A/N: Dick comes to see Babs after the team's rescue from the War World and reveals he hadn't been as "whelmed" about her capture as he'd seemed
Barbara closed her eyes and let the hot water wash over her, the pounding heat of the shower working wonders for her aching muscles. She'd thought a punch from a metahuman hurt, but the anti-gravity cell on the War World had been just as bad, if not worse. It felt like her entire body had been completely zapped of its strength. She could barely lift her arms above her head to wash her air.
At last, when she felt sufficiently clean (but only slightly re-energized), Barbara turned the water off and stepped out from behind the curtain, wrapping a towel around her. She opened the door to her bathroom, allowing a rush of steam to exit with her as she stepped into the bedroom of her small, two-roomed apartment. Pretty humble digs, maybe, but between classes at Gotham U and her missions with the team, she was barely there anyway. She'd found a nice spot in one of the few neighborhoods in Gotham that wasn't too horrible, and she liked it. She liked having a place all to herself.
Except at the moment, she wasn't alone. Barbara caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, concealed in the shadows behind the curtains of her window, and in an instant she was on the move. In one swift motion she turned, reached into utility belt she'd left hanging on the door and spun, hurling the protracted batarang at the intruder with deadly accuracy.
The sound of metal hitting metal rang sharply through her apartment as the intruder deflected the weapon with a movement so natural it had to be reflex. That, and the fact that he'd blocked it with an escrima stick, clued her in pretty fast.
"Dick," she said, the word coming out between clenched teeth in a breathy exclamation that was halfway between relief and admonishment. "I know you've didn't have the best example growing up but you seriously have to learn how to knock."
"Sorry, Babs," came the young man's regretful reply. He stood up, emerging from where he'd been leaning, submerged in shadow, against her desk. The moonlight from the open window hit his face as he stepped into its rays, highlighting its handsome lines and coloring the ends of his jet-black hair with a crown of white, like a halo. She noticed he'd taken his mask off, although he was still in his suit, and his bright blue eyes flashed at her through the dark.
"I do it without even realizing," he was saying, "Guess I ended up becoming more like him than I'd thought, huh?"
He said it lightly, trying to make it a joke, but Barbara caught the self-loathing in Dick's reference to his mentor as easily as if she'd read it off a page. He tried to play it off, Barbara knew, but the fear of turning into Bruce was growing stronger in him with every passing day.
Suddenly guilty that she had even brought up their mentor in the first place, Barbara instantly softened. "No, you're not," she told him earnestly, then added, "Not in the ways that count."
Her words made him smile, and even though it was a small one, the mere sight of it caused her heart to swell. "But still," she continued abruptly, still determined not to let him off the hook. "That doesn't explain why you're here. Shouldn't you be at the warehouse with the team, O Fearless Leader?"
Dick's smile shifted to a smirk at her use of the nickname but he just shook his head. "Connor's there," he answered quickly, running a hand through his hair. It was a signature move that meant his mind was somewhere else, something Barbara had come to recognize in the years she'd known him. "I told the others they could go home," he was saying, "They needed a break. I waited to make sure they'd all gotten home safely." Dick suddenly looked at her, pinning her with a gaze that, for once, she couldn't instantly read. "Then I came straight here," he said.
Something in the way he said it made her heart skip a beat. She felt it fluttering in her against her chest like the wings of a bird. Only Dick make her feel that way…but they weren't together. They weren't anything other than teammates—at least at the moment. And that's what she wanted, Barbara quickly told herself. No matter how she felt about him. No matter what his words did to her.
Now she just wished he would stop looking at her like that.
"Okay..." she said, fighting to keep her voice casual, "But that still doesn't explain why—"
Her words were cut off, abruptly, as Dick crossed the room in two long strides and pressed his mouth against hers. The kiss was rushed and desperate, his mouth hot and heavy and so forceful it was almost bruising as he pulled her against him roughly. His arms wrapped around her and she felt her body melt against him, surrendering completely to his need. She'd never seen him this way, not even when they'd been together before. Dick had always been passionate, but as he held her now she could feel his whole body trembling.
Blood was rushing to her head, leaving her breathless and dizzy, and as his tongue slipped between her lips the effect from the anti-gravity cell became a distant memory, paling in comparison to the way she was feeling now. Fancy alien tech had nothing on a kiss from Dick Grayson.
