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“Nightwing?”
He’s on the ground, gravel pressing into his back. The smell of rain mixes with the distinct smell of blood. He can hear the rain pounding against something—an umbrella, or maybe a tarp—but it doesn’t touch him. He’s wet, though, and he can feel blood running down his face.
“Nightwing?” the voice is louder now, more urgent.
“Quiet!” someone hisses, followed by the sound of a blunt object coming into contact with flesh.
Dick opens his eyes only for them to immediately close again. It takes all of his energy to refuse the tempting offer to keep his eyes closed and finally blink them open. He’s still in the scrapyard, but Batman is being restrained by two men, both armed. Not good.
He tries to push himself up, to get a better look at their captors, or to at least adjust himself into a less painful position, one that makes it a little easier to breathe. He hears the gravel crunching before he’s even gotten an arm under himself.
“Don’t touch him,” Bruce warns, followed by a grunt when the butt of a gun collides with him again.
Dick is still trying to push himself up when a foot collides with his chest. It sends him back down gasping, but more kicks keep coming. He’s coughing and curled up on his side by the time they stop. There’s something metallic in his mouth, but he can’t work up the strength to spit it out. A hand grips his hair and yanks his head up. He snaps his eyes for a moment, and one of the strangers shakes him a little, hissing, “Stay down.”
His head slams against the ground again and Dick does his best not to move. Not so much because of the warning; it just really hurts.
“Nightwing, are you alright?” Bruce asks, taking another hit before he’s even finished his question.
“Talk to him again, and we’ll shoot him.”
He hears a car roll up over the sound of his ragged breathing.
“What the hell took you so long?” Someone calls out when a car opens.
There’s a laugh. “I don’t think you have a right to complain here, seeing as you’re the one who—”
“We don’t have time for this,” another guy says. “Did you get the stuff?”
“Right here.” Something rustles, maybe a bag. Dick is too busy breathing to open his eyes and look. “There are a few doses in there, wasn’t sure how much we’d need.”
The bag rustles some more. “We’ll start with one and see how it goes. You get the Bat, I’ll take that one.”
“I hate needles,” someone else mumbles. “And does he really need it? Look at him.”
“Suck it up. We’re not taking any chances.”
More gravel crunching, and then Dick can hear Bruce struggling against his captors. Dick can’t bring himself to move, but he does open his eyes. A guy is coming toward him with a needle.
Dick watches as the man kneels and sets the needle on the ground. He pulls a penlight out of his pocket and turns it on, holding it in his teeth. The brightness makes Dick close his eyes again.
“Don’t think it will go through the suit. Neck okay?” he calls.
“Just get it in him!”
The man pulls Dick’s hair back and holds his head down, then Dick hears the clatter of the syringe.
Bruce is struggling again, and Dick wonders if he’s already been given his injection. “Don’t touch him!”
There’s the smack of a gun against Bruce again. “What the fuck did I tell you?”
Dick hisses as the needle is shoved into his neck and the liquid is forced into his veins. It burns and Dick wonders what hell it will do to him.
“Mel, you finished?”
“One second,” the guy—Mel, apparently—says. “Yup, all good.” The needle slides out of Dick’s skin and he digs his fingers into the gravel.
“Move,” the other guy says, and the gravel crunches quickly as he gets closer. He looks up to see Mel shoved to the side as a gun is aimed at Dick. “Maybe this will help you learn that your actions have consequences.”
The gun goes off and Dick feels a sharp, burning spread across his lower leg. He tries to move, to grasp his leg, stem the bleeding, but he takes a kick to the stomach for his efforts that leaves his coughing and choking.
“Stop!” Bruce shouts, has been shouting, but it sounds slurred. “Get away from him!”
The man tisks. “Now look what you’re making me do.”
The gun goes off again, this time hitting his stomach. Dick gasps, hands going to cover the new wound.
Bruce doesn’t say anything this time.
“Good. See? Keep that up and you two will be just dandy.”
“My car won’t,” one of the guys whines. “Blood is such a pain to get out.”
“We’ll bandage him and put him on a tarp, chill out.”
Dick feels dizzy and his ears are ringing. It’s getting hard to stay awake, and he feels a little numb.
Someone’s pressing against his head, his stomach, his leg. Then he feels himself being lifted to the air and set down on a hard, crinkly surface. A door slams shut and Dick has no idea how much time has passed when he feels himself lurch forward.
“Nightwing?” Bruce whispers next to him. “You’re going to be alright, chum. They gave us sedatives.” Bruce must be restrained because he doesn’t move closer to Dick. “Fight it.”
Dick can’t answer him; he’s already lost to the world.
oOo
Dick wakes up on a padded surface. The surface isn’t especially soft; his best guess is a gurney. There’s the familiar sound of medical monitors beeping, and there’s a nasal cannula feeding him oxygen. He feels nauseous and everything hurts, which someone should do something about because, by every indication, he’s somewhere where someone could do something about it.
