Chapter Text
Dick's first, ungracious thought: Is Jason here to shoot someone?
His next, even less gracious thought: Shit, I hope he shoots Slade.
It’s an odd Mexican stand-off. Dick flicks his escrima on, crackling with electricity and pointed at Slade, Jason aiming his firearm at Slade, and Slade for his part looking back at them like there is nowhere he would rather be.
They all know that a few bullets won’t kill Slade. Won’t even slow him down, really. The closest anyone has come to killing Slade was Rose, and that was at least half because Slade didn’t care to destroy her for it.
“It’s rude to invite more guests without asking,” Slade throws out mockingly. He doesn’t lower his rifle or the knife in his other hand, and what kind of asshole does that? Single-handed rifle shooting is the shit you see in movies, not real life. This is why Dick hates fighting metahumans. “I thought you had more manners than that, Richard.”
“I’m sure people would disagree,” Dick returns mildly. He takes the opportunity to try and level his breathing. Damn, Dick needs to work on his cardio. Too many days laying on his couch with the TV buzzing in the background. Not enough time patrolling, lately.
“Yeah, well I ain’t a guest.” Jason keeps his pistol steady. His finger on the side of the trigger guard. “You? Can leave, asshole.”
“When Richard learns to keep certain comments to himself,” Slade agrees.
Someone shoots first. Dick throws himself to the floor as bullets spray over his head, but it seems that neither were truly aiming for him. Slade has switched to taking out their party guest, while Jason—and why the fuck is Jason here? —seems determined to kill Slade just on principle.
“He took a hit on Robin,” Dick shouts over the gunfire. No one ever mentions how loud it is in the movies. His voice sounds muffled to his own ears.
The sudden lull in fire makes Dick raise his head. Jason is standing less than half a metre away from Slade, who seems almost reluctantly amused. Slade is bleeding through his body armour but Jason, thankfully, seems unharmed. Dick quickly gets to his feet.
“I like this birdie.” Slade turns to Dick. “Such fun to play with.”
Jason scowls at that and pulls out a kris dagger. Dick has seen a similar one—with its distinctive twisting blade—on Ra’as Al Ghul. His eyebrows shoot up.
“Playtime’s over, Wilson.”
Which is all the warning Slade gets before Jason tries to kill him for real. Slade similarly abandons his rifle in favour of his knife, matching Jason move for move. It quickly becomes clear to Dick that Slade is simply toying with Jason. Learning how he moves.
Well. Never let it be said that Dick plays fair. He picks up Jason’s abandoned pistol and shoots Slade clean through the other shoulder once Jason has shifted out of the way. It only makes Slade pause for a moment, looking over his shoulder with something akin to pride, before his shoulder begins knitting itself back together. Dick shoots again.
This time, Jason takes the hint and drives his dagger through the same shoulder, then springs back before Slade can take advantage of the proximity to gut him.
Slade can feel pain. This, Dick knows. Rose Wilson told him as much even if Dick hadn’t figured it out on his own.
“Who hired you?” Dick keeps his hands on the pistol. He raises his voice to Slade.
Slade laughs and shakes his head.
“Within your paygrade,” Slade says, which means it isn’t the League of Assassins or anyone on that level. “But not a pie you want to be sticking your fingers into, Richard.”
“I think I’ll decide that one for myself, thanks.”
It seems that most of Slade’s anger has faded away with the adrenaline of the fight. He always did love chasing Dick.
Slade shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
Jason finally speak. “Come on, Nightwing. Let’s get out of here.”
But Jason’s laser-focus on Slade suggests that he is feeling equally reluctant to leave without finding out who put the hit on Damian.
Slade doesn’t make any further moves to attack. He lets Jason step back with his dagger and Dick return the pistol to Jason, the two of them backing up slowly to the edge of the rooftop. Slade remains where he is, keenly amused at their actions.
Dick shoots his grapple first. Jason follows closely.
They move across ten rooftops in tandem before Jason finally tells Dick to stop.
“Go right,” he says.
Dick listens. It doesn’t take long before Dick realises that Jason is leading them somewhere in particular. A safe house, if Dick had to guess, and is quickly proven right.
They drop down to the fire escape. Jason deactivates a complicated alarm system from his wrist computer, then slides the window open. He pulls it closed behind Dick.
Dick’s energy leaves him in one go. He immediately lays down in the middle of the room, skipping the armchair and doing his level best to melt into the floor.
Jason shakes his head but doesn’t comment. Dick tries to trust that Jason won’t shoot him after rescuing him. It wouldn’t be out of character for Jason, but he seems oddly at-ease. Jason sets up on the armchair and pulls a cigarette from his jacket, flicking the cigarette between his fingers.
