Wounded Birds, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl [rough draft]
Part 7 (Dick)
A/N: DANG IT, I knew I should have put an author's note on the previous chapter! It's just vaguely assumed that Bruce gets vengeance on the Court of Owls; these last two chapters are just a recovery montage.
These scenes are not necessarily in chronological order.
o.o.o
I'm free, and I'm home, but I'm still so broken and sick that I might as well still be the Owls' slave.
Bruce can't stand to be around me. He never looks me in the eye, and he's avoiding me. The only time he stays put is when he's working at the Batcomputer, but even then, we don't talk. What I want to do is climb into his lap like I'm five years old and be hugged by my daddy so he'll make me feel safe, but that's out of the question, so I usually just sit beside him with a book or a tablet or a cup of coffee instead. I sit on the floor instead of a chair because I want to feel like he's bigger than me, that if anything wants to hurt me, it'll have to get through the unstoppable force of nature that is Batman first.
Damian pretends like he's totally fine and that he's back to the way he was before our capture, but I know that's not true. There are many reasons why I know, but the most obvious is that neither of us can bear to sleep alone anymore. At first, he kept making it look accidental...staying up so late playing video games in my room that he'd fall asleep; claiming he was just trying to comfort me after a nightmare or keep watch with me in case any enemies come crashing through the windows... But by now, he's given up making excuses. It's the new routine that he and Titus and sometimes the cat will come climbing into bed with me when it's time to sleep, or we'll curl up together in the Batcave, or crash Tim's room for a sleepover... Sometimes we'll even steal Bruce's room while he's out on patrol. Anything, as long as we don't have to sleep alone.
I've taken to wandering the halls. The quiet, majestic manor is so different than those small apartments and dark streets I was imprisoned in, such a soothingly familiar environment from my childhood... I like to just walk, and walk, looking out the windows as I go, brushing my palm across the walls to keep myself grounded, holding on to Damian with my other hand and basking in the sound of his voice. "...but it'll be soon, because I've been training and I know I'm ready. When Father comes back, I'll show him and I will convince him - don't worry, though, I'll make sure there's someone to stay with you..." The hall is bright with midmorning sunlight. The Wayne estate grounds outside are so beautiful. Before, I rarely took the time to appreciate them, but now, their fresh greenery and the beautiful colors of the gardens give me peace, just like the countryside did when I was waiting to die. "...reeeeaaaaallly tempted to shoot him, but I didn't, Bruce underestimates my self-control when..."
...That's not Damian's voice. I turn my head and am confused to see that it's Jason's hand I'm holding. Late afternoon shadows stretch across the hall. "Where's...? Where did Damian go?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "Dude, his shift was hours ago."
"Shift..."
He lets go of my hand with obvious relief, but then frowns at me. "You okay, Dick?"
"I...I was walking with Damian...he was telling me he's going to go out on patrol soon."
"...Right. Little suck-up - if he's ready for patrol, I don't know why he doesn't just tell Bruce where to shove it and do patrol."
He's hiding something from me. "Jason...you came and...and relieved Damian." I'm angry at myself for making them treat me like a helpless child. "Right, because someone has to babysit Dick at all times, can't expect Damian to always do it, he's got his real life back, so now we all have to take turns watching the headcase because he's too out of it to even notice when people leave...!"
"Dick...don't worry about it. We get it. We don't hold it against you-"
I can tell from his face that he's still hiding something. "What?! What aren't you telling me?!"
He sighs. Then he says quietly, "It was Tim I relieved. His shift was after Damian's."
Something inside me crumples. I cover my face so Jason won't see me cry, but then it doesn't matter because I'm too weak to keep standing. Stupid, helpless baby sobbing on the floor, no wonder they can't leave me alone...
But he doesn't say anything, just sits down beside me. Part of me wants to hide from him, but a bigger part of me needs to be comforted by another human being. He stiffens uncomfortably when I lean close to cry on his shoulder, but he doesn't stop me. After a while, he pats my back and says awkward shushing things until I have to laugh. "Okay...thanks, I know I've bugged you enough."