But something’s off, too. Because there’s something tight pulled across his chest and thighs, and something is digging into his wrists and ankles. When he forces his eyes open, he finds that he’s in a poorly lit room that he doesn’t recognize. It looks like a basement or a storage unit.
He turns his head—damn, his neck is sore—and finds what looks like a chain-link fence that goes all the way up to the ceiling.
“What?” he can’t help but whisper. His throat hurts too, in a familiar way like he’s just gotten out of surgery, and that much would explain the rest of what he’s feeling. But if that’s the case, why is he here? Why isn’t he home, or at least someplace that looks like it’s been cleaned in the last month?
“Nightwing?” that’s Bruce. He’ll explain everything.
Dick turns his head to the other side, taking in the IV pole beside him. He sees Bruce—still in his Batsuit, but stripped of his belt—restrained and kept in his own chain-link cage. “What . . . what happened?”
Bruce’s face falters. “I couldn’t get us out of the restraints. The sedatives they used were strong, and they gave me a second dose before we were put in the van. I couldn’t stay awake.”
The van triggers Dick’s memory, and he remembers the scrapyard, and the men, and the gunshots.
“I woke up when we got here, but we were getting out of a different van than the one we got into and the guards were different. Several people joined us and took you away. They brought me here and they wheeled you in on a gurney about an hour ago,” Bruce explains. “Do you know where they took you?”
Dick shakes his head, trying to think. He remembers bright lights and people wearing scrubs. Someone had asked him questions and he’d tried to answer them but his thoughts wouldn’t cooperate. The scrub-wearing people—doctors, he supposes—hadn’t been happy about that. He thinks he threw up, something else they hadn’t been happy about. They sent someone to get a new gown because Dick hadn’t been able to roll over in time—or move at all, for that matter. He’d passed out again before they’d come back, but he didn’t feel vomit on himself, so he guesses they’d succeeded in finding a new gown—wait! He’s wearing different clothes and his mask is gone.
He flails on the gurney in panic, trying and failing to get up, get out. The gurney rattles but it doesn’t tip over.
“Nightwing, deep breaths. You’re alright,” Bruce tries to tell him.
“Do they know? My suit—my mask—they took it,” Dick tries to explain.
“I know,” Bruce says. “I know. And we’ll deal with it. But I’m not concerned about that right now.”
“Do they know?” Dick repeats, noticing how the beeping his picked up.
“They haven’t given any indication that they know or care about our identities,” Bruce says. “Take a breath, chum. You need to breathe.”
Bruce hasn’t called him that in a while; something about the nickname calms Dick, letting him relax enough to take a breath. A door opens and someone in scrubs comes running in. “I told you we should have kept him in medical,” the one is grumbling.
“And I agreed with you,” her partner grumbles back. Bruce has gone quiet again, and Dick listens as keys clatter and unlock the cage door. It swings open with a rusty squeak.
“How are you feeling, hon?” the woman says. Her hair is pulled into a bun and she has a medical mask over her mouth and nose. She’s pulling on gloves.
The man already has his gloves on and is fiddling with the monitors. “His oxygen is dropping again.”
She glances over at the monitor. “Raise it by ten percent and see how he does.” She steps forward toward Dick, pulling down his blanket and unbuttoning the top of his gown before pulling that down to. It’s then that Dick notices the chest tube, explaining the tugging feeling. She unwraps the stethoscope from around her neck and presses it against his chest, making him shiver. “Deep breath, Nightwing,” she tells him.
He doesn’t change his breathing at all, just stares at her.
She looks down at him, frowning. “Can you understand me?”
Dick doesn’t answer. He moves his gaze to look at what the man is doing. He’s by the end of his gurney, looking at some bags, one of which has blood in it.
“Nightwing,” the woman grabs his chin, pulling his eyes to her. “This is important. Can you follow my finger with just your eyes?”
She moves her finger and Dick, begrudgingly, follows it, unsure of what would happen to him if he didn’t.
“Good,” she praises, a little relieved. “I’m going to flash a light in your eyes now, just look at my nose.”
He does as he’s told, bracing himself for the painful light. She pulls his eyelids up one at a time. “Hmm.”
“What?” the other doctor asks.
“Can you pass me his chart?”
“Here.”
She flips through it, adding a few notes. “I think we’re okay for now, but we should probably schedule another CT later today.”
The man scoffs. “Like they’ll approve that.”
She shrugs. “We can still ask.”
The man lifts the bottom half of Dick’s blanket off, pressing against his feet. His toes curl, and the man asks, “Can you feel that?” Dick nods, and the man lets go of his feet and moves to check the catheters.
“Nightwing,” the woman catches his attention again. “Can you speak?”
“Yes,” he says slowly.
She smiles. “Perfect. Are you in any pain? Still feeling nauseous?”
Dick nods, not feeling speech is worth the throat pain, especially for these two.
“I’ll see what we can do for that. Does taking deep breaths make it worse?”
He nods again, and she nods back sympathetically.