Dick shifts his head to look at Jason. “That’ll kill you, you know.”
“I don’t smoke.” Jason shrugs. He leans back into the armchair. “You ever seen me light one of these?”
Dick hasn’t.
“Exactly. Moving on—” Jason stretches then fixes Dick with a dead stare “—you gotta talk to Bruce. He’s being insufferable.”
Dick tries to phase through the floor. Nice, coo wooden floorboards that haven’t ever tried to kill him, unlike half his family. Isn’t that fun?
“Bruce isn’t my issue,” Dick says, ignoring how the floor distorts his words. He searches for the energy to care about Jason’s latest complaint. “Besides, you always say that Bruce is insufferable.”
“Not like this.” Jason flicks the cigarette again, levelling it at Dick to punctuate his point. Still with those dead eyes. “Even Tim is avoiding him, and that takes a whole fucking lot. Last I heard, he and Cain holed up together to wait out the storm.”
That makes Dick's eyebrows shoot up. He tries to lift his face from the floor and mostly fails. "Fuck, is it that bad?"
"Don't swear in my Catholic household," hypocrite, Jay, "but yeah. It's bad. Tim said to tell you it's like before, whatever that means."
Dick rolls over. Slowly. He blinks at the ceiling and tries, once again, to summon the energy to care.
Tim and Jason have worked out most of their issues in the past few years. More accurately, Jason has stopped hunting Tim down to settle a score Tim had no involvement in, and Tim has more-or-less gotten over Jason trying to kill him. Dick is 90% sure that it's because Tim could give Jason a decent run for his money these days. Jason isn't bad at hand-to-hand by any means, and he has guns, but Tim has something far more terrifying:
Absolutely zero concern for his own wellbeing, a missing spleen, and nothing to lose. Seriously, Dick wishes he would get his skateboard out of storage instead of dabbling in pissing off the world's largest criminal organisations. Dick would sleep a hell of a lot better. He's working on convincing Tim to go train hopping or something before he loses an actually essential organ.
"Bruce isn't my problem." Dick scoots closer to a fallen pillow. His voice unusually acrid. "He stuck a tranquiliser in my back because he couldn't handle watching me have a breakdown in my kitchen. Just watching, Jason. Then he took me back to the manor to lock me up like a Victorian woman with hysteria. That's not cool."
"I heard.” It doesn’t seem like news to Jason, but a strange expression steals across his face. “Bruce doing something fucked up? Call the press.”
“He crossed a line,” Dick repeats firmly. “I’ve been the bigger person for years. It’s time he mans up and apologises first.”
“You know the light kid is running interference?” Jason waits to Dick to meet his eyes, then nods and leans back. “Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought. No one else is willing to talk to Bruce at the moment so of course the new kid is cleaning up the trash. Barbara is still talking to Bruce, but only because she needs to coordinate with him for her own shit. Even then, it’s pretty frosty over there.”
“Duke?” Dick blinks to clear the increasing fog. “I thought he was still on a mission for the Outsiders.”
Jason shrugs. “Clearly, he came back. Missions do end, Dick. That’s the whole point. I thought you would have kept better track than that.”
Dick ignores the stab and the matching twist of guilt. No one told him that Duke was back. Isn’t that something they’re supposed to communicate? Especially when they’re all working a case together?
Irritation sparks. It seems all his friends and allies are making this a habit, dropping in without warning.
“Why did you respond to my signal?” Dick throws out in retaliation. He finally drags himself upright. “You’re the last person I would expect to help.”
He doesn’t address the elephant in the room: that Jason operates out of Gotham, not Bludhaven, and that Dick has no idea why Jason has a safe house in Bludhaven.
“I can’t help my fucking family now?” Jason looks seconds away from throwing something heavy at Dick, who suddenly has the sinking feeling that he has poked the wrong bear today. “You put out an emergency signal, dipshit. Don’t blame me for trying to stop you from being tiny little Nightwing-bits flattened on the pavement somewhere. Fuck off.”
“Two years ago, you tried to kill me for the cowl.”
“Yeah, well I wasn’t thinking real clearly, was I? I’d shoot myself before wearing that cowl. Make your fucking point.”
Dick falters. He doesn’t know what his point is, besides that trust is a fickle thing and Jason, unfortunately, hasn’t quite earned it from Dick.
Jason’s face tells him that he already knows.