"Don't worry about it, Dick."
o.o.o.o.o
Oops...came out to the gardens for a while, I must have fallen asleep here under the sunflowers... It's really hot now.
I open my eyes to find my sister sitting beside me, gazing wonderingly at a butterfly that's come to rest on her finger. I smile and sit up. "Cass."
She smiles back at me as the butterfly flits away. "Dick."
"Glad to see you again."
"Mm. Happy. You are safe."
"Sorry about...you know...attacking you back then..."
She cocks her head.
"So...you're taking a shift now, huh?"
"Dick is safe."
"More like Dick is broken..."
She sets her palm over my heart. "Will heal."
A tear slips down my face.
Without moving her hand from my heart, she brings her other one over to join it, and rests her forehead against mine. She begins to hum quietly. She hums for a long time, and I can almost feel my soul slowly stop bleeding.
o.o.o.o.o
"Dick?!"
Blood on my hands again... No, not his blood, mine. Blood on my neck. Damian's pulling my hands away and dragging me over to the sink to clean me up again. "There's a tracker...a tracker in my neck-"
"There's not. We took it out, Dick; it's gone. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?!"
"Sorry...sorry, Dami..."
His voice sounds panicked. "Dick, it's Tim. I'm Tim!"
I stare at him. Oh. Right...I recognize him now. And Damian doesn't call me 'Dick.'
"You know," he complains as he presses a paper towel to my neck and gropes with his other hand to pull ointment and bandages out of the cabinet, "all these 'Tim is the forgettable one' jokes are getting old."
"No...that's not it." This bathroom is so big. Everything's fancy, made for beauty as well as function. I'm not in an apartment, I'm at the manor. "It's...I forget I'm home. I forget...it's not just me and Damian anymore."
"Well...it's not just you and Damian anymore. We're all here, Dick, whenever you need us, whatever you need us for."
"Yeah." I smile at him. "Yeah, I know. I love you, Tim."
He smiles back. "Love you, too."
o.o.o.o.o
Sometimes the darkness suffocates me, and I need to be in the sunlight; other times, I need to bury myself in the most protected part of the mansion, where it's safe. I spend a lot of time in the Batcave, often sleeping there. That's what I'm doing on the first night Robin's allowed back on regular patrol, when he comes rushing alone into the cave and throws himself into my arms and bursts into tears.
"Damian, what happened?! Are you all right? ...Whose blood is this?"
"I didn't mean to," he sobs, "I d-didn't...mean to...!"
He finally calms down enough to tell me what happened, and my heart hurts for him. He's crossed the line so many times, he can't cleanly transition between 'Show no mercy' and 'Do not kill' as if it's a light switch.
"It's okay, Dami," I whisper to him. "It'll be okay. He was a murderer himself, wasn't he? He got what was coming to him. It was wrong, you made a mistake, but he deserved it. You'll do better next time. You'll-"
I can hear the roar of the Batmobile through the tunnel. It screeches to a halt and Batman comes storming out of it, straight toward us. "DAMIAN WAYNE, COME HERE RIGHT-!"
Damian clenches his arms around my chest, and a wave of fury surges through me. I leap up and shove my brother behind me and flare up to meet Bruce. "NO. No, do not come near him! Don't you dare blame him for this! You can't coddle me and forgive me for doubling the blood on my brother's hands and let me get away with murdering an innocent man, then turn around and beat down Damian for one mistake! He killed a monster, and he's sorry! He just spent MONTHS being enslaved, being told he and his brother would die if he didn't kill everyone he was ordered to, then you expect him to suddenly reverse his reflexes and go back to normal?! Don't you dare! After you LEFT US with the Owls, you have NO RIGHT to judge us!"
Bruce doesn't say a word during the whole tirade. When I pause for breath, he turns and stalks away.
