kid-flash.
(Bruce is missing than dead and Dick has to start wondering how often the rug can be pulled out from under him before he jumps into Gotham’s bay with an anchor tied to his ankle. He keeps making the same mistakes over and over again.)
Bruce leaves a ten year old behind and suddenly, Dick is forced into the role of the father, the caretaker the safety net and he can’t fail, not again. So he is cruel and does what he promised himself he’d never do. He takes the cape from Tim in the hope he will become his own Nightwing and gifts his mothers’ colors to the miniature Bat. He’d never wanted to be Bruce, but he has to be and his very first lesson is watching a broken Robin walk away. He knows the feeling from both sides now and can’t quite say what hurts more.
Dick does right and wrong but mostly he prays he can pave himself a different legacy to the previous Batman. He knows how Bruce acted around Tim, how callous he was especially in the first few years and he vows to b different, no matter how hard Damian makes that. He loves his littlest brother, no questions asked. But he also can’t say he enjoys being the sole root the child has, the one he has to turn to for everything. He hadn’t been prepared for so much responsibility and he wonders if Bruce had felt the same back then, when he’d first taken Dick in.
(He can’t quite express how endlessly grateful he is that he catches Tim. That he sees the little bird floundering downwards and catches him before he’s left in a pile of shattered bones on the ground. That he can be the very last barrier between his brother and death, just this once, after all the mistakes he’s made. This is a basis to rebuilt trust on, trust and safety and the security in his own skill that he has refined in his time protecting the streets of Gotham.)
His family returns one at a time and slowly he thinks, there might be someone to call when he’s in need of backup. His safety-net his worn thin and ripped in parts but he has learned how to walk without needing it at every turn, he has learned how to make the stew his mother had made him, how to be the arms that cradle a child in need and he’s glad for it. His brothers will get his support and maybe Bruce will have his back. If not, he will curl around whomever it might be in his arms and curl his back, just to make sure their fall is cushioned.