“I don’t care if you trust me.” Jason snorts. He stands and gets a bag of frozen peas from the kitchen, standing behind the bench and pressing it to his cheekbone. “If I want to help someone, I’ll help them. If I want to shoot them, I’ll shoot them. Why don’t you stop wasting your breath and explain this hit on Talia’s kid?”
“Seems you know more than me.” Dick straightens up. “Damian says he’s been digging into Black Masks’ dog fighting rings. Slade said someone hired him to get Damian out of their business. What are the chances Black Mask cares enough to hire Deathstroke over dog fighting?”
“Pretty fucking slim,” Jason agrees. “Kid’s lying to your face.”
“About the dog rings?”
“Nah, he’s one hundred percent digging into that shit. But I can tell you right now, that’s not the only thing he’s looking into about Black Mask.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what it is?” Dick sighs.
Jason just looks at Dick. “Figure it out yourself or ask the kid. I can’t give you everything.”
Dick narrows his eyes. He has the sense that Jason has spoken to Damian, and recently. Jason’s expression gives nothing away.
“Fine,” Dick says. “But whatever it is, we need to shut it down before Slade gets the chance to take out his hit. Slade will probably give us a week, max.”
“Awfully generous of him.” There’s a question in there, somewhere, but Dick is too tired to parse it.
“We go back,” Dick says tiredly. “One of the many generosities he grants me.”
“You’re both psychos,” Jason informs him, “and that’s saying something, coming from me.”
Dick shrugs. “You can think what you like, Jason. Doesn’t change what we are or what we’ve done.”
For a moment, Dick thinks that Jason will fight him. Jason’s eyes lock onto Dick’s and his shoulders tense.
Then, abruptly, the tension releases and Jason leans onto the bench.
“We’re all a little crazy,” Jason says, the closest he will come to concession.
“I gotta say,” Dick says, pushing his luck. “I’m getting real sick of you skirting around what Damian’s doing. You can’t keep hinting then refusing to disclose. This is Damian’s life. If he dies because you won’t tell me what he’s gotten into, I’ll kill you myself.”
Dick’s certainty rings out into the space. Jason looks at Dick for a long moment and puts down the bag of frozen peas.
“I know that Black Mask has been real interested in meta-humans lately,” Jason says finally. “He’s been asking around. Seeing if anyone is up for selling them. Indentured contracts with certain organisations, you understand? He wants to buy out their contracts and indebt some meta-humans to him. Make his own army. I don’t know how successful he has been, or how he got the money to hire Deathstroke, but I do know that you should be worried.”
Irritation ticks underneath Dick’s skin.
“You knew all this,” Dick says, climbing to his feet, “and you chose not to tell me? Why?”
Jason’s face shutters. His voice is clipped when he speaks. “None of your business, that’s what.”
“It’s Damian’s life.” Dick’s hands itch. His escrima are still within reach – holstered on his back. “You’re playing with his life to prove that I don’t know him like I should? That I haven’t been watching him?”
“Someone should be,” Jason snaps back. He reaches for something and keeps it in hand, tucked out of sight beneath the bench. Dick tracks the motion. “You haven’t been and Bruce hasn’t been, so where does that leave the kid? Getting into shit beyond his pay grade and a hit out for his head. You were his guardian. Do you really not care for the kid?”
Dick can feel the bees rising. Thrumming beneath his skin. Buzzing. Buzzing. Buzzing. Dread worms its way through him but is drowned out by the bees.
Dick, slowly and carefully, moves the ornaments on the coffee table out of his direct range. He doesn’t break eye contact with his brother.
“Jason,” Dick says calmly, moving his hands away from his escrima sticks. “You need to take that back, and you need to leave. Now.”
“This is my safehouse.” Jason looks at Dick like he is stupid. “You fucking leave if you can’t handle the heat, Dick. What, you can dish it out but you can’t take it? Fucking hypocrite.”
“Fine.” Dick’s jaw aches. He is suddenly perfectly calm, his head clear. Every muscle in his body is tensed. “I’ll leave then.”
"Hold up." Jason gets up to follow Dick to the window, because of course he does. "You need to tell me how you're going to fix this."
Jason manoeuvres himself in front of the window, blocking Dick’s escape.
"I don't need to fix shit." Dick turns on Jason. "Bruce did this. It's a Bruce Wayne fucking special, go talk to him if you're so worried about pretending to care about this fucked up family. I did my part. I’m doing my part, fixing the contract you played a role in by not being honest in the first place. You’re only helping to boost your ego. Trying to feel good for just a moment.”
It's not nice. It isn't kind. More importantly, it takes Jason by surprise. Just a little. His eyes narrow before the mask goes back up, laughing mockingly.