"That's right! LEAVE! You're so good at that! You really do hate me, don't you! You can't stand to be near me, can't even stand to look at me, I'm so sorry I'm not your perfect son anymore, kind of hard to stay pristine when you're being ripped apart every day, wondering why your father hasn't bothered to come looking for you yet...!" The words (and the tears) keep spilling out of me even though Bruce is gone by now, until Damian finally pulls me to sit down with him and pet Titus.
"...Sorry. I meant to stick up for you, not...word-vomit all my daddy issues..."
"I don't think I should be Robin anymore."
I hug him tightly. "You are Robin. You just need...some time to adjust, but you're Robin. You rejected killing once, you can do it again."
"Maybe..."
"Spar with me, Damian."
His smile is fragile. "Okay."
o.o.o.o.o
Whatever I'm leaning on is warm, but really hard. I crack open my eyes and straighten up, a little dizzily. "...Clark?"
He was talking to Bruce, but now he turns to smile at me. Superman himself came to sit on the floor and keep me company while I napped. "Hi, Dick."
I'm so happy to see him. He's always been my hero, and his smile now is so warm and encouraging. "What's...what's up?"
His smile turns sympathetic, and he pats my arm. "I just got back a few days ago - I heard what happened and wanted to come see you. Dick, I'm so sorry I wasn't here. If I'd known, I'd have rushed back to Earth in a heartbeat."
"I know. I know you would have, Clark. It's okay."
"You're a tough cookie."
"Not...not as much as I thought, but...I survived, at any rate."
"We're all thankful." His mouth quirks in another grin. "I like your shirt."
Heh. Superman-themed shirts have always been my favorite loungewear. "Me, too. I even had one when I was a Talon."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah." I lean close to whisper playfully, "And Damian has some Batman shirts, but don't tell Bruce."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
o.o.o.o.o
Because I spend so much time in the Batcave, and because that means seeing a lot of the family's action secondhand, now I know how stressful Alfred's nights are.
"Send me the blueprints, and let me know when Red Robin responds."
"Sending them now, sir."
I sit next to Alfred and pick at the tray of snacks nearby and chat with him in spare moments. Sometimes I'm even useful.
"Master Dick, perhaps you might contact Miss Gordon while I go fetch that manuscript?"
"Sure, Alfred." Maybe this is how I can contribute now. I still don't have the heart to go out on patrol and be a liability to the team, even if I did physically pass muster (which I don't...even now, there's something wrong with my reflexes and focus). But if I can be an extra set of hands in the cave...support the team from the sidelines, take some of the burden off Alfred...they'll think I'll still be worth keeping, right?
Except the battles are hard to watch, especially when Damian is involved. He's so little...he's grown over the past year, but he's still so little, and it's too stressful for me to sit here and helplessly watch people beating him, hurting him, trying to kill him. The first time he gets the worst of it in a fight, I start screaming, and Alfred has to yank the comm away from me so I won't distract everyone on the line. Then I start having episodes every time Damian encounters any opponent at all, so they can't even trust me with anything unless Alfred is supervising. Worse than useless...!
o.o.o.o.o
It's the first time in a long time that all seven of us are home at the same time to eat a meal together. Alfred's delighted. Jason and Tim and Damian helped him cook; Cass and I set the table. It feels like Thanksgiving or something, we're all laughing and chatting together until right before we all sit down to eat. That's when Bruce mumbles something about how he has a lot of work to do and will just take a plate down to the cave.
"No." My chest hurts. "No, I'll leave. You stay, Bruce."
"What? No, I-"
I slam down a fistful of silverware. "Just stop, Bruce! They were looking forward to this, don't let me ruin it! I'll leave, I'll leave, you stay and be with your family for once!"
"Dick," Tim points out, "you're family, too-"
"He can't stand me anymore! Don't think I haven't noticed you walking out of every room I set foot into, Bruce. I'm sorry for making you feel guilty, or whatever it is that makes you hate me so much now, but don't let that cut you off from the rest of the family. I won't get in your way."
