AN: This chapter follows on from the events of Centre Fight: Gambit/Bind Part 3 and Divergence: Shots.
Castling Part 1
Dick woke up in what looked like a hotel room that had been hastily converted to a hospital.
The wallpaper was light green with a simple floral pattern. The floor was covered with a slightly darker green rug. The furniture was all nice and seemed to go together as a set. Most of it had been shoved against the walls with only indents in the rug revealing where they once had been. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows. A single lamp in the corner spilled soft light over the room. There was no sign of any personal items or decoration. Surrounding the bed Dick was currently in were an IV drip, a heart monitor, and a small side table with nothing on it. The bed was a standard hospital bed that could have been grabbed out of any major Gotham hospital.
Dick had no idea where he was. One of the last things he remembered was the people who had been helping him - had one of them been Thomas Wayne? - saying that they weren't going to take him to a hospital. Then there had been a car ride. Tobias' network couldn't have gotten to him that quickly, and this hotel room looked much more expensive than something they would have booked.
He had no idea where he was or who had helped him.
Whoever it was had done a good job of it. It would have been hard to get hospital equipment in here. Looking down, he saw that his clothes had been taken off and someone had put him in a hospital gown. He looked under it and discovered that his wound had been treated and dressed extremely well. They didn't seem to be around right now though.
Step one: figure out where he was.
Dick reached over to the IV to remove before thinking better of it. Instead he grabbed the IV stand to hold himself steady as he stood up. He moved slowly, his legs shaking. As he set his feet down he realised there were a few dark spots on the floor near the hospital bed.
Oh, that was probably his blood wasn't it?
Dick limped towards the window with the IV stand. The curtains were surprisingly heavy. He had to lean against the wall by the window to pull them open .
He couldn't help but let out a slow whistle at the view.
He was on the ground floor looking over a narrow road that seemed to turn into a driveway. The driveway/road led up to an entrance that Dick had to lean his cheek against the window to see, flanked by large pillars. Either side of the road was an open field of grass that looked more like a lawn. In the distance Dick could see high hedges. There was no sign of a parking lot.
No hotel with large numbers of people coming to visit would be without a parking lot. This wasn't a hotel. This was the guest room of someone's very fancy and very large house outside the city. Only a few people in Gotham had the kind of money that could buy a place like this. Most of them wouldn't have put him up in a guest room. The alternative was-
There was a click as the door handle turned. Dick managed to get himself turned around in time to see a man in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. He had dark hair, blue eyes, and a furrowed brow.
"You absolutely should not be standing up yet," said Bruce Wayne. "That bullet hit an artery and took out a good chunk of muscle ."
"Where am I?" Dick asked. He already suspected he knew the answer since apparently the Waynes had grabbed him but he wasn't sure he believed it.
"We're at Wayne Manor. You didn't want us to take you to a hospital so we brought you here." Bruce walked up to him. He offered Dick a hand. "I can help you back to the bed if you need it. Please, come sit down."
Dick had been managing by leaning against the wall but when he tried to push off his legs started shaking. The knuckles of his right hand were white around the IV stand so he reached out his left hand to grab Bruce's. He started helping him to the bed when Dick realized something.
"I actually managed to save you. I was almost too late."
"And I'm incredibly glad you did. Now you need to recover." Bruce helped Dick climb onto the bed. "Also since you're awake now I'm going to need to look you over to make sure everything is healing alright."
Bruce reached for the dressing, noting that apart from the medications, it appeared perfectly dry. The skin surrounding the site of the surgical repair of the damaged femoral artery was not as ecchymosed or erthythameous as he expected. Looking up at the face of the boy he noted that there was none of the grimacing he'd normally receive from light palpation of a wound. There was minimal weeping and the biological sutures seemed to be dissolving far more rapidly than his dad's quickest recovering patients.
In fact…
At this rate this recovery would be maybe a fortnight - maybe a week more - with some physiotherapy. Not the months he would estimate for a patient with the sort of damage he had received.
"You're healing...remarkably fast." Bruce frowned. I was a bit surprised to see you up at all when I came in here, but this…" He looked up. "This isn't normal."
Dick tried not to look in Bruce's eyes. "I'm a naturally fast healer."
"Supernaturally fast."
"Not quite that-"
"I saw what it looked like after you were shot. I was helping treat you right after. You should not be healing this quickly."
Dick tried to come up with a response that would put any concerns Bruce had to rest without revealing too much but his whirling thoughts were interrupted by Bruce's sigh.
"This has something to do with whomever wanted to kill me doesn't it."
"Not directly." Dick looked up again. Bruce was glaring at him. Well it wasn't quite a glare, and more of a very intense stare but with the frown and the crossed arms it came across as a glare. "I just can recover from a lot."
Bruce sighed. "I know we just met but as one of the doctors taking care of you I need a bit more detail about your healing powers. You are recovering fast but you've still got a way to go. How fast is your healing compared to a regular human's?"
"Faster." Dick frowned. "I don't actually know. I've never tried to compare it to someone else's."
"But if it's your healing factor you must have some idea."
"They didn't exactly tell me what they were doing to me." Oh, why had he gone and said that. Waking up here of all places must have thrown Dick off.
"What they did to you…?" Now Bruce looked concerned. He was probably wondering what the heck he had gotten involved in.
"It's alright," Dick said. "As soon as I'm healed up I can be on my way." Bruce's frown got even deeper. "After the way that fell apart they aren't going to try going after you again for a while. And I'll still be working on stopping them."
"And just who are these people?"
Dick sighed. He really was revealing a lot. He tried not to get people involved in this stuff. Last time had been that journalist but she would have kept digging no matter what. She needed to know what she was getting into. Bruce was already involved in this since the Owls had it out for the Waynes. He deserved to know too.
"The Court of Owls."
Silence descended on the room for a long moment. Bruce walked over to the chair that had been shoved into a corner and sat down.
"You're joking."
"I'm not."
"They aren't real."
"They are."
"Right," Bruce put his face in his hands for a moment before looking up. "You're saying the Court of Owls is real, they want me dead, and they did something to you to give you superpowers."
"There is a lot more detail but that's the basics."
Bruce stood up. "Okay. I'm going to get my parents. Then we are going to have a long talk."
AN: Thanks once again for reading! If you'd like to contact us via tumblr, my handle is eastoniablogs!
