I find myself in a similar position to where I was a year ago: just getting into a new fandom that's already partway through its final season. At least, unlike 'The Walking Dead', 'Titans' is part of a genre that I have a history of enjoying. TWD is the first zombie fandom I've ever enjoyed.
Partly inspired by 'The bruises that you left behind' by Multifandom_damnation on AO3. You should really check it out, along with the author's other works; I find that we have some overlapping tastes when it comes to characters that need more love.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'Titans', 'Macbeth', or any Charlie Chaplin movies, nor any of their characters.
WORD COUNT: 3,111
Out, damned spot! Out, I say! – One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't. – Hell is murky! – Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
– Lady Macbeth, 'Macbeth' Act 5, Scene 1
It wasn't uncommon for Dick Grayson to be up and about in the middle of the night. Far from it, actually; being raised by a practically nocturnal vigilante meant that his sleep schedule really didn't resemble a schedule at all. Knowing it was neither normal nor healthy, Dick tried to keep the three teens he'd suddenly found under his care on a normal sleep schedule, even though Jason was already used to being up at all hours of the night. This resulted in Dick often being wide awake when he heard the nightmares.
As young as they were, they had already lived through horrors like the ones that had scarred Dick and his friends for life, and he would give everything he had to make them all go away. But since that was impossible, he had to settle for being there for them after the nightmares, which was significantly more dangerous with those three than it probably was with regular teenagers. Rachel would sometimes cry out in her sleep, her powers lashing out and violently throwing things around the room. Jason usually came awake fighting when Dick tried to rouse him, a sleep-sloppy mix of Batman's training and dirty street tactics. And Gar would twitch and growl, his teeth and nails sometimes shifting into fangs and claws.
Tonight, however, went a little different than normally.
He was working out against the punching bag when the first sound caught his ears. It was a strange combination of a moan and a growl, muffled through multiple walls, and he knew that only their resident shapeshifter could make a sound like that. He shed his wraps, leaving them in a pile on the nearest bench, and made tracks to Gar's room.
As he approached, the sound of running footsteps could be heard. The clicking of a door being thrown open, then another one seconds later, followed. Then, as Dick rounded the corner into the hallway that all the bedrooms and the bathroom branched off from, he heard the bathroom faucet turn on.
The door to Jason's bedroom creaked open, next, the second Robin peeking out and rubbing at his eyes. If he weren't so distracted, Dick would have laughed at how Jason's dark hair was sticking up in all directions. "The hell's making that noise?" Jason grumped.
Before Dick could open his mouth to answer, Rachel threw her own bedroom door open, her eyes wide and worried. "Something's wrong with Gar," she gasped, which only increased Dick's worry. Her empath powers often had her picking up on everyone's nightmares. She was always the first one to Dick's room when he suffered through his own, after all. But there was an extra note of urgency in her voice that had his hair standing on end.
Dick picked up his pace. When Rachel made a move to enter the bathroom, he held up a hand to stop her. "Hang on," he told her, "Let me see what's going on."
For a moment, he thought the girl was going to ignore him and go charging after her best friend, but Rachel swallowed and stepped back, although Dick could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
The bathroom door was ajar, but the lights were still off. And now that he was closer, Dick could hear the sound of distressed whimpers over the rushing of the water. Dick eased the door back open, allowing light from the hallway to illuminate the room.
Gar was standing in front of the sink, the water running as he frantically rubbed his hands together, occasionally reaching up to scrub vigorously at his neck and face. Tears ran down his face and breaths left him in short, strangled gasps.
"Gar?" Dick asked cautiously, taking another step into the bathroom, "Everything okay?"
The green-haired teen practically jumped out of his skin, whipping his head around so fast Dick would swear he heard Gar's neck cracking. "Dick?" he croaked, his voice cracking painfully.
Dick stepped closer, not missing the fact that Gar flinched at his approach. "What's wrong?" he asked softly.
"I- I- don't. I can't- The blood. It- It won't come off…" Gar turned around and resumed his fervent scrubbing. "I can't get it off!"
