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It's the end of a perfect snow day. You know the type: a thick couple feet of untouched snow blanketing the ground, fat flakes lazily floating on the breeze, a day just cold enough to warrant a hat but not so cold that it freezes the air in your lungs. Add in a bunch of kids on winter break, all with their sleds and snow forts and snowmen, and you've got yourself a picture-perfect December night. It makes even Blüdhaven look tranquil and beautiful.
Dick appreciates the snow. He didn't see much in the circus (snow is bad for tents, so Haly’s usually scheduled their November-thru-April shows near the equator), but when he moved in with Bruce, he finally got his first real snow day. It was bizarre, to watch as the whole smoggy, grimy city was cloaked in white. It looked so much more innocent with kids making snow angels and couples huddling together for warmth at the bus stops. Neighbors shoveling each other out of a blizzard and groups of carolers leaving a parade of footprints in their wake. Bruce taught him better, of course. Appearances can't be trusted. Not ever. Evil persists through the cold.
But still. It's nice to see that joy still exists in the city, even if it's sparing and infrequent.
On days like today, Dick makes his patrols a bit more carefully. No one throws salt on their roof, so it gets icy (and very, very slippery). No one shovels fire escapes, so the wrong attire could lead to a soaked uniform in seconds. And kids come out more frequently. Stay out later, whether that's to look at the lights decorating their neighbors’ homes or to have a midnight sled ride on the steep hill their parents told them not to go on. They become bolder and more willing to do something for the thrill, knowing that there's a safety net of snow to cushion their fall.
So while Dick is expecting muggers or arms dealers on his patrol, he's not entirely shocked when he sees a kid fall through the ice of a frozen lake. He's just disappointed that he didn't bring his wetsuit.
Dick drops from his rusty, snow-covered perch on the overpass, aiming for the jagged patch where the boy fell through. He misses - there's no way he could have reached it - and the force of a grown man jumping from a bridge is more than enough to break a new hole in the ice. His last thought before he hits the water?
This is going to suck.
Dick is fortunate he's wearing his winter suit. It's insulated and heated, which does wonders on a snowy day on land. Underwater, in a semi-frozen lake? Well, it's less effective. But combined with Batman’s ridiculous cold water conditioning, Dick is able to keep his body from going into neurogenic shock.
The kid though… The kid is sinking like a rock. Blood has probably already diverted from his limbs to his heart, brain, and lungs, keeping him alive but making it that much harder to swim back up. Add on the general reduction in ability to hold your breath in cold water and the heavy winter clothes on him, and he's not getting out of here on his own.
Even trained for this and wrapped in a heated suit, Dick can feel his heart rate and blood pressure tanking. He can't imagine the havoc it's wreaking on a child.
Dick kicks downward, following the yellow jacket deeper and deeper into the lake. They're not that far from shore. Surely it can't be this deep. His fingers finally brush the hood of the boy’s coat, grab it, and yank upward. He wraps his arm around the boy’s middle, but the boy reflexively kicks out, struggling to swim. It's a weak kick, especially considering how little blood has to be left in his legs, but it's enough, hitting Dick in the diaphragm and forcing him to exhale. Damn. There goes the last of his air.
The boy goes limp when Dick grabs him again. He’d be nervous about that if he had the time to worry. Right now, he's got no air in his lungs and way too much water to swim through. He estimates another thirty seconds before he passes out. He kicks his legs, forcing himself upward. It's slow going with one arm holding the kid. The cold is starting to seep into his suit. He can feel his heart rate slowing, lungs burning as his body begs him to take a breath.
The light above is getting brighter. They're getting closer. There's still a sheet of ice over the surface. Dick has no clue where the holes he and the boy made are, and honestly, he doesn't have the time to look for them. His vision goes fuzzy as he reaches the surface and rams an escrima stick against the ice. A second hit breaks through, making a small, foot-wide opening.
And then the darkness takes over, and Dick inhales water before he can escape the frigid, unforgiving lake.
---
Dick wakes up coughing. His lungs spasm as he struggles for breath. Water dribbles from his mouth, and his vision spins.
“Nightwing?”
“Mr. Nightwing, are you okay??”
Their voices sound like they're underwater. Or maybe there’s just lakewater in his ears. Dick can absently feel hands under his arms, holding him afloat, but everything below his chest is numb, still submerged in that unforgiving death trap of a lake.