“I thought so, but I need to check your breathing, okay? You were in pretty bad shape when they dropped you off, and with your oxygen dropping like that, we need to make sure things aren’t getting worse.”
He doesn’t like being talked to like this, but he nods.
“Alright, then, let’s give this another try.” She places the stethoscope on his chest, saying, “Deep breath.”
He does as he’s told, taking a deep breath each time he’s asked. Eventually, she’s satisfied and puts the stethoscope back around her neck. “No change,” she announces. She turns to her partner. “Finished?”
“Yeah,” he’s frowning. “No change.”
They pack up their stuff, but Dick realizes he’s now wearing a blood pressure cuff, which they leave on. They button up Dick’s gown again and tuck him back up in the blanket.
“What’s going on?” he finally brings himself to ask.
“Classified,” they say in unison.
The guy gets his attention. “See this?” he points to a button attached to the gurney. “If something feels wrong, press it and we’ll get an alert.”
“Who’s keeping me here?” Dick asks.
“Classified,” they say again.
“We don’t even know this stuff,” the woman tells him. “But some advice: don’t ask questions. They’re not going to kill you, so just don’t cause any problems and you’ll be okay.”
“How long do you plan to keep me here?” Dick tries.
“They’ll probably move you soon, but they never give us a date,” she says. “I doubt they’d do anything with you so soon after surgery, though. There’s nothing you need to worry about right now.”
“And the surgery was for?” Dick asks, already knowing they’re not going to tell him if he still owns all of his organs.
“We told you: you weren’t in good shape when they dropped you off. Worst guy we’ve seen in a while. Pissed off the wrong people, huh?” the man asks.
“We need to get going,” the woman tells him, already at the door. “Oh, and no more trying to move around, yeah? You’ll just hurt yourself. Besides, everything is being video-taped, and if you manage to get off the gurney, we’ll see it and have to activate the electric fence and sedate you—it will be a whole thing.”
“Set your recovery back too, no doubt,” the man adds. “And it will probably make them mad, so fewer painkillers for you.”
Dick blinks at them as they leave without another word. He watches as they say something to Bruce, but Dick can’t make it out. Then they’re gone, out of sight.
“Where the hell are we?” Dick asks Bruce. “Who are these people?”
“I don’t know. I suspect that they’re going to try to auction us off,” Bruce says.
“Great.” Dick rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling. His head is pounding, and after a moment, he closes his eyes.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Honestly? Not great.” And that’s the understatement of the year. Maybe if he could just move, or sit up. “Is someone coming for us?”
“We’ve been missing for at least twelve hours,” Bruce says. “I’m sure someone is looking.”
Dick can feel himself starting to drift off, so he opens his eyes and turns his head to look at Bruce. The lighting isn’t great, and Bruce isn’t exactly close, but from what Dick can see, he looks alright. “Are you okay? They didn’t shoot you too, did they?”
Bruce shakes his head. “I’m fine. A few cuts and bruises. They stitched something when I got here, but they never took me to a medical unit.”
Dick thinks about how Bruce must have felt, sitting here alone and not knowing what they did with Dick or if he’d come back. Dick can only imagine the relief Bruce felt when they wheeled Dick in, and then how quickly it must have been replaced by panic when Dick lied a few yards away, unresponsive for an hour.
Dick swallows. “I’m okay,” he says, but his voice shakes.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Bruce sounds helpless, and it’s just making Dick feel worse.
“I’m okay,” he tries again, but his voice sounds worse than the first time.
“You look tired, chum.”
“Yeah.” It’s weird, Bruce being so close and so far away from him.
“Get some sleep. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Okay.” Dick exhales slowly. “Okay.”
oOo
Pressure against the bottom of his eyebrows jolts him awake, and he hears the clacking of his restraints against the gurney as he reflexively tries to bring them to his face to smack whatever is causing the pain to go away. The pressure disappears and Dick looks around the room to see three people in the cage with him. The two people in scrubs are the doctors who visited him earlier, and after he woke up from surgery the first time, but the third person is someone new, a little older, and wearing what Dick guesses is a guard uniform. Dick feels a new wave of nausea when he sees he’s holding a tray of food.
“Nightwing?” the one doctor asks. He groans when he sees the penlight she’s holding. “I wasn’t able to get you anything more for the pain or nausea, but we’re working on it. I’m going to do another exam now, and then I’m going to need you to eat something, okay?”
“I’m not hungry,” Dick grumbles. He’d wanted to sit up so badly earlier, but now he just wants to lie down. He turns his head to find Bruce. There are two guards in his cell, watching him eat with one hand still attached to the cage wall. But he’s eating, and Dick wonders what they said to get him to eat. They haven’t been here that long, after all; no way Bruce would crack so easily.
“That’s not up to you,” the guard snarls at him.
“Right,” the woman sighs. “Exam, then?”
She runs through the same exam as earlier while the male doctor changes out his IV bags and jots down vitals. This time, however, they also check his wounds and change some of the bandages.