For a moment, Dick was confused by that statement. He couldn't see a drop of blood anywhere. He hit the light switch, and after a couple seconds to let his eyes adjust, he could clearly see that Gar's face and hands were as clean as could be. Yet, the boy continued to rub aggressively at his skin, getting water all over the place.
Dick closed the distance between the two of them. "Gar… There's nothing there."
"I bit him," Gar mumbled. Now that Dick was closer, he could see tears running down his face to join the rest of the water. "I b-b-bit him and there's so- so much blood. I can't- I-" His breaths were coming shorter and faster, making Dick worry that the kid was going to start hyperventilating.
Dick reached out, intending to pull him away from the sink, but Gar flinched violently the second Dick's hand touched his shoulder.
"Don't!" The one word was accompanied by a growling undertone that had Dick instinctively stepping back. Gar's eyes flashed green for a moment before switching back to their usual brown, and he pressed his sweat-soaked back against the tile wall.
Dick swallowed. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I won't touch, I promise. Gar, you need to take some breaths. Do you think you can do that?" He was thinking that Gar was still halfway in a nightmare, and a particularly bloody one, at that, and needed to wake up. Hopefully, getting him to slow his breathing down would calm him enough to help with that.
But Gar didn't seem to be listening to him. Instead, his eyes fixed on a spot in the opposite corner of the bathroom, and he froze. Dick looked over his shoulder; there was nothing there. All he could see was the shower stall and towel rack.
"N-n-n-n-no…" Gar gasped, backing up further along the wall until he was jammed into the corner, "No, no, I didn't- I've never-"
Dick was forced to jump back as Gar suddenly doubled over and threw up on the tile floor. Jason's cry of disgust could be heard behind him, but Dick chose to ignore it, for now.
"Gar…" In the mirror's reflection, Dick could see Rachel stepping forward. "Gar, it's okay. It's alright. You're at the Tower. You're safe."
"Rachel, get away from him!" Gar's voice practically echoed throughout the confined space of the bathroom, his eyes turning green and his skin starting to follow suit as his canines grew into fangs.
Rachel froze, and Jason's hand snapped out to grab at her arm to pull her back.
"Don't you touch her!" Gar snarled, but he wasn't looking at Jason. (The second Robin still retracted his hand as though he'd been burned.) Instead, he was glaring daggers at that empty corner. "She's not the one who killed you!"
Rachel sucked in her next breath with a sharp hiss, meeting Dick's eyes in the mirror as they both reached the same conclusion.
The Asylum. They place where they were all tortured, and where Gar was forced to take a life for the first time.
Knowing that it was foolhardy in the extreme, Dick carefully stepped in between Gar and the apparent hallucination he was snarling at. "Gar," he called firmly, "He's not there. There's no one there."
Gar didn't respond verbally, but his face had turned that deep shade of jade green, the bones visibly starting to shift under his skin. Instead of pressing his back to the wall, he was starting to lean forward in a more aggressive stance, like he was one moment away from lunging. His fingers were splayed out, the nails lengthening and sharpening into claws.
"Gar, listen to me. You're safe here. The doctor is gone, he can't hurt you or anyone else here. Gar, look at me."
The stern command finally got Gar to look Dick in the eye instead of trying to look around him. In that moment, Dick truly understood what it felt like to be prey being stared down by a predator. And this predator was literally backed into a corner and severely on-edge. A stranger seeing him for the first time would never be able to tell that this was also a kid who laughed and gloated when he beat them all at video games and played music and danced like a complete dork while working in the kitchen.
Still, Dick forced himself to swallow that primal fear and keep going. "You're safe here. The Asylum is gone. He is gone, and he can't hurt anyone else. C'mon, Gar, take a deep breath. It's okay. Come on back to us."
Dick wasn't sure how long it took. Every second seemed to stretch into an hour and pass by in an instant all at the same time. Gar's emerald eyes darted around the room nervously, searching for something – a threat, a target, maybe an exit; Dick wasn't sure what, exactly. The team leader didn't dare move, not wanting to spook what was essentially a cornered animal right now. Eventually, Gar's rapid breathing slowed, his tense muscles relaxed (somewhat), and the green in his eyes faded back to their natural brown. "Dick?" His voice was barely above a whisper, this time. Gar looked down at his clean hands, blinking a few times, and then the tears started up again. "I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't- 'M sorry I woke you…"
Finally confident that he wasn't about to get clawed if he made a wrong move, Dick stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Gar's trembling shoulders.