Dick coughs for another fifteen seconds and then reaches for the ice surrounding him, slowly, carefully dragging his body onto the surface. He lies limp for a moment, not unlike a beached whale, lungs still sucking in that sweet, sweet oxygen. The blurry blobs beside him are starting to take shape. Boys. They're boys. Not the kid Dick pulled from the water, but still kids, standing on thin ice.
“Get-” Dick coughs, teeth starting to chatter. “Get down on your stomachs. Crawl off the ice.”
The boys hesitate.
“Now!” Dick shouts as loud as his lungs will permit. The still-hazy boys get down and army crawl their way to safety. Dick lets out one last, particularly wet and aggressive cough. (The water he hacks up feels hot on his lips, and hadn't it been freezing just a second ago?) Then he drags himself off the ice, and the boys grab his arms from the bank, helping him onto solid ground.
Dick shakily sits up, trying to take in the moonlit scene before him. His eyes immediately go to the boy in yellow - “Lester,” the other boys are calling him - and sees him awake, coughing, and shuddering like a washing machine on its last legs. Good. Dick really thought the boy would be dead by the time he reached the surface.
(He really thought they both would be dead. It really was luck that the other boys saw Dick break through the ice, walked into a dangerous situation on literal thin ice, and pulled Lester free. It was luck that no one else got hurt. It was luck that the kids were strong enough to hold him above water for however long it took him to wake up.)
“You kids got-” Dick’s voice chokes under the need to cough. “-got a phone?”
“Yeah,” the one in green replies.
“Call 911,” Dick orders, trying to crank the heaters in his suit but then realizing that he can’t feel them on full blast. That’s… very not good. “Your friend needs to go to the hospital.”
“What about you?” the kid in orange asks. “You need to go too.”
“I’m Nightwing. I’m okay.” At least one of those statements is true. His vision is clear now, head no longer spinning, so he’s pretty sure they’re both accurate. His lungs are still stuttery, not quite recovered from the near-drowning, but once he’s in some dry clothes, he’ll be back to normal.
“If you say so, mister,” the kid in green says. He looks unconvinced. So much so, in fact, that it would give Alfred Pennyworth’s signature get-back-in-bed-or-so-help-me-I-will-tie-you-down glare a run for its money.
But for all the luxuries Dick lost after moving to Blüdhaven, he’s not sad to no longer have Alfred breathing down his neck post-mission. He misses Alfred, absolutely, but definitely not the exasperated caretaker version of him.
So when the kid’s in the ambulance and Dick refuses treatment, he doesn’t look at the boy with the green coat. Because he doesn’t need the judgment. He’s not in Gotham anymore. He can take care of himself, thank you very much.
---
Dick can’t take care of himself.
Well, that might be an exaggeration. He knows how to take care of himself. He’s pretty sure he’s doing all the right things. But for whatever reason, it’s just not working.
It starts with a cold a couple days after his dip in the lake. He figures he brought this upon himself. That’s what happens when you go outside when it’s cold with wet hair. (Or whatever his old hairdresser used to tell him. She was a wizard with a razor but rambled like nobody’s business. Dick found his time in her chair to be ideal for practicing Bruce’s meditation techniques. Apparently, some of her teachings slipped into his brain regardless of his awareness of the subject at hand.)
But anyway.
Dick does all the right things. He drinks plenty of fluids. Gets a full four hours of sleep every. Single. Night that week. He even takes some medicine from that commercial with the giant, anthropomorphic blob of phlegm. (And he hates those commercials.)
And nothing. He coughs his way through his shift. More than once, his partner Amy asks him to keep his germs to himself. She teases him about it more than she should, really, but Dick isn’t keeping score. He just wants his nose to stop running.
Patrols are no better. He can’t sneak up on anyone when his lungs are constantly coughing, sneezing, or some freak combination of the two. One mob boss puts their confrontation on hold to grab Dick a tissue. And the number of slips, flubbed grapples, and near-misses out on the rooftops? Well, it’s a little humiliating. He’s so, so glad he’s not in Gotham with someone watching over his shoulder as he messes up.
After the second week passes with no end in sight, Dick considers seeing a real doctor. No longer is it a hacking cough, leaky sinuses, and a sore throat. Now it’s all those plus dizziness, an inescapable chill, and pain every time he takes a breath. Also, he might have a fever, but he doesn’t have a thermometer to check.
