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It happened at the worst possible time. Not that being pregnant in the pit of vipers Ra’s called a court was peachy, even when Ra’s went to fight the civil war he’d started by killing the son of a well-respected general, but of all the times to go into labor, on the ramparts of a besieged castle was the least ideal.
Dick gripped Pru’s arm. Perhaps a little too tight. She broke off her tirade on his idiocy and stubbornness in not fleeing the castle—Dick had merely pointed out that there was little point, the rebellion had enough knowledge of the Cradle to guard all the secret gates—and stared at him, her worried expression lit by the fires deep below them.
“Your Highness?” she asked tentatively. Dick looked at his white-knuckled grip on her arm and tried to unclench his fingers. He failed.
The dampness was spreading down his legs.
“My water broke,” Dick said quietly. Pru’s face blanched so quickly it looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. The echo of her sharp inhale spread outwards, and murmurs followed it—soon the entire castle would know that Ra’s al Ghul’s heir demanded to be born at the most inconvenient time.
According to the reports—the reports Dick hadn’t dared to believe were true—Ra’s al Ghul was dead. The baby currently fighting their way out of him was the new ruler of Nanda Parbat.
Well. Dick chanced another glance at the army at their gates. If General Wilson didn’t get his way.
“Okay, Gerard, send someone for the midwife, Lance, you’re in command, watch those fuckers and if they try anything, flame them,” Pru ordered, already ushering Dick to the steps. The army outside had been patiently waiting for nearly a full day. Presumably to let the stragglers catch up before they broke in. “Your Highness, your timing is atrocious.”
“The baby’s,” Dick protested, because he hadn’t planned this. The baby wasn’t due for another two weeks. “And aren’t you glad I didn’t listen to your idea to sneak out through the sewers?”
Pru didn’t say anything, and Dick couldn’t keep up the forced levity as she all-but-dragged him to the keep. Everyone knew that the Cradle’s defenses would not hold. It was just a matter of time before the castle was sacked. And General Wilson completed his vendetta against Ra’s al Ghul—a vengeance sparked by the murder of Wilson’s son.
Dick felt ice crawl down his spine as he wrapped an arm around his stomach and prayed.
Not my child. Please, I’ve given everything else, not my child.
Dick paused on his circuit of the room and gripped the bedpost, digging his nails in as the cramping pain tightened higher and higher—and released. “Breathe,” Laira reminded him as he massaged his stomach. “Or the pain will be worse.”
The pain was already pretty bad, he didn’t need goddamn platitudes on top of that. Dick breathed, in and out, and turned back to the rest of the room.
Beta midwife, two omega nurses, and Pru. Dick had long since decided he didn’t want people hovering over his bed—the doctor was needed elsewhere, and there were few people Dick trusted in this castle. “Go,” Dick rasped at his tense guard. “Check on the defenses. Nothing will happen here for hours.”
For all the baby’s urgency, they were taking their sweet time coming out.
“Your Highness—” Pru started tightly.
“Who are you going to protect me from in here?” Dick asked, and waved at the window. “The threat is out there. They need you.”
Pru gave him an unhappy look, and glared at Laira, Wren, and Kai. They gave her unimpressed looks in return. “Fine,” Pru snapped. “But someone better find me the moment the baby is born.” She stomped from the room and Dick breathed easier when her scent was gone.
“Ill luck to have an alpha in the birthing room,” Wren muttered. Dick couldn’t deny that some part of him was loosening, metaphorical hackles slowly receding. The frenetic energy pulsing through the castle didn’t help.
He again crossed to the window and poked his head out. His room was at the back of the castle, nothing but forest beyond, and if he shut his ears to block out the distant shouts, it looked like nothing more than a peaceful night.
The shouts increased in volume. Dick clutched the windowsill and breathed through the next contraction.
The castle was won smoothly and cleanly. The bonus of a rebellion against a cruel ruler—enough of Nanda Parbat had switched allegiances that the secrets of the Cradle were Slade’s, and it was easy to send soldiers through the secret passages to attack from behind.
Once the gates were open, there was no organized defense left. They had taken the remaining guards prisoner—Slade had come here to win a kingdom, not slaughter one—and all that was left was to capture the remainder of Ra’s al Ghul’s court.