He broke away briefly, much to Barbara's dismay, to skim his lips across her jaw. "To do that," he murmured in a low, hungry voice as his mouth reached her ear. "That's why."
His words were the final straw. Feeling like she was about to faint, Barbara planted a hand in the middle of Dick's chest and pushed him back slightly, although she wasn't sure if she was doing it to get some breathing room or just to keep herself from falling over.
"Wow," she managed shakily, the word coming out in a heady exhale. "Easy there,
Hunk Wonder. It's not your birthday for another six months, remember?"
She'd meant it as a joke, trying to keep her tone light even as her voice wavered. But at her words Dick's expression darkened. The hand that had been entwined in in her damp hair dropped dejectedly to his side. Barbara watched, perplexed, as he turned away from her, face towards the window. "I know." he said quietly.
Instantly, Barbara wished she could take back what she said. She just wasn't sure exactly why. She took a step towards him, reaching out a hand before she hesitated, and held back. "Dick?"
"Do you know what I was thinking?"
The words came spilling out of him abruptly, startling her; sounding almost as if Dick wasn't in control of his own voice. He spun around suddenly, his eyes flashing wildly. "Do you know what I couldn't get out of my head, the whole time you and the team were missing? What I couldn't stop telling myself?"
Barbara thought she did. At least, she knew what she wanted it to be. But she didn't want to hear him say it; didn't want that hope put into words, where it could never be taken back. Her voice was soft, sorely lacking of the authoritative tone it usually possessed so effortlessly as she tried to tell him that, to warn him. "Dick—"
"You, Babs," he exclaimed, and all the air was swept from her lungs. "When I should have been concentrating on the clues that were laid out right in front of me, when I should have been thinking about the rest of the team, all I could think about was you. That I might have lost you forever...and that was awful enough—" Dick's voice broke off sharply, as if he'd been choked. Barbara felt tears spring to her eyes immediately, just from the sound. She wanted it to stop—she wanted Dick's pain to stop—but before she could say anything, he was speaking again. "But the thing that made it even worse was the fact that I would have lost you without ever getting to know what we might have been."
The tears were overwhelming now, too powerful to hold them back. Barbara felt her throat give a painful squeeze as they spilled over her lashes and ran swiftly down her cheeks. Her body moved on its own, without conscious direction from her, as she wrapped her arms around Dick's shaking shoulders and pressed her face against his chest.
His arms encircled her tightly, almost covetously, as if they wanted to hold her there forever and never let go. She could feel his heart hammering against her cheek, pounding out a pattern of fear the likes of which she'd never known in him before. A man who as a child had fought the most terrifying villains in Gotham with a smile on his face, who launched himself off of buildings as carelessly as if he were diving into a pool; led a team of covert superheroes against some of the deadliest threats in the world and still managed to crack jokes with the rookies. That Dick Grayson had never been afraid of anything. But the one holding her right now was terrified.
"Dick," Barbara murmured soothingly, "Dick, it's okay. I'm here. You didn't lose me. I'm here."
"But I could have, Barbara," he murmured it against her hair, but the damp strands did nothing to hide the sound of his pain. "You have no idea what that felt like."
Barbara stiffened. A thousand images flashed through her mind at his words. A black eye that had taken weeks to heal after a run-in with Killer Croc. A broken leg from the time he had misjudged a landing. A knife wound that had bled onto her carpet one night after a bad patrol. If she looked now, she could probably still see the stain. All moments when she had understood, wholly and terribly, exactly what it was she could lose. Tears sprang to her eyes again, but this time they were hot and angry. She pulled back, meeting his eyes with a fierce glare. "Of course I do," she told him, her voice low and dangerous. "Of course I know how it feels. Do you think I've never thought about losing you? Do you think I've never imagined how it would feel? I've lost sleep thinking about it, Dick...If anything happened to you, I couldn't—I couldn't—"
Her voice broke in a sob, and Dick's arms tightened around her. His voice sounded softly in her ear in quiet soothing noises. He rocked her lightly as she calmed down, the comforted suddenly becoming the comforter in another one of the swift reversal of roles that they could manage so well.
At last, when Barbara could trust her own voice, she pulled back, placing a hand on Dick's cheek and looking straight into his eyes. "But that's the price we pay to live this life," she said at last, her voice firm and unwavering—and it matched her resolve. "We know the risks. We know what could happen. But we fight anyway. We solider on...because we have to."
