Dick knows what he did could destroy them.
But he chooses to see it like he had no other choice. He couldn't see Harley like that anymore. In a moment of weakness, he'd allowed her to escape the Batcave, and the Batman's interrogation.
The action tore a rift in the family. Meanwhile, the Joker's plan continues, with Harley at the helm. The one wrench in her gears, however, is Dick. He's unpredictable. So when Nightwing pursues her once again, Harley again tries to force him away, but her actions are becoming less and less forceful...
Dick's eyes flew open, and he gasped as he was dragged out of his bed by his shirt collar. In his still half asleep haze, he screamed and tried to defend himself, but Bruce lifted him off of the ground and threw him into the armchair across his bedroom. It skidded back, it's legs scraping against the hardwood floor, and Dick cried out as the back of it slammed against the wall; it jolted him, and his head hit the back of the chair. He gasped and his hand went to his side as pain exploded from his stab wound, and Dick looked up in terror.
"What did you do!?" Bruce bellowed, coming across the room at him. He grabbed Dick by the collar again and lifted him violently out of the chair. Dick's mouth opened in surprise.
"-Bruce-! Put me down- you're hurting me!" he cried, still dazed. Bruce dropped him on the floor, and he stumbled, and when Dick straightened up, Bruce backhanded him across the face.
"You stupid, selfish child! Where is she?" he roared as Dick tripped over the chair and fell to the floor.
"Bruce!" Selina cried, racing into the room and grabbing his arms. He roughly shoved her away and hauled Dick to his feet again. Tim, Barbara, and Damian all rushed through the door, and Selina and Tim dragged Bruce away from Dick as Damian pulled Dick back. Both boys went sprawling on the floor when Bruce suddenly let go, and Dick cried out in pain, sitting up on the ground as Damian knelt beside him. He could taste blood in his mouth and feel it on his side where his stitches had burst, but he was so disoriented that the only emotion that could stand out above the rest was terror. He clung to Damian's shirt as Tim and Selina pulled Bruce away.
"Get off me!" he shouted at them both, tearing his arms away from them.
"Shame on you for hurting your son!" Selina shouted, slapping Bruce across the face. "Now what, in the hell, is going on!?" she demanded furiously, glaring up at Bruce. Barbara hurried towards Dick, and she knelt beside him. He still didn't let go of Damian's shirt, clinging to him and panting in his terror. She pulled up his shirt to make sure that the tight bandages would hold his cut for now, but the blood was already seeping through the gauze.
"How could you?" Bruce roared down at Dick, his face a mask of fury.
He stuttered, half hiding behind Damian and Barbara. "Bruce- I don't know! I'm sorry!" he cried, his eyes wide.
"You betrayed all of us for her!" Bruce bellowed, shaking Selina off.
Dick didn't know what to do. He couldn't think straight, and he didn't know if he'd been thinking all that clearly last night either, when he'd released Harley Quinn. Damian and Barbara looked at him, surprised. Barbara stepped away. Tim and Selina both turned to stare at him in disbelief and horror, and Damian looked down at him in confusion. Dick felt sick to his stomach. "I'm sorry!" he wailed again, not sure what else to say.
"Do you realize what you've done?" Bruce demanded slowly.
"Yes, I just- I don't know-" Dick ran both hands into his hair, closing his eyes. "I'm so sorry-"
"-you're sorry?!" Bruce growled, grabbing the front of Dick's shirt. "The person who freed half of Gotham's criminals is back on the street!"
"Bruce, this is bad, but you can't keep hurting him!" Selina cried, wrapping her hands around his thick arm and trying to pull him back. The rest of them didn't move, didn't try to help. Bruce elbowed Selina away and slammed Dick against the wall.
"I'm hurting him?!" he snapped. "What does this mean for Gotham? How many people are going to die because of this? So, yes, I'm hurting him."
"Bruce-!" Dick choked, trying not to cry. He wasn't going to fight back. He knew he deserved it, but that didn't stop the panic rising in his chest. "If you'd- listen to me-" he gasped, his eyes wide.
"Then what?" Bruce demanded, dropping Dick to the floor.
Dick bit back the scream rising in his throat as he clutched his wounded side. He gasped, the pain nearly debilitating. "-didn't betray you- I just didn't want to watch her get hurt-"
"Did you even think what you were doing?" Bruce cried incredulously. "The one person who knows who all of us are, you just sent back to the person out there planning something with every foe we've ever faced! For once we had the upper hand, and now..." he trailed off, breathing deeply to try and control his rage.