Most of the servants had surrendered on sight, and Slade left some soldiers to break down the rooms the nobles had barricaded themselves into while he searched for the ruler of the castle. With Ra’s dead, the rule passed to his consort, and Slade would have his surrender before sunrise.
If he was even still in the castle. The lack of a visible authority at the front gates was extremely evident, and if Richard Grayson shared his mate’s attributes of ruling from above and back, then Slade would make sure he learned a lesson on why running away never worked. The servants had insisted that Grayson was still here, though Slade was half-suspicious he was being led on a wild goose chase.
They were in the main keep, near the royal apartments, following a twitchy servant as he led Slade and Tara and a few of his soldiers. Slade kept a sharp eye on the dark corridors, watching for an ambush, when the air was split by a tortured scream. Everyone halted.
“Who was that?” Slade demanded. The servant just stared back with wide eyes. Useless. Slade pushed past him and strode forward, the screams were coming from the room on the right, and the entire corridor stank of omega distress.
The door was locked. Before Slade could decide whether to hammer on it or just break through, the door clicked open and a sweaty, scowling face poked through.
“No alphas!” the omega nearly snarled, baring his teeth. He flicked a cursory gaze over the entire group, but his expression didn’t change. “Leave.”
Slade arched an eyebrow. “Do you know who I am?” he asked pleasantly, because he had given everyone a chance to surrender. Everyone except the people that murdered his son—the ones that gave the order, and the ones who carried it out.
To his bemusement, the omega kept the scowl. “I don’t care who you are,” he snapped. “No alphas in the birthing room! Take your scent elsewhere.” With that, the omega slammed the door shut and they heard the lock click back into place.
Another low, broken, hoarse scream, dissolving halfway through to choked sounds. This close, he could hear steady, soothing murmurs of reassurance in between the jagged sobs.
“In the what?” Tara asked sharply.
Slade stepped away from the door. “It appears we have to wait for that surrender,” he said.
He had imagined paying Ra’s back in kind. Murdering his child, to pay him back for Grant. For Slade’s firstborn. Imagined dumping a corpse at the old tyrant’s feet, so he could watch Ra’s’ expression shatter, so he could watch the horror creep over his face, so he could watch the alpha break.
But Ra’s had no living heirs. Yet.
Dick dimly noted the door opening and closing, and a wave of smoke-and-blood tinged alpha scent wafting through as he grit his teeth and suffered through another wave of pain, trying to push the baby out. “Pru?” he gasped when he managed to suck in a breath.
“No, Your Highness,” a voice said, but his vision was too blurry to know who it was. Shame had disappeared long before, and tears ran freely down his cheeks as he cursed Ra’s to the deepest, darkest pits of hells.
“Get them out of me,” he nearly screeched, his world narrowed down to the waves of fire licking down his back, the agony of being suspended in hellfire and unable to make it stop.
“Push, Your Highness,” came Laira’s calm voice. “Harder, yes, you can do it, you can—”
There was a surge of pressure that nearly made Dick black out, but he kept pushing, his legs shaking, and it abruptly stopped.
There was nothing. He was empty. Dick sucked in a short, too-fast breath as his body refused to untense, still waiting…
A shrill cry split the air. “A baby boy, Your Highness,” Laira’s voice said, the words echoing in his skull. “An alpha pup.”
A boy. He had a son. Everything inside him relaxed in a giant swell, and the haze swallowed him up. He had a pup.
Dick didn’t know how long he was lost in the fuzziness, but he was drawn back to the present as his pillows were adjusted. “—our Highness? Your Highness? Can you hear me?”
“Mm?” Dick tried. The room was still blurry, and his hand felt like a limp noodle when he reached up to wipe his face.
“Do you want to hold him?”
Hold who? A tiny cry tugged at his ears. Oh right, his pup. Dick stretched out his arms and let a heavy warmth be deposited into the cradle and pressed against his front.
The pup was making tiny, distressed cries, as if indignant at the whole birthing experience—he shared his mother’s opinion there—and Dick lightly shushed him as he cupped the small, delicate head with his shaking fingers. The baby had dark hair, and newborn-gray eyes, and was flushed and scowling despite being cleaned, and the most beautiful thing Dick had ever seen.
He had wondered if he’d hate the pup. If he’d resent the baby for who its father was, for what Ra’s had done to him, to his family, all the pain and torment he’d endured here.