“Everything is still stable,” the doctor announces, pulling Dick’s gown down again and the blanket back up. “I still want another CT, though.”
“You just said he’s fine,” the guard snaps.
She puts her hands in the air. “Just giving my medical opinion.”
The guard mutters something under his breath that makes her roll her eyes. “Can this one feed himself?”
“He hasn’t eaten anything yet,” she supplies as an answer. “So, we’ll find that out together.”
Without warning, they raise Dick’s gurney, and he’s left reeling in dizziness and nausea, but because of the restraints, he can’t curl forward to provide any relief. The guard grabs his hand a little tighter than necessary as he lengthens the restraint.
“Try to touch any of us or any of the medical supplies, and you’ll regret it, understand?” the guard asks, and Dick nods. The man grunts and shoves a spoon at Dick, then drops the tray in his lap. “Eat.”
Dick scoops up a bite of food and brings it to his mouth with a shaky hand. He swallows and takes a deep breath, trying to keep it down.
“You’re not finished,” the guard presses.
“Trying not to puke,” Dick grits out.
“Enough of the backtalk,” the guard shouts at him.
Dick doesn’t even look at him, just tries to take another bite. He drops the spoon when he feels the mush he swallowed rise in the back of his throat. He claps a hand over his mouth, trying to swallow it back down, and in his haste, he brushes against the nasal cannula.
“What did I tell you about touching the medical equipment?” the guard growls, grabbing Dick’s hand and slamming it back down against the gurney. He watches as the guard shortens the length of the restraint to even shorter than before, and he does the same on the other side, taking the opportunity to tighten them both around his wrists while he’s at it. He’d thought they were tight before, but now he thinks they’re going to risk cutting off his circulation.
He looks over at the doctors, who are standing in the opposite corner looking bored. He looks over at Bruce, who’s watching him with hidden panic as he keeps eating.
His guard has picked up the spoon and shoves it at Dick’s face with such force that it hit his teeth and he gags on it. He turns his head on reflex, spitting out the bits of food that managed to get in.
“Wrong move,” the guard snarls. He takes the tray and moves away from the gurney. He finds a lever and Dick is suddenly horizontal again. “He’s no cooperating.”
“And what do you want us to do about it?” the doctor asks, glancing at her nails.
“Tube him. The boss won’t be happy if he starves to death, and I’m not dealing with any sort of hunger strike from the prisoners.”
“As always, we thank you for your astute observations and predictive abilities. You truly are keeping us all safe,” she drawls.
“Shut it and just get the job done.” The guard is clenching his fist, but she doesn’t seem the least bit concerned.
“Sure thing,” she says. She looks at her partner. “You put the kit on the cart, right?”
“Right here,” he says, holding it up.
Dick furrows his eyebrows—how did they know they’d need it?
The guard leans over him. “You’re here for a minimum of two weeks, and after what you did to my brother Tommy, I’m going to make it as hellish as possible.”
Dick is about to ask who exactly Tommy is, but he’s sure whatever happened was justified. After all, Nightwing does sort of have a thing for dealing with criminals and protecting innocents.
“If you could step away from my patient, I’d love to get started,” the doctor interrupts.
“All yours,” the guard says taking a step back.
Dick glances at Bruce. He’s finished his meal and is back in his regular restraint position, watching Dick like a hawk. Bruce’s guards are outside the cells and watching Dick.
“Pass me the Xylocaine,” the doctor says as she slowly raises Dick’s gurney upright again.
He’s had NG tubes placed before—not exactly something he wants to have happen again, especially for no reason whatsoever. If the guard wasn’t standing there, maybe Dick would have tried to talk the doctors out of it, but it’s too dangerous. For himself, sure, but also for Bruce. They had no problem using him against Bruce earlier, so he doesn’t see why the reverse wouldn’t also be true.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” the guard says.
The doctor closes her eyes and takes a breath, then turns to the guard. “I know you have fun with this sort of thing.” He grins, malicious. “But I promise, this will be uncomfortable enough with the Xylocaine.”
“But it’s not necessary, is it?” the guard asks.
“No,” both doctors reply begrudgingly.
“So why pump more drugs into the kid? You’ll ruin his worth like that. Nobody wants a junky,” the guard reasons.
The doctor closes her eyes and takes another breath, no doubt holding her tongue with all of her willpower. “Fine. Since I guess you call the medical shots around here now.”
“Sure as hell I do.”
“Nightwing, you’re going to need to work with me on this or you could hurt yourself, okay?” her eyes are a little pleading, and Dick wonders what will happen to her if something goes wrong. He nods and she looks a little relieved. “I’m going to measure out the tubing and then thread it down. You’ll need to swallow some water when I ask you to, and you’ll need to tell me if it hurts too much, understand?”