Gar stiffened up at first, and Dick was about to step away when the waterworks really started. Heavy sobs shook the teen's entire body, and he reached up to clutch onto Dick's shirt as his knees buckled.
Dick staggered under the sudden extra weight, but was able to keep himself upright as Gar clung to him. Rachel finally moved away from the door and gently gripped Gar's shoulders from behind, rubbing circles into the back of his neck with her thumbs. "It was the Asylum," she murmured softly, so softly Dick almost couldn't hear it, "Wasn't it?"
"I think so."
"What asylum?" Jason asked. His hands were in his pockets, and he was shifting his weight back and forth like he wasn't sure if he should join them or not.
"The one where my mother was being held," Rachel explained, spitting out the word 'mother' like it tasted badly in her mouth, "We all got captured while trying to rescue her. It was hell; they tortured Gar with cattle prods, and when I freed him, one of them attacked me and Gar… He killed the bastard. To protect me. Before that, he'd never so much as bitten a person…"
Jason paled, and Dick realised that they'd never told him the full story of what happened at the asylum. The fact that the woman they'd gone through all that to rescue had turned out to be another enemy… that had only made it worse. The bitch had manipulated Rachel, poisoned Gar, and murdered an innocent man to help her demon lover. She hadn't been worth all that pain.
Swallowing back the bile that rose as he thought about his own experience in that hellhole, Dick sighed and tightened his arms around Gar's trembling frame. "You don't have to be sorry about waking us," he murmured, "Not after something like that. Killing someone, even when it's necessary, takes its toll on you. There's no shame in how you're feeling. You know you can come to me anytime, right?"
Gar made a whimpering noise that kind of sounded like an agreement, and then finally pulled back. His sobs had stopped, but his eyes were still glazed over and unfocused. Dick figured they would be better off if he tried giving the teen this talk when everyone was calmer. So, for now, he would stick with a tried-and-true short-term fix that he and the other Titans were familiar with.
"Come on, let's get out of here."
Together, Dick and Rachel steered Gar around the puddle of vomit, out of the bathroom, and down the hall. However, instead of going to Gar's room, Dick led the pair to the common area. "Something we did with the old team when one of us had a rough night," he said softly in response to their confused looks, "We'd all pile on an air mattress in front of the TV, watch silly movies, and stuff our faces with ice cream."
"Gar doesn't eat ice cream," Rachel reminded him.
"What about that fancy fake ice cream you guys made yesterday?" Jason asked.
"Sorbet. Vegan strawberry sorbet. It's four simple ingredients, so I wouldn't call it fancy."
"Well, a fancy French name like 'sorbet' makes it sound fancy."
"Is there any left over?" Dick asked as they guided Gar to the couch.
"Lots," Gar mumbled, "We made a crap ton of it."
"Considering it takes, like, six hours to make…" Rachel grumbled.
"Okay, you two-" Dick gestured at Rachel and Jason. "-go get the sorbet and four bowls. I'll get the mattress out."
The king-sized blow-up mattress was still folded up in the closet where he remembered it, along with the battery-powered auto-inflator. Dick got Gar settled on the couch before going to get it, and when he came back, the younger Titan had moved so that he was lying on his side, his knees tucked loosely up to his chest. Dick hadn't seen him looking that miserable since patching him up from the fight with Trigon. The kid was silent as Dick pushed the coffee table to one side, unfolded the mattress in its place, and got to the business of blowing it up.
"It's happened before," Gar murmured, his voice just barely audible over the sound of the inflator and the other two teens bickering in the kitchen area.
Dick looked up at him. "When?" After several seconds of silence, he decided to push the issue a little. "Gar, when has this happened before?"