The onlookers are starting to get concerned now, too. Amy is no longer laughing at him, now borderline harassing him to go to the doctor’s. Every time she looks at him, there’s this glimmer of pity in her eyes, and she speaks to him softly, just like she does to scared kids in the field. His landlady Clancy is checking on him now, too, dropping off chicken soup and tea with such frequency that Dick has a hard time leaving for patrol without her noticing his absence and breaking down his door, believing him to finally have kicked the bucket. She’s already done it once, and Dick had to steal a change of clothes from his apartment while his coworkers were actively searching it, change on the roof, and then come in through the front door and explain to Clancy and half the BPD that he was alive and had simply gone out to the pharmacy.
“Your car was out front,” Amy had protested. “And why didn’t you buy anything?” she demanded, pointing at his empty hands.
“I… walked,” Dick had countered. “And the store was closed.”
Amy had felt his forehead, banished him to bed, and gave him strict instructions to call her if he needed anything. Clancy had echoed the sentiment, stating that she could and would kick his door in if he pulled anything half as stupid as that again.
But Dick still tries his best to take care of himself. He’s getting less sleep now (it’s so hard to sleep when his lungs feel like deflated balloons), but he’s not going on patrol nearly as often. (See the Clancy-kicking-down-his-door situation above.) He’s still drinking water and tea and orange juice and all the things he’s supposed to. In fact, he’s arguably got more oversight now, with two overprotective friends, than he ever had in the Cave. At least Alfred had to split his attention between Dick and (the bigger problem child of the two) Bruce.
One night, after passing out on his couch at eight, waking from a nightmare at ten, and being so unnerved by the realism of it, Dick puts a sign on his door (RESTING. PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB UNTIL 7AM.) and sneaks out the fire escape in his suit. He’s a little lightheaded, a little uncoordinated, but the cold air feels nice on his skin.
And then everything goes wrong.
There’s a spindly figure lurking on the roof of the Melville Library. His hat eclipses his narrow shoulders. Rags hang off him like old clothes on a clothesline. His shape is vague underneath his garb, fluctuating with the wind. Dick has seen this man before. None of their prior meets ever ended well.
Dick throws a batarang before jumping out of the shadows and kicking the man in the head. “What are you doing here??” he demands.
But the figure lets the kick glance off him, not even flinching. He turns to face Dick, lips slowly tugging up into a bright white grin. “Hello, Dickie. Nice to see you again.”
“You’re not welcome here,” Dick growls, pulling his sticks and watching for the man to attack.
But he does nothing of the sort. “Tell me, kiddo. You still scared of disappointing the Bat?”
And then the world collapses in on itself. The roof disintegrates under Dick’s feet, sending him falling, falling, falling. He can hear screams, see two familiar faces look up at him as they plummet to the earth.
“Son, help us!”
“Why won’t you save us, my Robin?”
Dick tries to reach out, but they make impact with the ground, necks snapping at ninety-degree angles and limbs twisted in wrong directions. Dick, though, he doesn’t hit the ground. The ground never comes. He just keeps falling and falling.
“I died alone, Dick,” a little boy in red and yellow says sullenly. “You told me we were brothers. You told me you’d always be there for me. And then you abandoned me. Some brother you turned out to be.”
“No. No, I didn’t… I wasn’t even on the planet when it happened! I wish I never left! I should have-!”
The boy explodes. There’s bone and blood and… viscera… everywhere. It’s on his face and in his mouth and on his hands.
God, there’s so much blood on his hands.
“I’ll admit, Robin wasn’t a terrible idea. You proved to be smart and capable. We made a great team.”
Dick frowns. “Bruce? You… You mean that?”
The dark shadow nods. “You proved yourself to me one hundred times over.”
“Oh… that’s…” Something warm blooms in his chest. Hope, maybe. Relief. “Thanks, B.”
“These days, though-” Bruce whistles. “You were such a capable kid. Then you created Nightwing, and the whole thing went to hell. Maybe you aren’t as good as I thought you were.”
“Devastated” is a weak and insufficient descriptor for how Dick is feeling right now. His… He’s pretty sure his soul just shattered. Or maybe he has that thing people get when their loved one dies, broken heart syndrome or something. With all the pounding and the pain and the tingling, he’s pretty sure he’s having a heart attack.
“I’m sorry, Bruce,” Dick says, though he’s probably just as angry as he is remorseful. Why isn’t his good ever good enough? “I’ll do better.”
“You won’t,” the Bat assures him. “You won’t live long enough to get the chance.” And then he disappears into the fog.