He nods again and tries to stay still as she places the tubing at the tip of his nose and pulls it back across his cheek, measuring it out. This isn’t going to be fun for anyone—well, anyone other than that fucked up guard.
oOo
Dick thinks he’s dying. He’s lying on his back, desperate to be able to do so much as roll on his side. The tube is making his throat hurt more and his nose burns. His cheek is itchy where the tube is taped in place and he can’t adjust it at all. He’s nauseous and his stomach has been cramping since the feed started. The male doctor had turned it off early when Dick almost puked because they were afraid the tube would come up. Again.
Because of Dick’s gagging, it took three tries to get the tube in in the first place. There’s no doubt in his mind that it would have been easier with some Xylocaine, but he hadn’t been allowed that, and now they’ve stopped his regular painkillers too. He isn’t even 48-hours out of surgery and he has nothing to help with the broken ribs, punctured lung, head wound, and two bullet wounds. And that’s just what Dick knows; there could be other internal injuries they repaired that he’s not even aware of. Maybe there’s something wrong with his stomach and that’s why the nausea has been so bad. No one’s telling him anything and he just wants to go home.
“Nightwing?” Bruce calls.
“I don’t feel good, B.”
“I know,” Bruce says. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
There’s a pause that says Bruce thinks this is his fault, but Dick can’t give a reassuring talk right now. Talking hurts too much.
“What did the guard say to you?” Bruce asks. “Before, when you were eating.”
Dick squeezes his eyes shut as a wave of pain courses through him. “Uh, he wants revenge. I put Tommy—his brother—away or something,” Dick says, trying to press his temple into the pillow as best he can. His head and neck are killing him. He wishes they would turn the lights off.
“Hnn. Did he sound or look family?” Bruce asks.
Dick shakes his head, and a moan leaks out.
“What’s wrong?” Bruce asks, like he can do something.
“Just hurts,” Dick explains with a croak. “No painkillers.”
“Those bastards,” Bruce growls.
“Said.” Dick swallows around the tube. “Said I’d be here for at least two weeks.”
“Hnn. That’s interesting,” Bruce says. “That must be when the auction is.”
“Confirmation?” Dick asks, trying to speak as little as possible.
“I overheard the guards talking. They said enough to imply,” Bruce says.
“Got a plan?” Dick asks, because Bruce always has a plan. Dick is supposed to always have a plan, and usually, he does, but the best plan he has right now is to let someone else get him out of this mess.
“Working on it,” Bruce says, which is the exact opposite of reassuring. “For now, we need to be patient.”
“Easy for you to say,” Dick mumbles. Bruce still hears him though; his flinch is enough to tell Dick that much. Dick rolls his head to stare at the ceiling.
“Is there anything I can do?” Bruce asks after a while.
Dick figures he’s offering to talk to him, and maybe Dick would take him up on it, but his head hurts too much. “I’m tired.”
“Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
The last thing Dick thinks before slipping back into the blessing that is unconsciousness is how hollow Bruce’s words are, how the man has no say in where he will be when Dick wakes up.
oOo
The sleep doesn’t last, but the nausea has finally let up. The pain gets worse, though, and it pulls him from his slumber. Dick just wants to be able to curl up, but he can’t. He’ll just have to deal and try to tap into some of his pain management strategies.
(The problem is, Dick can’t think like this. He’s tired and in pain and can’t focus long enough to have anything work. He needs help.)
Bruce dozed off at some point, but he wakes up when Dick calls him.
“What is it, chum?” Bruce asks, urgent and attentive.
“Can you,” Dick starts, pausing to swallow and lick his lips. His voice must be barely audible at this point, just a croak. “Can’t think. Guided imagery?”
“Of course,” Bruce says, sitting up a little straighter. “How bad is the pain?”
Dick just nods.
“Oh sweetheart,” Bruce says, and Dick thinks Bruce is going for a record, calling him that so often since being captured. He wonders why Bruce isn’t concerned about keeping up the tough Batman front; maybe Dick really looks that bad.
“Please?”
“Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.” Dick does as he’s told, listening as Bruce takes a deep breath with him. “Imagine you’re walking through the woods . . .”
oOo
Bruce is still talking to Dick in a calm voice—telling him to hear the crunch of a branch under his foot, feel the wind running through his hair—when the guards come in with the two doctors. Bruce stops speaking and Dick takes a deep breath. The guided imagery had been helping a little, and with Bruce’s voice grounding him, he’d been able to follow along for most of it. He thought he was about to fall asleep, but now the woods are gone and who knows what tortures await him now.
The guards hand Bruce a tray of food, and he starts eating without protest.
“How are you feeling this morning, Nightwing?” the doctor asks, pulling on her mask and gloves.
Dick doesn’t answer, just focuses on Bruce.
“Alrighty then, no pleasantries today I see,” she says. “We’re going to do a quick exam, and if you’re a good boy, we’ll give you a sedative and take you on a little trip, sound like a plan?”
Dick furrows his eyebrows and frowns—what?
“Relax. I can’t tell you what’s happening until we’re done—company policy—but trust me, this is a good thing. Plus, a sedative will do you some good,” she says. “I’m guessing you didn’t get much sleep last night? What with the painkiller ban and all.”