"At the house. When Rachel and I were staying with Angela. I saw blood on my reflection in a mirror, and went outside to call you and get some air. And then I saw him… The doctor. He was standing in the yard, all torn up and covered in blood and just staring at me." He sniffed. "He disappeared when Rachel came out to talk to me, but I still see him in my nightmares. With all the shit that was going on then, I thought it was Trigon messing with my head, but I can't blame this on him, anymore. Sometimes I wake up and see him in my room, always bloody, always staring. Sometimes I can still taste it. I can't make it go away…"
He started trembling again, screwing his eyes shut against another wave of tears. Dick immediately abandoned his pillow-arranging and moved over to sit next to Gar and, after a moment's indecision, start rubbing his back like he remembered his mother doing for him when he was little.
In his mind, Dick was reeling. How the hell had he missed this?! He was well aware that Gar had been struggling, just as the other two had been dealing with their own traumas. But hallucinations? Ones that had been going on since before they got here? Clearly Gar's first kill had left a deeper mark on him than Dick had originally thought, especially if he was seeing things that weren't there.
Rachel and Jason soon returned, both carrying a bowl in each hand, although Rachel set her burden down on the table to rush over to Gar's side. "Hey," she soothed, "Hey, you're going to be okay. You know that, right? Maybe not today, but someday. And we'll be there for you, every step of the way."
Jason hovered awkwardly behind her. He clearly wasn't used to talking about feelings. "You're tough, Gar," he finally spat out, "Tougher than you think. You may not believe that right now, but we can keep believing for you."
It was far from eloquent, but Dick felt so damn proud of all of his charges right now.
The inflator started making that high-pitched noise it did when the mattress was fully blown up, so Dick turned and finished up, plugging the hole. "Alright, everybody get comfy."
It took some grumbling and shuffling around, but eventually everyone got settled on the mattress. Gar was in the middle, half-buried under a veritable mountain of blankets. Dick got comfortable on the kid's right side while Rachel snuggled close on his left, and Jason stretched out at the foot of the mattress. The bowls of sorbet were all balanced on blankets and laps. And then it took some time for them to choose something to watch. They eventually settled on a collection of Charlie Chaplin movies (even Dick was surprised to find them), knowing Gar's appreciation of the classics. 'A Dog's Life' came on first, although they ended up stopping partway through 'The Circus', the film bringing up some painful memories for Dick and apparently featuring a scene with Chaplin getting trapped in a lion's cage (aka the absolute worst scene to show Gar right now).
Despite being the most shaken up by far, Gar was the first one to fall asleep. Dick gently removed the bowl from his slack hands before the melted remains of sorbet could drip onto the blankets. Rachel and Jason at least got their dishes set aside before they also drifted off. Dick remained awake a little longer.
In the dim light from the city lights below, he could see that Gar was curled up against his side like an actual housecat, his head resting on Dick's stomach and his left arm thrown over him, as well. Rachel was pressed up against Gar's back as the 'big spoon', the fingers of her left hand loosely tangled in his hair. And Jason was sprawled out over everyone's legs, using Rachel's calves as a pillow and drooling onto the hem of her pajama pants.
The whole scene was almost disgustingly cute. If Donna or Kory were here, they'd be making shushed little "Aww…" noises and snapping a ton of blackmail photos on their phones. Thankfully, per their last update, the pair was nowhere near San Francisco.
Dick stayed awake just long enough to turn the TV off before succumbing to the pull of sleep tugging on his eyelids.
THE END
I honestly can't recall if every bedroom in Titans Tower has its own bathroom or not. Let's say, for the sake of the story, that they don't.
The sorbet recipe is one I found online and would like to try some day: strawberries, bananas, coconut milk, and maple syrup. ( /4-ingredient-homemade-strawberry-sorbet-vegan-paleo-dairy-free-gluten-free/)
That said, I'm not one hundred percent certain that Gar is actually a vegan in canon. I recall him eating some distinctly non-vegan foods in Season 1, like a pizza with cheese. Of course, it could be because they were on the run and he'd temporarily adopted an 'eat what you can get' philosophy. Him being a vegetarian is still on the table, though.