"Still have… th' upper hand…" Dick breathed. Something was wrong. He took his hand away from his side, blood coating his palm. "Bruce…" he dithered, his eyes fluttering. "Bruce stop… I'm gonna pass out..." Bruce opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, his jaw working furiously. Barbara knelt at Dick's side.
He closed his eyes against the pain and then slumped forward, falling against Barbara. She caught him and tugged his already blood soaked t-shirt away from his side. "We need to re-stitch this stab wound. It tore open again," she looked up at Bruce.
"I'll get Alfred," he muttered, storming out of the room. Damian and Tim still stared at Dick in numb shock. Selina knelt beside Barbara and helped her pick him up and carry him back to bed, laying him on his side. She peeled his shirt off, working quietly.
"Why would he do this to us?" Damian asked suddenly, his voice soft.
"I don't know," Tim whispered. The two of them watched Selina and Barbara as the worked around Dick. Alfred and Bruce came back into the room. Damian looked up at him.
"What now, Father?"
"We'll continue this conversation later." Without looking at any of them, Bruce turned and left again. Damian looked down, crossing his arms tighter over his chest. He sighed.
Alfred began re-stitching the stab wound in Dick's side, and Barbara stroked his dark hair. Dick was the one that they would have looked to in these situations; he was their secondary leader. None of them knew what to do, and they all turned to Selina. She looked at each of them, and then looked down, wrapping her arms around herself.
"I'll go talk to him," she whispered, dreading the encounter. She wandered out into the hall, assuming that he'd go to the Batcave. When she stepped out of the elevator, she looked around. "Bruce?" Selina asked, her bare footsteps echoing as she walked along the stone floor toward the computer banks. He didn't answer, but she could see him slumped forward in the computer chair. "It's not all bad," she whispered, hesitantly putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Tell me one good thing," he pleaded, his head in his hands.
"Damian didn't kill anyone?" she said hopefully, stroking his hair at the back of his neck.
"I wouldn't put it past him yet." He sighed and leaned back to look at her. She smiled a little, brushing his hair back from his forehead and stroking his cheek.
"But it's good that he hasn't. You told me to give you one good thing," she shrugged, and then knelt beside his chair. "You can figure this out. You always do."
"This time is different," he muttered. "Dick was always there to solve the problem, not to cause it."
"I don't know what to tell you," she sighed. "Except that he's in love." Bruce looked into her eyes, suddenly glad that when they'd fallen for each other, she'd changed for him. He didn't know what he'd have done.
"Thank you for being here," he told her earnestly. She smiled a little, sadly, and then kissed his cheek.
"You wouldn't be able to function without me," she whispered, smiling. She leaned back on her heels and stood, and then stroked his shoulder. "We have work to do."
"Hello Puddin," Harley called. She stepped nervously into the room, running her fingers through her still damp hair. She tried to stand tall and ignore her dread. Joker sat bolt upright in the chair that he had been lounging in, his hands smacking on the armrests. He whirled around to look at her over the back of the chair, his knees planted on the seat as he stared at her, eyes wide.
"Harley!" he cried, practically leaping out of his chair and rushing to her. "I didn't know where you'd gone, I was so worried!"
"I thought I'd let you chat with Scarecrow and didn't think I'd be needed for the night," her words flowed fast as she quickly explained. She shifted her weight awkwardly. "I'm sorry to worry you."
He waved away her apology and looked her over. "No. As long as you're alright and here and not dead," he mumbled. She held her breath, and then slowly released it as the Joker ultimately decided that nothing was wrong with her. He sighed in relief. "Good, good…" Joker nodded, lacing his fingers and pacing away from her.
"Did I miss anything?" Harley asked innocently. She knew he wouldn't be in this good of a mood if the answer was 'yes'.
"Of course not. Things were rather bland around here today, actually, with you not here I had to sit on the balcony and shoot stray cats to break the boredom," he sighed, his shoulders slumping in his purple jacket. He perked up almost instantaneously, though, and turned. "You're up for another job tonight?" Joker asked hopefully, his fingers laced together.
"Absolutely," she smiled, keeping the wince off her face.
"Oh good," he grinned, cocking his head at her. A curl bounced in front of his forehead, and he laughed a bit. "Tonight, though. No more of this daytime business, we wouldn't want our favorite friend getting stage fright. I've been doing my part as you've done yours, beautifully, by the way; there's no stopping us now, Batman!" He laughed gleefully, clapping in excitement.