"Jeez, when did you go and grow a backbone, Dick?"
"You saw me and Bruce beat the life out of each other when you first became Robin, Jason. Don't pretend I took it laying down."
"Nah." Jason concedes. His eyebrows haven't quite lowered, Jason folding his arms and watching Dick closely. "Guess I just saw things differently. That was another life, dearest brother. Back before the pit wiped everything clean."
Buzzing. The fucking buzzing. Dick opens and closes his palms.
“Window.” Dick points. “Me. Leaving. Get out of the way.”
Jason raises his palms. "Soon as you swear you'll call the dickhead, I'll go. Next time, pull your head out of your ass and own up to being a shit fucking brother to that kid.”
Dick carefully inhales-exhales-inhales.
"You can let me leave," Dick says, "or I can make you leave. Please, I'd love for you to let me choose. And I will choose, make no mistake."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Jason blinks, finally stepping into Dick's space. "Huh? You've been such a mess lately that even the little brat is asking about it. Hell, Stephanie asked about it and she's not even part of the family. Duke, too, although he's the only one around here with some fucking sense."
Dick warned Jason. The buzzing.
It takes him whole.
Dick blinks back to himself. Jason is gone, the kitchen is a wreck—what the fuck? —and his throat hurts like has been screaming. Dick sees his actions in flashes. He knows what he did, for the most part. Pushing Jason. Getting pushed back. Finally picking up a knife—fuck, fuck, fuck—and pointing it at Jason just to get him to get the fuck out of Dick's space before Dick did— something. Killed himself. Killed Jason. Killed someone.
He knows what he did, but the consuming rage, the forceful vibration of it and the way it consumed him, took him under—it's all gone. Faded through him.
"Why the fuck...?" Dick swears softly to himself, standing in Jason’s kitchen surrounded by the wreck he has made of his life. He presses a hand to his face. He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand any of it – the rage, the blackouts, the constant flash flooding of emotions.
Part of Dick, he thinks, will always be that nine-year-old watching his parents fall, and part of him will always be that eighteen-year-old being punched and thrown out on his ass by Bruce. He’s just… stuck. Like he’s locked in a room with no key. Staring at everyone else through the windows. It’s easier to draw the blinds, to pretend that there is no other way of life, that all of this is normal, because the alternative is facing that Dick is fucked, his life is fucked, his family is fucked, and none of it—none of it—will ever, ever get better.
Dick spends a long time standing in Jason’s kitchen, watching the world through the windows without absorbing any of it. At some point, it gets dark, and still Jason does not return.
This, Dick thinks, must be what it feels like to lose your mind.
Dick just… goes somewhere else.
He finds himself in a psychologist's office. Dick doesn't know what day it is. Tuesday, he thinks. They were talking about... something. He thinks he has seen this psychologist before. She looks familiar. They had a talk, didn't they? About Bruce? The red frames of her glasses are comforting, for a moment.
He doesn't remember coming here. He doesn't remember making the appointment at all. They talked about Bruce last time, and this time they were talking about.... something else. Dick's failed engagement to Kori. Why it failed.
Dick is floating out of his body. He looks at the psychologist and looks and looks but he is almost startlingly calm.
The psychologist notices after approximately a minute. Dick can see her in his periphery, cocking her head curiously.
“Dick,” she says, “are you still here with me?”
He makes… some sort of answering noise, but no words.
His head is glassy and still. Lake Baikal is the deepest rift lake in the world. Dick can feel it tugging him down, down, his body immobile in the chair. But his mind skims the surface. Floating along the water like he is buoyed by salt. A dead thing preserved alive.
“Can you explain where you have gone?” the psychologist probes. She does something with her pen, the end clicking.
Dick makes a noise.
“Is this about our conversation, Dick?”
He makes another noise. Dick finally manages to swallow, rasping out: “Memories.”
They were talking about Kori, and their relationship, because she was asking about healthy models of relationships, and somehow Dick volunteered that he had a fiancée, and of course she asked how that turned out, and of course Dick shut down the moment his thoughts wandered to Mirage.
Mirage wasn't trying to hurt him, Dick knows. She was looking at the face of a man she loved in another universe. She was in love, and Dick can understand that. Almost forgive it. Except she saw something she liked and took, without telling him she wasn't Kori.
He thought she was Kori. He tried to make that clear to the psychologist, then his breathing just.... stopped.
“I see.” The psychologist turns silent. “Dick, I’m going to ask you to tell me five things you can see.”
Dick doesn’t answer. Apple-bobbing. The dead sea. Toy boats in a bathtub. Lake Baikal. Dick’s mind feels wholly empty.