He blinks at her, still not wanting to talk.
She shrugs and starts checking Dick’s wounds. The male doctor is there too, yawning behind his mask as he changes out the bags hanging off the gurney—all of which have varying amounts of red in them, something that makes Dick’s eyes go wide. No one comments on it when he points it out, just shrugs. Great.
The doctor finishes changing his bandages and gauze, cleaning some of the wounds as she goes. The male doctor jots down his vitals and checks out his various tubes. It’s still uncomfortable, but knowing that the doctors aren’t going to hurt him offers him some reassurance.
The male doctor checks Dick’s feeding tube, grimacing with his eyes at the sight of Dick’s throat. “I suppose we should be grateful he let us use the lubricant.”
“Don’t say that,” the doctor hisses.
“What? He’s not even here,” he says, taking the penlight away from Dick’s mouth. Dick glances over at the guards, but it does no good; he can’t tell them apart.
The doctor must finish, because Dick’s gown and blanket are fixed and his gurney is being raised.
The doctor runs him through a quick neuro exam and she seems satisfied. She goes back to her tray and fills a syringe, no doubt with the promised sedative. She walks back to him and injects the liquid through his IV. It’s cold, and it makes him feel tingly within seconds.
“How’s the swelling on his neck?” the doctor asks as Dick feels himself fading.
Dick blinks, looking at the male doctor to try to figure out what’s wrong with his neck. “A little worse than yesterday.”
“What was his temperature?” the doctor asks.
Dick blinks hard, trying to stay awake, to get the information that’s rightfully his, but he can’t. He sleeps.
oOo
Dick wakes up still in his cage, which doesn’t make sense. He looks around, but it’s the same room, and Bruce is still in the cell next to him. His nausea is back too—god he hates sedatives.
“What happened?” Dick asks, and Bruce snaps his head to look over at him.
“You’re awake,” Bruce says, a little sad. Dick’s a little sad about it too, to be honest; recovering from surgery without any painkillers and unable to move isn’t exactly fun. “I don’t know where they took you, but I think it was for another CT scan.”
“Why’d they sedate me?” Dick asks. It still hurts to talk, but it’s getting better. A little.
“They probably didn’t want you to be able to figure out where they were going,” Bruce explains, and Dick hums in agreement.
“My head okay?” Dick asks.
“They wouldn’t talk to me, but they brought you back without any new bandages,” Bruce tells him, and Dick hums again. “Still tired?” Bruce asks.
Dick nods a little, breathing deeply from another wave of nausea. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Bruce grunts. “Worried about you. They said you have a fever.”
That might explain part of why he’s feeling so shitty, and fuzzy. “Yeah?”
“They were worried about your neck.”
That night in the rain—the man injected him with the needle after he placed it on the ground, in the gravel. “One of the goons that grabbed us doesn’t know anything about keeping needles clean.” He wonders, idly, if the needle had been used.
Bruce growls, literally growls. Dick almost laughs, but the tube shoved down his nose keeps him from it.
“There was a lot of blood in those bags,” Dick muses, thinking back to this morning. He wonders how long he’s been out, he wonders if Bruce kept track.
“I know, sweetheart,” Bruce tells him gently; Dick adds another “sweetheart” to his count. “From what I can see, there’s less now. You’re not getting worse.”
“Except for the fever,” Dick says.
“Except for the fever.”
oOo
Somehow, Dick is able to fall asleep again. He wakes to the sounds of people murmuring around him, something that never fails to spark panic in his chest. He’s shivering, he notices; someone’s taken his blanket, but his gown is still in the right place.
He opens his eyes to find the two doctors and several guards.
“He needs medicine,” the doctor is instating. “He could die.”
“It’s a fever,” the guard says. He meets Dick’s eyes, “Look, he’s even awake. He’s fine.”
Dick doesn’t think that’s true; he’s feeling worse than he did last time. He rolls his head to look at Bruce, he looks back at him and mouths something Dick can’t make out. He wonders if he should add another “sweetheart” to his count, just to be safe. What was his count again? How long have they been here, and where is here?
“Where?” Dick croaks, and his throat hurts and his voice doesn’t sound like his. He coughs, trying to clear it, but that makes his throat worse and sends pain crashing through his ribs, tugging at his side. He tries to move his hands, to hold his chest together, but he can’t move them. He can’t move! “B?”
“You’re alright, Nightwing. Focus.” Bruce is always telling him to focus, but focus on what?
“Don’t talk to him,” the guard spits.
“Will you let me run a blood test?” the doctor asks. “Then when those come back with infection written in bold, we can give him antibiotics. No painkillers, just antibiotics and an ice pack for the fever, cross my heart.”
“It’s probably just a cold, he doesn’t need medicine,” the guard insists. “And if it’s not a cold, whoever buys him can decide what to do with him and his medical care.”
