Chapter Text
Dick becomes aware of his senses slowly. His brain feels like it’s being dragged through quicksand, and his eyelids burn as he painstakingly peels them open.
He’s in the cave. He gazes listlessly up at the ceiling while he tries to order his thoughts a little and take stock of his current state.
He feels his heartbeat quicken as he processes that no, he is not, in fact, dead, and yes, what had happened had really just happened. The thudding in his chest is the biggest indicator to the panic thrumming beneath the surface, but mostly Dick just feels numb. In shock, maybe. It’s not every day that one gets severely beaten, has their all-important secret identity revealed to the world, and then consequently gets murdered and brought back to life in the span of about five minutes. Even for a Bat, that’s kind of a rough break. He’s just glad that whoever had set him up here had had the sense not to hook him up to a heart monitor.
Dick’s not sure how well he would have reacted to that, just then.
He can feel eyes gazing steadily at the side of his head from the seat beside the cot he’s currently lying on. He’s not ready to deal with that conversation just yet, so he ignores it. He thinks that’s allowed, all things considered.
Trust Bruce not to give him a moment’s peace, even after death.
“Dick,” he starts.
Bruce’s voice is controlled, balancing between acts. It’s got a hard edge to it, in a way Dick can tell after so many years means he’s gearing up for a fight. Means he’s angry.
Dick turns his head, and meets that unforgiving look.
“Bruce,” he says, blank. Raspy, from recent events. He doesn’t want to fight right now. Doesn’t ever want to fight with Bruce, really. What he wants is some space to think, and maybe some of Alfred’s hot chocolate to sip on while he tries to figure out how he’s going to piece his life back together, after this. If he even can.
“Get up,” Bruce says instead, and his voice doesn’t leave room for an argument.
Dick wants to tell Bruce to go to hell. That he can’t do this right now, that he’s carefully tip-toeing on the edge of a cliff that’s got shame and humiliation and guilt and rage and fear that will swallow him whole if he falls to the bottom. Maybe he would have, if things were different.
But Dick’s been hard trained to listen to that voice since he was eight years old. He gets up.
Bruce seems to have expected nothing less, because he’s already walking towards the practice mats. Dick doesn’t let himself groan as he tips up and off the medical cot and towards him. He shoves down everything he’s been thinking and feeling since he first opened his eyes a few minutes ago, doesn’t let himself feel the aching pain that pulls on his bones and muscles as he follows. He’s been taught better than to let that stop him right now.
Dick never could stand silence. “So, not that I don’t love a quality manly bonding session, but do you think we could maybe schedule this for another time?”
Bruce doesn’t respond, just starts wrapping his hands, an unspoken indication for Dick to do the same.
“Bruce,” he trails off for a second, not sure how to continue. He’s so tired. He decides to go for the tried and failed method of honest communication. “I don’t really want to fight with you right now.”
He doesn’t get a response to that until they’ve both wrapped up, and are facing one another.
“You let them expose you,” Bruce says, and there’s the anger, but it’s controlled, coiled tight, because god forbid the Batman ever lose control over something like this. Dick’s own anger tastes like ash on his tongue. There are things he could say to that, things like what else was I supposed to do and I was alone and I know, I know, and I hate myself for it. But he chokes down on all of it, keeps himself in check, doesn’t hurl stones at the immovable wall that is the Batman, because he doesn’t want to fight right now.
Bruce’s fists come at him like lightning, hard and unforgiving. Always, always, testing his resolve. Move quicker, fight harder, do better. Dick wants to throw up.
Dick blocks his strike, tumbles out of the way, springs back up, dodges the kick that swings wide towards his face. Bruce keeps coming, and Dick keeps responding, until he’s forced to strike back to keep himself standing.
“You let them kill you. Let me watch you die.” Their fight has started to move, Dick flipping and kicking off railings, flying, refusing to let himself get knocked down.
“I was trying to save people. I am alive,” Dick growls, shoving Bruce off him and out of the hold he’d had him in, slamming him down two feet away from the Batmobile. He takes another hit in retaliation.
“Prove it.” Bruce is an unstoppable force. He comes at him with volley after volley, and Dick fights back, furious and unable to ignore that call.
“What is this?” he shouts, because Bruce is calling the shots here, and he lost the ability to comprehend what the hell is happening sometime after the first punch.
Bruce tells him about Spyral, then, how they’re looking into hero identities, the threat they pose, how there’s no one else who won’t give in, how he’s off the grid and the world needs him right now, in between exchanges of blows. He tells him that Dick needs to stay dead, and that no one can know the truth.
Dick is panting, and he hurts. He is also seething, and he gets right up in Bruce’s space and he spits “No” into his face. The word is desperate, dragged out of him from the pits of the clogged up emotions he’s been shoving down, down, down between ragged breaths. He is not doing this to them. He’s not going to hurt his family this way. He isn’t Bruce.
Bruce doesn’t let him off so easy, because when has it ever been easy. Dick’s strength is flagging, but he won’t let himself back down. He thinks of Tim, who already knows a lifetime of neglect, and doesn’t deserve another death to deal with. Of Jason, who he’s just starting to form a new, rocky relationship with, and how that tenuous thread will snap if pressed. Of Damian, and how he can’t do this to them after that. Can’t do it to himself, either.
“If they know our secrets, we can’t fight back,” Bruce says, slamming him into the wall. “You need to stop them.” He hears what Bruce doesn’t say. That he needs to protect them, that they’re all in danger here.
“They’re my family, Bruce. We can’t do this to them. I can’t. They don’t deserve it,” Dick gasps, landing a punch and twisting away.
Bruce keeps coming. “People will die, if we don’t stop this. We need to know what they want, and we need an inside man. You.”
“You can’t—”
“They’re going to come for you, after this. If you’re not dead, there’s no stopping them. An irresistible target, a masked man without a mask.”
Dick flicks the blood on his face out of his eyes. Everything hurts, and they just keep going. He thinks about the kind of life he’d have after this if he stays, knows it’s just going to bring danger on himself and the people he cares about. Would have, even without the threat of Sypral apparently looming over all of their heads. He knows that he is painfully, humiliatingly exposed, and it’s his own fault for being too weak to stop it. The ghost of Damian’s body, covered in blood, hangs before his eyes.
He knows that if he agrees to this, something will shift in his relationship with Bruce. That things could never be the same, after asking him to do this. He doesn’t want to do this.
The fight goes on for a while longer. His knees are weak, his limbs are trembling, but he doesn’t stop. Bruce pushes him to keep on getting back up, to keep fighting. Everything for the goddamn mission, nothing more important than the cause. Dick’s never really enjoyed how people seem to push him around to suit their needs, to expect things from him, how he sometimes feels like he’s a thing for people to use and to have. It’s never really mattered, to the Crime Syndicate or the Court of Owls or the hero community or even to Dick, what he wants. He’s been accused of being too willing to follow orders before, of being an obedient soldier, no matter what the burning straining of his heart against its cage has to say about it.
“I know I’m hurting them. Hurting you,” Bruce says, and it’s the closest he’s looked to a real human man since Dick woke up. The closest to an apology he thinks he’s probably going to get. But agreeing to this, he thinks, isn’t just on Bruce. He’s going to make his choice, and he’s going to have to live with it. He’s so tired.
Dick doesn’t want to do this.
But how can he refuse?