His vision crosses.
“Carpet,” Dick says. He tries to find another thing without moving his eyes or head. “Wall.”
“That’s great,” the psychologist encourages. “Three more things, Dick.”
Skirting board is too hard to say. Dick finds something else.
“Window. Glass.” He has to flick his eyes to the right for the final item. “Pen.”
Dick’s tongue is thick and heavy. Rolling uselessly in his mouth.
“What about five things you can hear, Dick?”
They repeat the process. It takes Dick a few seconds to think through each answer.
“Traffic,” he says for the fifth item, listening to the cars roaring outside.
He still can’t move his body, but the words are coming easier, now. Dick slowly rises out of the water and sits on the shore.
“I think we’ll end things there, for today.” The psychologist closes her notebook. “Do you have someone to take you home, Dick?”
“Yeah,” Dick says, no detail.
“Okay.” She nods, accepting the answer. She has no choice. “Can you do me a favour, Dick? Once you leave, do something calmly. Go for a walk along the beach or a trip to an ice-cream parlour, whatever makes you feel safer. Do something grounding.”
Dick finds it within himself to thank her and head for the door. He doesn't think they talked about Jason at all. Or the kitchen. The rage. Because Dick's life is just like that. A charcuterie board of trauma for psychologists to pick at.
It’s strange, isn’t it. Dick is fine. He’s always fine, always pushing ahead, rushing ahead, and he shakes hands and lets people hug him and touch him and it’s all fine, isn’t it, right up until it isn’t.
There must be a trigger for it. Somewhere. Dick hasn’t found one yet but that doesn’t make it non-existent. Cause-and-effect. Is Dick fucked because his life is fucked, or is his life fucked because his head is fucked?
It’s like plunging into the dark. Like snapping your head above the dark, broiling waves. Like smiling on the deck of a sinking ship. Everything is fine until the veil drops, for whatever reason, the fabric falling from his eyes and he looks around and realises, fuck, nothing is fine, none of this is fine, and it is never going to be fine. This is it, for Dick. This is the best he is ever going to get.
Dick keeps himself in a strict routine. It’s the only way he can get on with it, sometimes. But when the waves crest and swallow him whole, the churning, gasping desperation to breathe kicks in, survival instincts clinging to life.
He just—loses himself, somehow. Finds himself going for long walks when he should be sleeping. He wakes before his body is ready, mind unwilling to release him back to sleep, leaving Dick slumped over his coffee table in a permanent state of half-awakening. Body wired and mind exhausted. Dick eats crackers and cereal then feels guilty about the lack of protein and vegetables, buying tinned cans of tuna to even the score, and spends most mornings staring at the window from his bed. Watching the sun trickle in.
Like that, everything crashes over him. Tugs at his ribs and hair and bones. Remember me. Remember me. I’m still here. I will always be here.
Dick believes in therapy. Understands the benefits. But he can’t be fully, one-hundred percent honest with any therapist about his life, and any therapist who works with vigilantes would undoubtedly recognise Bruce by description. Dick isn’t comfortable airing their drama like that.
Besides, what’s the point? Seriously, what’s the point? No amount of therapy can change what has happened. It can’t undo it. It can’t undo any of it – not Jason dying, not Bruce returning, the first touch on Dick’s body or the second or third. Dick doesn’t need to be given more ways to cope. He deals, okay. He can fucking deal.
His entire life is just dealing with shit that happened to him. Dick would really like to be able to stop doing that, at some point.
Except he doesn’t have time for this, for any of this. He doesn’t remember making the appointment. He doesn’t remember walking to the psychologist. He doesn’t remember half the session, blinking back to himself in the middle of it and taking a long moment to absorb his surroundings. The psychologist seemed to realise, speaking soft encouragements.
There is a contract out for Damian. A hit out for his life. And Slade, more than likely, won’t actually complete the hit, will keep stalling for time, for a reason to break the contract for Dick, but if Dick keeps fucking around and losing time and blinking in and out, threatening his brother with a knife in his brother’s fucking kitchen, then Slade will probably do them all the mercy of taking out Damian and Dick.
Dick picks at his thumb. He realises that he has stopped in the middle of the street, people flowing around him with sideways, disgruntled glares at Dick. He is wearing cargo shorts, a tee-shirt too big for him—has he lost weight? Was it stolen from someone else? —unlaced trainers and a watch he knows doesn’t work.
I’m going crazy, Dick realises. It floors him. He looks around the street. The unfamiliar street and the unfamiliar office.
Somehow, his feet carry him home, and Dick locks the door on autopilot.