But this was Dick’s pup. They belonged to no one but him. “Damian,” Dick whispered to the wriggling infant. Dick had not been tamed, despite Ra’s al Ghul’s best efforts. And his pup never would.
Dick curled tightly around his son and smiled, weak but happy.
It was nearly sunrise by the time Slade was allowed into the room. In the intervening period, his soldiers had taken the castle for good—the nobles had been rounded up and ordered to swear fealty or marched to the cells, the guards had been locked up to cool them down, and his army was hard at work transforming the castle from a besieged fortress back to the seat of power.
Grayson’s surrender was only a formality at this point, but courts had risen and fallen on formalities. And with Ra’s al Ghul’s heir…well, there was a reason Slade had ordered the door guarded.
Rose was in charge of the defenses, of redistributing their men on watch, and Joey was dealing with the logistics, the food and supplies and coordinating messages to send out, but Tara had stuck with him, her gaze never moving far from the door.
The door had been opened numerous times after they heard the first, sharp infant cry—the midwife, stepping out with a bundle of bloody linen and stopping dead in the doorway to stare at him, one of the omegas running for fresh water and not sparing him a single glance, the other omega tiredly stumbling out and nearly into a wall before one of the guards rescued her and escorted her to the kitchens. The door had been closed pointedly every time, and Slade took the hint.
He could wait. Grayson couldn’t run, and he couldn’t hide forever.
But finally the midwife poked her head out and said, in a tone that implied she’d rather watch him burn alive, that His Highness was ready to see them now. Slade left the guards outside but Tara slipped in on his shadow as he stepped inside the room and beheld the pretty, young consort of Ra’s al Ghul for the first time.
Slade had been at the wedding, but even then it had been apparent that Ra’s was souring on Slade’s success and popularity, and he only remembered catching a few glimpses of Grayson. He had heard more than enough stories about him though, the eldest child of King Wayne, the jewel of Gotham, the charming omega with suitors following his every step.
It really was a shame that he’d married Ra’s.
Richard Grayson looked nowhere near as beautiful as the stories proclaimed. His eyes were sunken, his face was waxy and blotchy, his expression was a displeased frown, and he looked exhausted enough to fall asleep sitting up on the bed, especially with all the pillows propping him up. His silks were loose enough to reveal half his chest, and Slade’s gaze paused on sharply jutting collarbones before dropping his gaze to the wrapped bundle leaned half against Grayson’s chest and sucking busily on a breast.
“It’s the only time he’s been quiet thus far.” Grayson had followed his gaze before snapping back to Slade’s face. Despite the exhaustion, those blue eyes were sharp. “General Wilson. Princess Markov. What can we do for you?”
“Consort al Ghul,” Slade said, and watched Grayson’s expression darken. “We’ve taken the castle.” Grayson merely blinked at him. “We’ve taken this country. Nanda Parbat is ours. You can either bend the knee, or join your mate in hell.”
Something flashed through Grayson’s eyes, too fast to see, but when the omega spoke, it was in the same hoarse rasp, “If you want me to kneel, you’ll have to wait until I can get out of bed.”
Slade inclined his head, “Your word will suffice.”
“Very well,” Grayson said tiredly, “I surrender. My lord.” There was a bite to his tone. “Was that all?”
Slade dropped his gaze to the baby. Tara shifted behind him. Grayson took a slow, measured breath and tensed. The room was already filled with protective omega scent, but this one took on a decidedly more…militant edge.
“No,” Grayson said, quiet and level. “If you touch my son, I swear by all the gods that I will claw your eye out of your skull.”
“Ra’s al Ghul’s son,” Tara said darkly. “The pup of a cruel, vicious monster. Better to make sure it doesn’t take after its father.”
Grayson shifted in place and abruptly gave the impression of being coiled. His lap was concealed by carefully tucked blankets, the baby was swaddled loosely, and any number of weapons could be concealed in the folds. There was nothing quite as dangerous as an omega protecting their children, and Slade took a step back when Grayson’s scent swelled to something almost noxiously thick.
“And what do you call someone murdering an innocent babe for the crimes of their father?” Grayson hissed.
“Ra’s al Ghul took my intended from me,” Tara retorted, equally sharp. “He deserves to—”
“Ra’s al Ghul is dead,” Slade reminded her flatly. She was nearly vibrating in place, and Slade nudged her back a step, before she lunged and the omega on the bed slit her throat. “And we do not punish children to get back at their fathers. I believe we’ve learnt our lesson.”
