Disclaimer: Surprise! I don't own the show. Bet you would have never guessed that. ;)
Time Frame: It starts with a few mixed descriptions from different periods of their lives, and then the last scene takes place after Dick has moved to Blüdhaven and before Artemis leaves the Team.
Characters: Dick & Artemis (Traught)
Dreaming on Broken Glass
Dick was tired and afraid of others treating him as if he were made of porcelain.
Like the woman in the floppy black hat at his parents' funeral, eyes glistening as she blubbered, "Poor little Richard, without a hope in the world!"
Or the talkative shrink Bruce had forced Dick to visit during his first month at Wayne manor, a young man fresh out of graduate school who understood the mechanics of the developing brain more than the thoughts inside of it.
They always tried to reach out to him, to "understand" his pain with the false assumption their shallow, self-serving sympathy did him any good. It was this pity, not Bruce's stern insistence that a vigilante must guard his alter-ego with his life, which gave him reason to keep his identity and back-story a secret from everyone but his closest friends.
However, even Bruce or Wally would look at him with a glimmer of pity when Dick's past reared its ugly, morbid head. Their concern touched him, but it also deeply angered him. He wasn't the little circus boy who had watched his family plunge to their deaths. He wasn't the man who still had nightmares about said accident. Those were only parts of what made up Dick Grayson. He was himself, and he had forged his self into an icon. Nightwing: the costumed hero he had sacrificed his whole identity, even his allegiance to Gotham and the Bat, to become.
As for Artemis, she had never pitied him. Even when she woke to his hoarse screams the nights they stayed in Mount Justice, she didn't go to his room to wake him up or to comfort him. Instead, she would calmly collect herself, pull pajama pants and a sweatshirt over her underwear, and go down to the lounge kitchen to make a cup of coffee (note: Artemis didn't drink coffee. She liked tea. Dick drank a special Italian blend of coffee, but never in the morning. Only at night).
Dick walking down in boxers and a ratty t-shirt to join her for a drink was merely "a coincidence."
This happened on several occasions: many times in the Cave, once in a motel during an overnight mission, and once when he stayed at Artemis and Wally's apartment (Wally slept like the living dead, managing to snore through Dick's yells and most of Artemis' night terrors). Every time she would get up, make him coffee, and brew tea for herself, and they would sit together and sip their steaming drinks in a state of comfortable insomnia. She didn't ask questions, which is why he eventually gave her answers.
After he told her his story, both of them sitting cross-legged on the Cave lounge carpet between the couch and the TV, she had looked at him unblinkingly, nodded, and then leaned over to give him a swift, sweatshirt-padded hug. Then she rapidly stood to her feet and returned to bed without a word.
The next day, she bought more coffee, but a different blend this time. Dick found a brown bag marked with Vietnamese writing in the cabinet where he kept his caffeine stash. It became his new favorite.
She never verbally shared her reasons for understanding him, but it might have had something to do with the way she sometimes woke up in a cold sweat, a mixture of "Dad" and "Jade" on her screaming lips.
These nightmares came with less and less frequency and became quieter as she settled into the security of the Team and later, her relationship with Wally. So it was Dick's terrors that woke her (she was a light sleeper with sensitive ears), not the other way around.
He didn't get the chance to return the favor until the night he was on monitor duty, Wally was in Central City, and she was in the Cave. It was two weeks after Artemis' father had escaped prison once again.
Perhaps it was Sportsmaster's freedom that reawakened the monsters. Then again, it may have been the stress of her upcoming decision to leave the team with Wally that triggered the event.
Whatever the reason, Artemis' nightmares returned that night with a vengeance.
Half-past one AM, a wail of sheer terror screeched over the audio surveillance. Dick jumped in his seat. He instinctively yanked off his headphones, his eardrums throbbing from the strain, and bent over the security touch-screen controls. With a few punches and swipes of his fingers, he activated the system, and the computer located the source of the sound: Artemis' room.
If he were like Artemis, he would have made her a cup of strong black tea with one creamer and one sweetener. Just the way he knew she liked it.
Instead, he dropped everything to sprint up the stairs to her room because the elevator was too slow for him.
He came into the dark room and groped about for a light source, turning on the bedside lamp. The yellow light illuminated her haggard face. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a wild mane; her mouth was wide as it released an unending stream of screams. Her eyes were open but sightless, and as he came nearer to the bed, she began to thrash around against an unseen enemy.
The moment his soft but insistent cries of "Artemis! It's not real. It's a dream. You can fight it. Wake up!" reached her, her shrieks dissipated and her jaw snapped shut. Without a glance at him, she bolted to her feet and ran to the light switch by the door. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she frantically flicked the lights on and off, on and off, as if she was trying to flash away the darkness. The sight of her trapped within a waking nightmare had scared the life out of him, but her whimpers as she huddled against the wall broke his heart.
Walking up and cautiously placing himself behind her, he gently tugged her hand off the switch (leaving the overhead light on) and folded her up into his arms to carry her back to bed. His brave, strong teammate seemed so small to him now, battling fears born from a traumatic childhood he could only begin to imagine. The skin of her chest was covered in a film of sweat, darkening the neckline of her gray sports bra.
Mutely, he sat back against her pillows and the headboard, arranging her body in his lap so she could remain curled up against his chest. He stayed there for a long time, rubbing her bare back soothingly as she cried her eyes dry. For once, they could drop their walls and share their humanity with each other.
If it had been anyone else, Artemis would have found a way to pull herself together and put on a convincing "I'm good, just a bad dream" façade. But this was Dick. From experience, she knew she could trust him to keep her breathing when she was drowning, and he knew she would do the same for him. They could ask each other for help without forming the humiliating words, "I'm weak, and I need you."
It was in this rare, vulnerable moment that Dick considered the possibility that he loved her, and Artemis considered the possibility that in another world, she might have loved him back.
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