It was tricky, slipping down to the Batcave to get his uniform. Nightwing raced across Gotham now on his motorcycle, the night air whipping his hair around his head. The entire family had avoided him. Sneaking out wasn't hard.
The difficult part had been letting them believe that he was a traitor. It still made him sick to his stomach, what he'd done, but he didn't regret it as much as he let them think. He'd helped her escape because he couldn't bear to watch her be hurt any longer by his own father. He'd told them as much.
What Nightwing hadn't told them, was that he knew that she wasn't going to talk, and he chose to believe that she'd forced his hand. Batman never would have made her give up the Joker, and Nightwing had seen no other alternative than this. So he'd let them think that he let her go because he loved her, and he didn't tell them about the tracker that he'd planted on her costume as he'd pushed her down the tunnel of the Batcave toward her escape, the tracker that he now followed as he tore through the Gotham streets. Eventually, she'd lead him right to the Joker.
He parked his bike in an alleyway and took one last look at the screen of his microcomputer, and then slipped it into his pocket. He fired his grappling hook from the end of his escrima stick and it caught the ledge of the office complex roof ten stories above him. He retracted it and then did a graceful flip onto the roof, his boots landing softly on the shingles. Peering down over the edge, he saw a door open to the street below. Harley stepped out. Nightwing crouched down and watched her intently, and then a smile flashed across his lips. He braced himself against the ledge and then aimed his grappling hook, firing it down at her.
Harley screamed as the cord suddenly wound around her arms, and she was yanked upward toward the roof. Nightwing caught her, his arms around her. She blinked in surprise.
"Hi," he looked at her, smirking a bit.
"Nightwing," she breathed. "You shouldn't be here."
"Well they sure as hell don't want me back at the mansion," he quipped, still not releasing her as they stood on the edge of the rooftop.
"You don't understand. We can't be here. You need to leave," she pleaded.
"Wait, were you serious about that whole 'blow up another building' thing last night?" he asked, looking at her in alarm. The cording pulled off of her, and he stepped back.
"Not me, but-" she was cut off as the base of the building blew out in a fiery explosion. It rocketed it's way through the floors toward them, and they jolted away from each other. Harley stumbled back toward him. "Over there," she yelled over the noise, pointing to a ledge on the adjacent rooftop as she grabbed his arm with her other hand. He quickly wrapped his arm around her and fired the grappling hook across, swinging down to the wall of the adjacent building. He cried out when his boots hit the brick, the force jolting the freshly stitched cut in his side, and then he hit the button to retract the cording, and they were yanked up toward the ledge. Harley tumbled out of his arms and rolled a few feet across the rooftop as another blast blew apart the building beside them. Nightwing threw himself over her as shrapnel and bits of brick and wood rained down around them, his heavy kevlar and nylon suit protecting him and her with his arms around her. She curled into him, flinching away from the noise as her hands fluttered reflexively at his chest.
The explosions stopped, and they listened to the silence. "Are you okay?" Harley whispered. Nightwing carefully leaned back, still holding her in his arms. He glanced over the edge of the building at the burning rubble that had spilled into the alleyway.
"Aw, hell, motorcycle…" He frowned, and then turned to her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes." Her voice hitched a little, and she was still a bit shaken. "What are you doing here?" she asked again.
"Asked around town, and was told I'd find you here," he replied. She frowned but didn't contradict him. Slowly she pushed herself to her feet, wincing a bit.
"Aren't you supposed to be under house arrest or something?" she muttered. "You did help a criminal."
"I doubt they'd notice I'm gone," he sighed, and looked down. "And you're one to talk. I'm surprised that the Joker doesn't keep you on a tight leash after you helped us."
"Oh please," she scoffed, stretching her arms. "He doesn't know. That would mean explaining my stolen comm and my little escapade last night with you. No thank you, I'm leaving that alone."
"Did you really mean all those things you said to me?" he asked suddenly, looking at her seriously.
"What things?" she asked, on edge.
"In the warehouse." His eyes met hers, and for once, she couldn't figure out what he was thinking. His face was unreadable.
"You need to stop doing this," she told him mildly, glancing away. "Just let me go."
"No." His voice was serious, almost angry. He put a hand on her cheek and made her look at him. "I'm not going to do that." She closed her eyes, and he could see the struggle written on her face.
"Please," she begged weakly. He pulled her face to his and kissed her defiantly, passionately. His other arm wound around her waist and pulled her against him.