Grayson was still hunched, watching them with the sharp, suspicious eyes of a beaten dog, ready to bite. The pup dislodged himself and waved a tiny fist around before making a thin, demanding cry.
“You’ve surrendered, and that makes you my subjects. No harm will come to you at my command,” Slade said evenly. “As long as you obey.”
“You cannot seriously mean to let him live,” Tara snarled, hands curled into fists and expression locked into seething. Slade was only grateful she’d waited until the council meeting was over until she spoke.
“Why not?” Slade asked.
“He is Ra’s al Ghul’s consort! He represents everything sick and rotten about his court, and if you let him live—”
“He is the eldest son of the King of Gotham,” Slade cut her off. “We have just fought a war, and I am not inclined to fight another.” Tara didn’t look pacified, and Slade sighed. “We cannot kill everyone who was on the wrong side.”
“He murdered Grant,” Tara said, low and venomous. “He murdered him for no greater crime than existing, and you—”
“And if I did the same thing, there’ll be another army storming the gates to take my head.”
Slade returned to his figures. Running a kingdom was hard work, and made harder when he couldn’t trust half his staff. Treachery was a foundational part of al Ghul’s court, and Slade half-heartedly dreamed of setting the whole place on fire and starting anew.
“So that’s it. You give up your revenge because it’s not politic.” Tara’s face twisted in a sneer. “Grant was your firstborn son and yet you only care—” she stuttered and broken off her sentence at Slade’s stare.
“Go on,” Slade invited. “Finish your thought.”
Tara made a truly ugly face, but she turned away, silently acceding. Finally left with some quiet, Slade returned to his calculations. It was crucial to know how long the stores at the Cradle would last, especially with winter fast approaching. It had been a stroke of luck to avoid a long siege and Slade was determined to eke out their good fortune.
“It’s dangerous,” Tara said suddenly, distracting him from his thoughts.
“Hm?”
“Keeping them alive. It’s a knife at your back for the rest of your life, Slade, and then Joey’s after you.” Tara’s expression was grim and calm. “Ra’s al Ghul’s heir—”
“The pup is just born,” Slade pointed out.
“Now. What happens in five years? Ten? Fifteen, when he is the spitting image of his father, and his mother brings him the might of Gotham’s armies to reclaim his throne?” Tara asked. “The babe is innocent of his father’s crimes, but blood runs deep.”
“So you ask me to murder an infant.”
“I’m asking you to consolidate your reign!” Tara straightened, eyes burning furiously. “You don’t have to make a production of it, but that boy is a threat and his mother is twice that. I don’t trust him to play nice, and your mercy is going to end up as a knife in your back!”
“I,” Slade said, slow and even, “am not Ra’s al Ghul. I do not underestimate my enemies, Tara, even if I don’t throw them in the dungeons.” If Grayson wanted revenge for his mate’s murder, if he wanted to install his own son on the throne, Slade would find out.
He did not show mercy to traitors.
“But I will gain nothing and win no friends by smothering the babe in his crib, nor by pushing a new mother off a high tower. Richard al Ghul is not his consort. I cannot execute him at my fancy.”
Tara glared at him, face splotchy and jaw hard.
“You can solve problems without resorting to murder.” A lesson that the old king had forgotten and his son’s intended had yet to learn. “And there is more than one way to defeat an enemy.”
Dick swallowed, cold and hard, as he was led into the King’s quarters. His mate’s old quarters, conquered like everything else—not that it made much difference to him.
Dick was used to fear twisting around his spine as he walked through the Cradle. Entering these rooms with trepidation if not outright fear, forever braced for punishment. He had the gall to be the wrong Wayne bride, and Ra’s never let him forget it.
It seemed that Wilson wouldn’t either.
The new King was waiting in the receiving room, standing by a table loaded with a full dinner service, as promised in the order phrased as an invitation. His one-eyed gaze narrowed when Dick entered, focusing on the bundle in Dick’s arms.
“Your Majesty,” Dick greeted, bending into a deep curtsey.
“You brought the babe,” Wilson said flatly.