“No one will want him like this,” she presses. “And last I checked, you were supposed to get approval for what I asked for, not take those decisions into your hands and—”
There’s a hand around her throat, and Dick tries to leap up to help, but he’s stuck—he’s stuck, he’s stuck, he’s stuck!
There’s beeping, and someone is telling him to take a breath, and someone is telling them to shut up and it’s too much and Dick can’t think, he can’t—
Dick’s finger twitches, brushing across a button. He remembers someone telling him to press it, and that someone would come. He presses it once, twice, three times. A louder beeping goes off, a different octave. It’s an alarm.
The woman reappears, the alarm stops, the monitors keep going. “What is it? What happened?”
“Need help,” Dick grits out, and that’s the last thing he remembers.
oOo
“Check on Nightwing first.”
Dick pulls his eyes open at the sound of his name, and when he looks toward the doorway, he sees not the doctors he’s half-expecting, but Robin and Spoiler—the rescue team has finally arrived.
With a click, Tim cuts off the lock and the two of them run to his side.
“Are you alright?” Tim asks him as he and Stephanie work on getting off his restraints. Bruce is cutting his own restraints with a weapon someone must have given him.
“Fantastic now that you guys are here. Get this stuff off me, yeah?” Dick asks, sitting up as soon as the restraints are gone.
“I don’t . . .” Tim trails off, looking up at Batman when he joins them.
“Spoiler, turn off the monitors,” Batman commands, receiving a dutiful nod. She’s oddly quiet and her movements are stiff, Dick notes.
Dick moves to pull the IV out of his hand, but Bruce stops him.
“Let me. Lie down and relax.”
“I’m fine,” Dick protests, but he knows he’s not; sitting up is sending a shooting pain to his chest and stomach, but he’s too stubborn to listen to them.
Bruce ignores him but takes out the IV, then lets Dick take off the blood pressure cuff and sticky pads for the heart monitor. Steph and Tim watch as Bruce and Dick remove most of the medical equipment, leaving in the tubes and catheters in until they can get the proper supplies.
“Lie down,” Bruce tells him, again.
“I can walk,” Dick says.
Bruce gives him a hard stare, forcing Dick back down by sheer will.
“Oracle?” Bruce asks, pressing the new comm Tim must have given him. Bruce nods in a way that tells Dick that Babs gave him good news. “Let’s move.”
Dick drapes an arm over his eyes and takes a deep breath as he’s rolled out of the room at what he’s sure is a sprint. Tim grabs his hand, squeezing it once to reassure him before letting go again. The past few days have been a nightmare, but it’s almost over; he’s going home.
oOo
Alfred freaked out as much as he’s capable of when he first saw Dick, all wide eyes and sharp inhales followed by frowns and tisking. Dick’s chest had a looked particularly bad, covered in bruises from where he’d been kicked repeatedly and with enough force to do more than bruise. The doctors, though, had done a good job. After countless scans, Alfred confirmed that they’d managed to repair one of his kidneys, which was likely damaged by one of the bullets, and a punctured lung. All of his organs were still in place and Alfred didn’t have to perform any additional surgery.
He did, however, remove the chest tube, feeding tube, and catheters.
Alfred wanted to keep him on an IV for painkillers, fluids, and antibiotics. The antibiotics, weren’t for the injection site, to Dick’s surprise. While it had been red and swollen, it wasn’t that bad by the time he’d arrived at the cave; their bigger problem was the fact that Dick had developed pneumonia, probably because he’d been immobilized, kept in poor conditions, and had broken ribs paired with a punctured lung. Despite his condition, Dick had convinced Alfred not to put him on an IV, citing that he’d had too many wires and tubes for his taste. They both had a sense that Dick would be fighting IVs for quite a while.
Dick mostly stayed in his bed for the first few days, too knocked out by drugs and fever to do much of anything else. By the fourth day, he was up and shuffling around the manor, gearing up to convince Alfred to let him go home and recover there. It was weird, being in the manor. It gave him a hard to describe feeling, one that made him almost itchy.
He figured, though, that his argument wouldn’t be very effective if Dick looked as tired as he felt. He’d had a hard time sleeping last night and one glance in the mirror told him it showed; taking a quick power nap on the couch while he waited to run into Alfred would be for the best.
Bruce, however, felt that it was up to him to sabotage Dick’s perfectly good plan by waking him up.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were asleep,” Bruce says when Dick sits up on the couch with a yawn. He’s wearing a suit; Bruce must just be getting home from work, then, meaning Dick slept longer than he’d intended to.
“It’s fine,” Dick mumbles, stifling another yawn. “Did you need something?”
Bruce shakes his head. “You weren’t in your room. I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“Oh. I’m feeling a little better and just wanted a change of scenery,” Dick explains. “I actually think I’m healed enough to get out of your hair, so.” Dick ends with a shrug.
“And you think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? I feel fine,” Dick says.
“You have pneumonia and are recovering from two GSWs.”
Dick scoffs, rolls his eyes. “I’ve dealt with worse on my own.”