"Dick...that's not-"
"Come to think of it," Jason says suddenly "you have been avoiding him."
"All of us have to eat together!" Damian demands childishly.
Bruce looks uncomfortable. "I'm not avoiding you. I really do have some important things to-"
"Master Bruce," Alfred says in a tone I've rarely heard from him, "this gathering is important."
"All right. All right, I'll stay. The work can wait."
"Don't force yourself," I snarl. I start to storm out of the room, but Cass gets in my way.
She's too upset to speak aloud, but I think I understand her gestures. "This pain in here, you leave, it grows. Stay. Love, we, you. Stay." She moves to Bruce. "This pain in here, you leave, it grows. Him, hurt. You, hurt. Together. Heal."
"Don't let the Court of Owls take more from us than they already have," Tim says quietly.
Bruce and I both sit down, stiff and silent. Everyone starts to eat, but the laughter and conversation from earlier is gone. It's like we're having a funeral meal. Then I blink and realize that everyone's staring at me, and Damian is pulling hard to get my hand away from my neck. Even now that I've finally convinced myself that the implant's gone, my body still sees 'scratch hole in neck' as its default coping mechanism. "Dammit."
"Stay," Cass says quickly, reading in my body that I'm intending to escape to my room and hide. "No shame."
Which makes me want to melt into the floor even more.
"It's cool," Jason mutters. "Don't worry about it."
I slam my hands on the table. "Right. Right, no worries, Dick's a wreck, it's all fine, none of us cares that we've got a lunatic wandering around Wayne Manor when he should be locked up in Arkham, we don't care that Nightwing's gone and his empty husk is wasting space while everyone's out saving the city-"
"That's enough, Dick," Bruce thunders.
I leap to my feet and thrust my arm through everything on the table within reach as I scream, "I'm crazy! They ruined me! That's why you hate me! I hate myself, I hate being so useless, I hate-!"
He's marching around the table and suddenly I'm terrified, but I stumble as I back away and just barely catch myself on the edge of the table before I fall, he's going to hit me-
He doesn't hit me. His grip, though tight and full of emotion, isn't painful, and his face is so close to mine that I can see tears brimming in his eyes. "I do not hate you. I could never hate you, Dick." We stare at each other. Then he says softly, "And I did not bring you into this household to be useful, Dick. I brought you here to protect you and give you a better life. Saving Gotham is my mission, and as long as you're safe and healthy and hopefully happy, that's all I need you to be. ...The reason it's so hard for me to look at you now is because I see how badly I failed to protect my son, whom I love. It's myself I hate, Dick. Not you."
I sort of...curl into him. And he hugs me tight, and...I feel better. I wish he hugged us more often. When we finally sit back down, Tim leans over to pat my back and Cass smiles brilliantly, Jason makes an 'it's all good' gesture, and Alfred remarks in satisfaction. Damian brings his plate around and pushes a chair next to Bruce's so he can cuddle with his dad. Bruce lets him.
Although the heavy atmosphere has finally lifted, attempts at conversation are still awkward. Tim finally gets out a notebook, draws a bunch of lines on it, and passes it around to Damian. "You're the youngest, so you can have the first guess."
Damian stares at the notebook. "What is this?"
"What is-? It's Hangman!"
"Far too abstract, Drake. I could draw a better hanged man in my sleep."
"It's a game, Damian."
"You don't know what Hangman is?!" Jason exclaims.
"Don't know what Hangman is," Cass pipes up cheerfully.
"All right, look, the point of the game is to figure out what the phrase is, and you can only guess one letter at a time..."
It's fun, watching them all get so into it. Bruce and I both stay pretty quiet until the third round, when I finally have enough motivation to guess a letter. "B."
Tim smiles at me. "Yup! There's one B." He writes it in.
Bruce suddenly speaks up with his first contribution to the game: "'The day our lost Robins came home.'"
"Wha-?! There are barely any letters filled in, how'd you guess?!"
To be concluded...