Dick hadn’t let Damian out of his sight since he was born. With Pru gone and his staff rotated, there was no one he trusted even minutely except the midwife, and with two weeks fast approaching, Dick knew she’d be gone soon too. He refused a wetnurse and a nursemaid, feeding Damian himself and rocking him to sleep with his own two arms. It wasn’t like Dick had other duties to distract him, locked in his room with nothing to do but wait.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Dick kept his head bowed, but didn’t apologize. Apologizing had never gone over well with Ra’s, and it was easier to just accept the punishment.
Wilson’s frown deepened, but he made no further comment on the matter. Instead, he waved at the table. “Please, have a seat.”
Dick awkwardly seated himself, adjusting the sleeping babe in his lap—praying he wouldn’t wake—and waiting for the alpha. Wilson, on his part, merely stared at Dick for a long, stretching moment, stillness hanging like an anvil over them both, before he finally picked up the spoon.
Dick kept his hands in his lap.
The food looked to be simple fare, similar to what Dick ate in his rooms. Either Wilson disdained luxuries, or the whole castle was on winter rations. Either way, it proved sound judgment. A practical king.
“Not hungry?” Wilson asked, gaze heavy.
Dick’s arms curled tighter around his pup. “Not particularly, Your Majesty.”
Wilson’s frown hardened all the way into a glare. “Is it the food you disdain, or the company, Consort Richard?”
Still Consort. Not a good sign, that his old title had yet to be stripped from him. Not a good sign for him, or for the babe.
“You did not have me brought here for dinner, Your Majesty,” Dick said, quiet and even. “I would appreciate if we got straight to the point.”
The alpha set his spoon down with a hard clink. His jaw was hard and Dick smelled as his scent thickened. Provoking alphas was never a good idea, not when they were apt to react so violently, but Dick’s nerves had been worn to splinters long before General Wilson showed up at his gates.
He was tired. So very tired. Tired of acting, tired of playing a game he never won, tired of sitting there and looking pretty and staying silent when it never helped and always hurt.
“To the point,” Wilson repeated, hard.
Dick finally lifted his head to meet that one-eyed gaze. He didn’t falter.
“Very well, Richard,” Wilson said, a twist to his mouth. “The point. You understand the position you place me in.”
The pit in his stomach grew deeper. “You swore we would come to no harm at your command.”
“If you obey,” Wilson qualified.
“Has Your Majesty been given reason to doubt our obedience?” came out sharper than Dick intended, but his fingers where white where they clutched his newborn son and the licks of a long-forgotten fury were beginning to well up.
“Not yet. But that doesn’t change that your very existence is a living, breathing threat to my reign.” Wilson’s gaze dropped to Damian. “As long as Ra’s al Ghul’s heir is alive, there will be those who support him over me.”
Ra’s was dead. Could Dick not claim sole custody of his son, even now? “I spoke true when I surrendered. I have no desire for the throne of Nanda Parbat. I have no desire to remain here at all. If Your Majesty provides, I will gladly leave—”
“Where you will be free to build an army outside my reach?” Wilson interjected, raising a pale eyebrow. Dick bit his tongue.
“Then Damian,” he pivoted, struggling to keep his voice even and not betray his desperation. He knew full well that their time ticked down the longer they were political prisoners of a violent revolution. “He is only a babe. Let me send him away, to my father. I will stay here, in your control.”
Wilson took a long, slow sip of wine. “Send the heir of Ra’s al Ghul to the King of Gotham.” His voice was measured and not mocking, but Dick felt it bite the same. “While his mother stays in his court and negotiates support.”
Dick closed his eyes briefly.
“I will publicly renounce his claim,” Dick tried. “I will speak it in front of the whole court if you wish me to.”
Wilson considered him. “Do you think that will work?” he asked, almost curious.
Dick subsided. No. No, it would not, because his mate’s allies never cared for Dick and would gladly steal Damian away to raise him in the image of his father. Between plotters and schemers, his babe would end up dead one way or another.
He looked down at his pup, slumbering peacefully, blissfully unaware of the crown on his head. Dick could not watch him die. He had suffered all manner of torture and torment, but this one he would not bear.
He could—he could offer the babe to Wilson. To have him give the pup to a loyal follower, to raise and mold—except if Wilson would’ve accepted that, he would’ve surely already suggested it. There was nothing else, no idea miraculously sprouting in his exhausted mind, no plan that could be sustained permanently, and Wilson was clearly not going to be swayed by sentiment.