“I’m sorry, B! Please don’t leave me! Please come back! Please, please, please-!”
“Dick! Stop it! He’s not here!”
“I know,” Dick moans. “He left. He’s never coming back.”
“No, I mean he’s at the Manor right now. You’re in the Clock Tower.”
“No. No, no, no, B, please-”
A heavy sigh. Warmth on his hand. “Come back to me, Dick.”
Dick squints. That’s not Bruce. (Bruce is gone. He’s gone-) That’s fiery red hair. That’s square glasses. That’s a scar on her hand, vanilla and citrus, green eyes that glisten with such intensity that they could convince a wolf to leave a lamb alone.
“Babs…?”
“There you are.” Barbara smiles, and the room warms ten degrees. “Need anything? You look like crap, honestly. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job at this.”
Dick looks around the room, struggling to assess the situation. He’s in bed, but he’s not in his apartment or the Manor. But the ceiling is high, and the windows show a stunning view of Old Gotham, the sun high in the sky.
“The Clock Tower,” Dick says, sitting up. He quickly realizes that he was lying back for a reason, head spinning as he lets his shoulders thunk against the wall.
“Yes,” Barbara confirms. “I told you that already.”
Oh. She had, hadn’t she?
“Really hurts to breathe,” Dick murmurs, rubbing his sternum.
“Color me shocked.” Barbara grabs a glass of water from the nightstand and hands it to Dick. “Leslie got an x-ray of your lungs. They look like someone forgot to dust in there.”
Dick frowns into the glass. “‘s just a cold. I jumped in a lake to save a kid, and then I got sick. Cold water equals cold sickness, Babs. Why else would they call it a cold?”
Barbara shakes her head. “You idiot. Being cold won’t give you a cold. But inhaling frozen lake water will give you pneumonia.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Dick does feel kind of terrible. It would explain why he wasn’t getting any better. But then-?
“How did I get here?”
“You called me last night.” Barbara presses the back of her hand to Dick’s forehead, frowning appropriately. “You were crying about Scarecrow.”
Dick sets the glass down. His nausea exceeds his thirst. “I don't know about crying…”
“Crying or bawling,” Barbara insists, pulling away and folding her hands. “Either way, it was tough to understand you. I checked cameras and scanners, but there was no sign of Scarecrow. Tim found you passed out in an alley in the Haven.”
“Oh, that's… great.”
Barbara smirks. “I had him bring you here. Bruce wanted you at the Cave, but if memory serves, you're not on good terms right now…?”
Dick mops his face with a hand. “Yeah. We're arguing about… god, I don't remember.”
“Sounds about right. I figured you didn't want him lurking.”
“Good guess.” Dick closes his eyes.
“You need to keep drinking fluids,” Barbara informs him quietly. “You get some rest, and I’ll make you some tea.”
“Thanks, Babs,” he murmurs, sinking deeper into the bed.
Then a thought strikes him, and he's violently ripped from sleep, sitting up and jumping out of bed. He stumbles and has to catch himself on the wall.
“If I come back there and see you out of bed, Boy Wonder,” Barbara calls from the kitchen, “you're gonna wish I sent you to the Cave.”
Dick fights against vertigo and exhaustion to get to the kitchen. “Babs, where's my phone??”
Barbara drops a tea bag in a mug and shoots Dick a scathing look. “What did I just say?”
“It's important,” Dick presses. “My landlady has been checking in on me ever since I got sick, and the last time I didn't answer the door, she broke into my apartment and called the police.”
“Oh. Clancy?”
Dick raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. How did you-?”
“She called you this morning. I explained. Real sweetheart. Too bad she's got a stupid, self-sacrificing tenant like you.”
Dick ignores the dig. “You… You did?”
“Yep.” Barbara rolls over to the pantry. “And then I called your work and told them you weren't coming in today. Sounds like your partner’s ridiculously worried about you too. Not sure how you get such supportive people in your life. Sugar or honey?”
“Oh, wow, Babs, that's… Thank you. You're the best.”
Barbara moves back to the counter with both sugar and honey on her lap. “I know,” she says with a smile. “Now tell me what you want in your tea, or you’re getting it plain.”
“Honey.”
“Attaboy. Go back to bed, okay? You look like you're about to fall over, and I’m not carrying you.”
Dick smiles. “... thanks, Babs.”
“Don't mention it, Boy Wonder.”