"What the hell?" someone said. Nightwing broke away in confusion while Harley let out an annoyed sigh. Nightwing recognized the man as Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong, otherwise known as the General. He was an escaped Arkham patient.
"Not now. The grown ups are talking," Harley told him in annoyance. He looked between her and Nightwing in shock. Harley drew her cork gun and shot the General in the forehead, knocking him unconscious. "Well, it looks like you're taking this one," she told Nightwing.
"Come with me," he breathed, smiling. They could hear police and fire engine sirens wailing towards them through the Gotham streets. His arms were still wound around her waist. Her expression softened.
"I can't," she whispered.
"Not back to the Batcave," he pleaded, and then smiled again. "Come back to my apartment. Just for the night." Harley closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Dick, I can't."
"I'll have you back to the Joker before midnight," he grinned, his lips brushing hers.
"Dick. Stop," she moaned. Her eyes popped open and she pushed him away. "Stop," she commanded more firmly.
"I told you. I'm not giving up on you," he insisted, pulling her close again despite her protest.
"You need to," she told him sternly, the crease forming between her eyes. She tried to pull away again. Dick caught her and kissed her again, his taste intoxicating. He held her tight. "No," she cried weakly, breaking off the kiss. She pushed at his chest, trying to distance herself from him. Dick pulled her close and held her tight, pressing her head to his shoulder. He stroked her hair gently and closed his eyes tight.
"Nothing you could say could make me hate you, Harley. I'm not giving up on you. I won't leave you." He spoke quietly, pressing his lips to her neck.
"But I'll leave you," she breathed.
"That can come later," he said, resigning to her words. "For now, stay with me." Dick kissed her neck gently.
"Dick, no." She grabbed his face and made him look at her so she could see her words sink in. "I'm with the Joker."
His jaw tightened, and she could see the hurt in his eyes behind his mask. He swallowed hard, and weakly released her, his arms dropping to his sides. His voice was a harsh whisper. "Then kill me."
"No!" she yelled immediately in surprise and alarm.
"Why not?" He looked up at her, his jaw pushed forward angrily. "I will never stop pursuing you. And it's what the Joker would want. So why not?"
She closed her eyes in exasperation. "I'm not going to kill you."
"Tell me why not," he looked at her expectantly.
"Well that would really piss me off," Red Hood said, and they both jumped.
"Don't do that!" Harley objected, her heart rate returning to normal. Nightwing stood silently, his jaw clenched angrily, and then he drew his escrima sticks.
"Jason." He looked at him. "I should have known."
"That I show up when things get blown sky high? Yeah you should have." Red Hood came over closer to them. "Also, so does Batman, so you might want to wrap this up." Nightwing watched him for a moment, and then wordlessly walked toward the edge of the building. "Don't leave on my account," Red Hood mocked.
"Stop it, both of you," Harley ordered. Nightwing hesitated, a boot up on the ledge. He didn't look back over his shoulder at her. She let out an exasperated sigh. "At least take the General with you because I am not explaining that back at the hideout, and Jason can't be left in charge of anything."
"Hey," Red Hood objected.
"Batman will be here any minute. He'll take him," Nightwing snapped. "Both of you should get the hell out of here before he arrives because it's not going to be pretty." Harley narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.
"Fine." She strode over to him, and before Nightwing could react, drew a knife and cut a part of his uniform away from his shoulder. "I need some reason to give." She raised an eyebrow to see if he would object. He watched her sadly, and then nodded.
"Leave, unless you want to stay here and watch me receive a beating," he snapped. "You too, Jason." Harley walked away across the roof, leaving the two of them alone.
"And what are you going to do?" Red Hood asked him.
"About what, Jay?!" Nightwing demanded, glaring at him icily. His tone had changed from dejected to furious in less than a second.
"You're just going to sit here and wait for Batman to come and get mad at you?"
"I don't have a choice, and I more than deserve it. If it wasn't for me, none of this would have ever happened." Nightwing snapped heatedly.
"This is true," Red Hood admitted. "But I think that's better than you realize."
"Care to elaborate?" he asked, rubbing his temples in irritation. Red Hood shrugged his shoulders.
"Nah, just get out of here. Batman isn't pissed at me. What he doesn't know won't hurt him."
"I'm not in the mood for this, Jay. If this is some joke you're pulling on me, I swear to God…" Nightwing glared at him.
"Are you going to trust me or not?" he demanded. "Because you don't really have very many people on your side right now."
"For the record, I don't trust you. But you're right. Thanks." He sighed, and then tipped backward over the ledge, disappearing into the night.