“Hnn.” Bruce tightens his stare, but it’s not angry. Concerned, maybe. Worried. “I’m sure Alfred agrees that you should stay here until you’re fully healed.”
Dick blinks at him, wondering where this is coming from. Dick had kind of gotten the sense that, if anything, Bruce had been avoiding him. But now, it almost sounds like Bruce wants him around. Bruce had obviously and understandably been worried when Dick was first hurt, but he’s in the clear now; Bruce should be back to normal.
“This is the first time we’ve really seen each other in a month,” Dick muses, unable to think of another time they had been around each other more for than an hour outside of masks.
A beat passes, a pause that lasts a moment too long. “Yes. What’s your point?”
Dick sighs, pushes his hair back. “We weren’t even planning on seeing each other last week, it was just by chance.”
Bruce nods.
“So, if you had no problem avoiding me for a month—a whole month, Bruce—why do you care now?” Dick asks, and he really hopes there’s an answer out there. “I’ve been sick and injured on my own before. There were plenty of times when you knew I was sick or injured, and Alfred called, but you didn’t.”
“I thought you wanted space,” Bruce supplies.
“Bullshit,” Dick snaps. “What kid doesn’t want their”—Dick cuts himself off, not knowing what he’s going to say, not wanting to say it. “When have I not wanted you around when I’ve been hurt?”
“You have asked me to leave on several occasions,” Bruce says.
Dick presses his palms into his eyes. “Why are you so difficult?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Bruce says. “It seems like you’re angry with me no matter what I do. If you ask me to go, you’re mad that I didn’t stay, but now I’m asking you to stay, and you’re arguing with me. What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” Dick whines. He wants Bruce around, but sometimes it feels like the Bruce he wants isn’t around anymore, or maybe never was. It’s hard, looking at a parental figure without the rose-tinted glasses childhood hides them behind. Now he looks at Bruce and he’s reminded of all the hurt and shortcomings that came with his upbringing; he looks at Bruce and he’s angry for everything that wasn’t and isn’t.
“Neither do I,” Bruce tells him. “Sometimes it feels like you want nothing to do with me.”
Dick wants to scream, tell Bruce that there’s a fucking reason why Dick doesn’t want anything to do with him, with certain sides of him. He wants to tell him that, yeah, maybe both of them are at fault for the way things are between them, but he was the child—just a dumb, angry teenager—and it shouldn’t be his job to make things right and ignore all the things Bruce has done to him, or hasn’t done. He wants to take the venom on his tongue and tell Bruce all the ways he fucked up and demand apology after apology and make Bruce feel like shit.
(In this moment, all of that feels like an absolute truth, a certainty. But given time, it will falter; Bruce’s flaws won’t seem so extreme and the hurt Dick feels won’t run as deep.)
Instead, he says, “That’s not true.” This is another truth—albeit one that doesn’t always feel absolute and constant, but a truth nonetheless.
“Then why did you stop coming to the manor?” Bruce asks.
It’s a fair question with a complicated answer that Dick doesn’t think he has. It’s more complicated than saying “you replaced me with another kid” because that isn’t where it started, and deep-down Dick knows that isn’t completely true. It’s more complicated than saying “you never ask me to come home” because Bruce might be asking, probably has been, but Bruce doesn’t use words for those kinds of requests and Dick is too tired, too done, to translate Bruce-speak. It’s more complicated than saying “I don’t know what I’m doing and I can’t be around people who know that I don’t know what I’m doing” because then it wouldn’t just be Bruce he’s avoiding.
He finds himself voicing a watered-down version of the truth: “It doesn’t feel like home anymore.”
“Hnn.” Bruce takes a seat on the couch, and Dick moves his feet to accommodate him. After a moment of silent debate, Dick leans his head against Bruce’s should, and Bruce tucks him underneath his chin, just like he used to do when Dick still lived here. “Things have changed,” Bruce says simply.
“Yeah.” And Dick can’t pinpoint where exactly the change started, where the tipping point was, and what role Dick played in tipping it.
“I’ve missed you.”
For a second, Dick is wearing the rose-tinted glasses again, but only for that second. “I’ll stay,” Dick agrees.
Bruce presses a kiss into his hairline, and Dick feels at home, if only for a second.
“I don’t want to go another month without seeing you,” Dick continues. “We need to start making an effort.” That’s what it means to be an adult, right?
Bruce nods, humming in agreement. “I’m sorry I stopped, that I . . . pushed you away.”
Dick sighs, not feeling up to the conversation boiling in that sentence. He presses himself into Bruce a little harder despite his aching ribs. Bruce runs his fingers through Dick’s hair, and Dick closes his eyes, breathing slowing.
In that moment, Dick feels like everything will be alright. He knows that the rose-tinted glasses will eventually fall away and shatter, but when they do, he hopes that things will still look brighter than they did before he put them on, even if he knows they won’t be as bright without them. He doesn’t need a childish fantasy of a perfect father figure, but he does need Bruce, and with a little effort, he hopes that it will be more than enough.