If this had been Ra’s, Dick could’ve tried to persuade, tried to entice in all the ways he knew his mate appreciated, appealed to his possessiveness because for all that he hated Dick, he was still pack—
Oh.
Dick suddenly rose from his seat and Wilson reacted immediately, drawing a dagger as he leapt up as well. But Dick wasn’t trying to attack him. He dropped to his knees and bent his head back, baring the expanse of his throat as he stared up at the ceiling. “I submit,” he said hoarsely, squeezing his eyes shut.
Silence. One stretching beat, then two. On the third, the floor creaked underneath his knees, getting closer, and the alpha’s scent curled around him. In his arms, Damian began to stir.
Rough, callused fingers closed around his throat. Not squeezing. Not yet.
“This is your solution?” Wilson asked, voice a little deeper and hoarser. Dick could imagine the way his blue eye had darkened, pupil swelling as alpha instincts rose up.
It wasn’t hard to speak around the grip on his throat, but it felt like he was clawing the words out. “He will be your son, not the heir of Ra’s al Ghul. I will be your consort. We will have no claim to the throne.”
“Except through me,” Wilson said roughly. “A neater path. No need for a revolution at all, just regicide.”
Dick opened his eyes, weary to the bone. The alpha loomed above him, hard lines and uncompromising. “If the point of this conversation was to prove our deaths are necessary, you needn’t have gone to the effort,” he said plainly. “No one can stop you from killing us.”
The grip on his throat released. Dick took a high, shuddering breath. In his arms, Damian made a fitful cry in preparation for wailing.
“I do not wish to spill unnecessary blood,” Wilson said coldly, stepping away from him.
“I have no other solution to offer you,” Dick answered, levering back up to his feet. Damian opened his mouth to cry louder and Dick made an educated guess and bared a breast for him to latch on. Thankfully, he quieted.
When Dick looked back up, Wilson was staring at him.
“Very well,” Wilson said. “I accept your submission.” Dick stared, and Wilson walked to the adjoining doors. “After you,” he beckoned.
Dick had been in these rooms before. Every night in the beginning, when Ra’s wished to have him, though they reduced in frequency when Dick had fallen pregnant, and stopped altogether when his mate rode off for war. A remembered jolt of fear lanced down his spine as Wilson led the way to the bed and stopped, arching an eyebrow in expectance.
“Your Majesty,” Dick began, slow and conciliatory, “I—your generosity is greatly appreciated, I merely—the birth—I am not yet fully healed, Your Majesty. I can satisfy you in other ways—”
“I am not trying to fuck you, Richard,” Wilson said flatly. “Get in the bed.”
The two statements appeared contradictory, but Dick didn’t point that out. He crawled into the bed one-handed, settling awkwardly with Damian still curled against his chest. If it was a choice between pain and the death of his son, he would take the pain, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.
Fingers slid the remaining silks off his shoulder, baring his back and torso. Dick looked up as the alpha loomed above him, and closed his eyes when the alpha bent down. Teeth latched above his collarbone and bit down. Hard.
He couldn’t suppress his gasp as the submission kicked in, snapping into place with a resounding finality. The stupor swallowed him whole, paralyzing his muscles and forcing him limp and helpless under the alpha who claimed him. He couldn’t stop Wilson if he chose to tear Damian from his arms and rend him in two right here and now. He couldn’t stop Wilson if he chose to take him with the babe still suckling at his breast. He couldn’t stop Wilson from…curling around him, one arm supporting the babe, as Dick rested in his arms.
Protection-safety-pack curled around him, foreign and implausible.
“Why?” Dick finally managed to force out, voice slurred and weak. “Why…keep us?”
A finger stroked down the side of his cheek, brushing his hair to the side. “Ra’s al Ghul was a wasteful man. I am not.”
There were tears pooling at the corners of his eyes and try as he might, Dick could not stop them. “But,” he tried, knowing there was some trick he missed but unable to find it.
“Shh. Sleep, Richard. We will discuss specifics in the morning.”
Richard. He’d hated that name every time he’d heard it in Ra’s’ oily voice. “Dick,” he murmured. “My name is Dick.”
“…Very well. Rest, Dick. You are safe here.”
With that, Dick slipped into unconsciousness, carried on the waves of the deepest sleep he’d felt in months.