Whether her words were directed at Dick or herself, it didn't matter. Barbara knew she was just repeating something they both knew. It was an intrinsic piece of knowledge, either something they'd been born with or something that had been trained into them. Their purpose, their mission—like a flame burning within them always, igniting their will. A flame they shared.
But as Dick covered her hand with his and she saw pain cloud in his eyes, she wondered if his flame was threatening to go out.
"I know that, Barbara," he told her in a somber voice. "I remember the night I made my vow to Bruce like it was yesterday. I haven't forgotten, even after all these years. And I'd never ask you to give up the fight. You couldn't, just like I couldn't, if you asked me." A small, sad smile crept across his lips as he reached out with his other hand and swept a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "It's got its hooks in us," he said.
He was silent for a moment, his azure eyes trailing a path across his face, as if committing every detail to memory (although if he really was, that was just redundant. Barbara knew he'd already memorized it, just like she'd memorized his). When he spoke again, his voice was soft, tender, even, though his words were enough to break her heart. "I know that means we might lose each other. I can live with that. Because I have to, like you said. Because that's the price we have to pay."
"But what I can't live with," he added suddenly, his voice hardening into something fierce, "is losing you before we even have a chance to be together. A chance to know what that would be like."
Barbara was silent. Dick's eyes held hers, a force binding them that was too powerful to break. A thousand thoughts were rushing through her head, a dizzying slew of emotions that were threatening to overpower her. But most potent of all, welling up in her chest with such intensity she feared it might burst, was the overwhelming knowledge that she loved this man. She loved him and she wanted to be with him.
And suddenly Barbara was wondering if she'd had it wrong all along.
It had been easier for her to push Dick away, to tell herself that he wasn't ready, that they were too young and it would only complicate things. She knew that if they went for it then that would be it—the endgame. They were made for each other. There wouldn't be anyone else after, for either of them. But they were still just kids, really. That was too much pressure to put on either one of them…wasn't it?
Because there were other implications, too. What she had already said, what Dick had acknowledged. They lived dangerous lives. The mischievous grin of a young boy they used to know flashed through her mind, coupled with a flash of pain like a jolt of electricity, and Barbara thought of the lesson they had both irrevocably learned—the good die young. She couldn't conceive of a life without Dick, and that was just given what they were now. How much worse would losing him be if they were dating? Married? Or (God, was she really going to go there) if they had kids?
Wasn't it better to keep it this way? Wasn't it safer not to risk it?
"It's not."
Dick's voice came out of nowhere, startling her. Barbara looked back at him in surprise, a part of her lost still in her thoughts. She latched onto the earnest gaze of Dick's eyes, forcing herself back to reality. "What?" she asked, in an uncharacteristic bout of confusion.
"You're thinking that it's better not to be together," he answered, "because it would be harder to lose the other if we were. I'm saying it's not."
"Dick," Barbara shook her head, partly in disbelief at the reminder that he could read her just as easily as she could read him. "You don't know what you're saying. You think that now, but it would be different if we were together. We would be different."
"Babs," Dick said, and he actually laughed—the first time since he'd been there that he actually sounded like his old self. "Don't you think I know that? A relationship would change us...but it would change us for the better. And we deserve to take that chance, Babs. Look...maybe a relationship would make the risks bigger. Maybe it would make it harder to take them. I don't know for sure. But what I do know," Dick reached out, taking both of Barbara's hands in his, "is that I love you, Barbara. And I want to be with you. Because losing you will always be the worst thing that could possibly happen to me, whether we're together by your standards or not."
He had her. He knew it. But he wasn't done. He slipped a hand around her waist and pulled her against him again, close enough to make her acutely aware that she was still only wearing a bath towel.
Dick's voice was soft as he looked down at her, his breath brushing against her lips like a tender caress. "Do you know what my dad told me the first time I learned how to jump off the platform without a net?"
"What did he tell you?" she asked, her voice a hushed tone; transfixed, like she always was whenever Dick talked about his parents.
"I was scared," he said, brushing a thumb across her cheek. "Because it was so high. And when I said that, he told me, 'Looking down will always be scary. Sometimes it's better to not look at all. Sometimes it's better to just leap.'"
There were tears in Barbara's eyes as she smiled up at him. "Well, alright then,
Boy Wonder," she whispered, and leaned forward, closing the distance between their lips.
"Let's leap."