Chapter Text
Dick freezes.
Imagine how mad he’ll be if I’ve whacked two boy wonders on the same day!
He takes a deep breath in and out, trying to silence the laughter still bubbling in his ears.
“I already have.” He can’t help but admit. Perhaps it’s because of the Joker that he’s grasping his faith in the No Killing rule so tightly, but Hood should know he’s a hypocrite.
“What?!” Dick’s pretty sure that one was snarled under Red Hood’s helmet.
“I lost control.” Dick tells him, staring at his hands, the same hands that slammed into Joker’s disgusting husk of a body over and over and over again. “He kept talking about my little brother, and I snapped. I beat him to death. It’s only because he was revived that he isn’t six feet under right now.”
Hood’s chest has stopped moving with breath. He’s frozen in the center of his living room.
“I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to hear all of this.” Dick sniffs and blinks hard, rubbing at his wrists. “I haven’t really talked about this with anyone. I nearly went mad with guilt, when it happened. He’s the most vile thing I’ve ever encountered, deserved to die over and over again and I still felt so guilty. Maybe it’s because he wanted it in the end, gleefully talking about how he won. And I guess he did.”
“You killed him.”
“Yeah. Only person I’ve killed with my own hands.”
Hood has started breathing again, but it’s far too rapid. He’s clutching the edges of his helmet and starting to pace in tight little circles. Dick can recognize the beginning signs of a panic attack if he’s ever seen one.
Hood’s mumbling, something unintelligible, but Dick thinks he might hear an Arabic word or two. Interesting.
He turns on his heel, and in a rush flees from the living room, throwing himself into the bedroom with a slammed door behind him.
Dick follows after a moment, keeping his footsteps silent, and lingers by the bedroom door. What, it’s in a bat’s nature to be a little too invasively curious. He can still hear Hood’s panicked murmurs and what sounds like a muffled scream.
Dick slides down the wall outside the bedroom with a sigh.
“You should take off the helmet.” He says, keeping his tone even. He has the sense that any pity will make Hood angrier. “It helps to be less claustrophobic during a panic attack. I promise I won’t look.”
Silence. Then two clicks and a hissing noise.
“Not having a panic attack.” Hood’s voice is deep, raspy, like he’s trying not to cry, and barely intelligible through the door and his mumbling, but Dick sits up a little straighter to listen to him without the modulator anyway.
“Have you tried grounding exercises? Y’know, five things you can see, four you can hear—”
“I can hear you being a fucking jackass, I’m not having a panic attack!” Red Hood screeches back, in between the gasping breaths.
“Alright, you’re not having a panic attack.” Dick acquiesces. He sits in silence, gently humming an off-key melody from his circus days under his breath, waits for Hood to catch his breath.
“I’m sorry if I brought up unpleasant memories for you,” Dick says when Hood seems to have calmed a little, and finds that he truly is sorry.
Hood laughs a little hysterically. “Whatever. Just talk about anything else other than that right now, or I’m gonna fucking lose it.”
So Dick does what he’s always been good at- talks. It’s a bit hard to judge Hood’s mood through a door, but he’s got practice reading Bruce, so this crime lord with theater kid tendencies is a walk in the park. Harder than that though, are the unexpected conversation traps he falls into. Hood will be fine, even responsive for some of Dick’s stupid little stories, but when he tries to talk about the ski trip with Jason, or train surfing with Tim, Hood starts to shut down again. He isn’t sure what it is about those particular tales, but Dick sticks to mostly Titans stuff, and it goes better.
When Dick’s throat is starting to feel a little sore from all the talking, there’s the sound of rustling and clicks from the other side of the wall, and then Red Hood bursts through the door, helmet already on. He looks at Dick, sitting against the wall in an impossibly small ball.
“Why the hell are you on the floor?” The voice modulator seems even more strange after hearing his real voice.
Dick rolls forward and springs to his feet by butterfly kicking off the wall. Red Hood does not seem impressed. The man turns and stomps back over to the living room, and Dick follows after him. He stares out the little window, his hands now ungloved. They’re pale, covered with scars.
“You know,” Dick starts, attempting to segue into some sort of questioning/comforting about whatever just occurred, but Hood cuts him off.
“You said killed with your own hands. Implying there’s someone you killed without your own hands.” Hood says, and it changes the subject immediately, which was probably Hood’s intention. Dick is once again reminded of Bruce.
Dick sighs, and plops onto the couch again, rubbing his face with his hands. He’s tired, he’s so tired. And he hasn’t told anyone about this. Too on the outs with Barbara to confide in her, not wanting to let Tim down, too ashamed to talk to Batman.
“His name was… Blockbuster. He blamed me for his mother’s death so-“ Dick feels the lump growing in his throat, the walls start to close in a little. He needs to get through this fast, because if he thinks about it for too long he’ll fall apart even more than he already had. “He uh, wanted me to lose everything. He figured out who I was. Put contracts out on me. The circus burned. He blew up my apartment building.” Dick is dimly aware that he’s shaking. He’s not sure if any of this story makes sense but it’s not going to come out any other way.
“I lost my job. I couldn’t go to anyone or he’d kill them. He shot a woman in front of me and her uh- brains got everywhere, and I went up to the roof. I don’t know, it’s kinda fuzzy, I’m pretty sure I was in shock. He followed me, but this woman I was training— she, she came up, and she told me she was going to kill him, and I moved, I think, and she shot him.”
Dick can see Hood get angrier and angrier in his peripheral vision. He’s not sure why this is making Hood so angry, but he almost doesn’t care anymore. He’s too busy staring at the carpet, thinking of blood, cold, iron, flesh. The cold grey light of the rooftop, his suit tacky and stiff with old and new blood. Quierdo, she said. He threw up up there, he can remember that. His ears still weren’t healed from the explosion, and he barely heard the gun fire. Just saw, in his increasingly dizzy vision, Blockbuster fall.
“It’s my fault.” He chokes out. “I shouldn’t have let her shoot him. It’s my fault. I killed him. I killed-“
He stops talking, and Hood draws a gun. There’s a moment of instinctual panic, realizes for a moment this is when Red Hood will shoot him, will see that Dick deserves it, but— would it really be such a bad way to die? And he could move, but it didn’t turn out so well for him last time, and he wonders how Hood will get the red out of the carpet. Dick should tell him, to be polite.Tell him that they should move to the bathroom, that blood cleans up easier off of tile. He doesn’t— Dick just closes his eyes.
The gun fires.
Dick doesn’t even feel the bullet enter his body. Wait— he doesn’t feel the gunshot enter his body. He pries open his eyes to see Red Hood panting, still holding the gun, and a smoking hole in the potted plant in the corner.
“Oops.” Hood says. “Oh look, it’s your fault, you killed the plant.”
Dick just gapes like a fish.
“Oh you didn’t jump in the way fast enough?” Hood wildly gestures with the gun, working himself into a tizzy, but Dick absentmindedly notes his good trigger discipline. “You stupid fucking martyr asshole! That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. That wasn’t your fault.”
“I-“
“Are you kidding me?”
“I have a responsibility! I have-“
“Yeah, yeah, training and promises and whatever. That doesn’t extend to getting blown up, or shot, you fucking dumbass.” Dick is, he’s surprised to find, a little honored by how much disgust Hood shows at the prospect of him getting blown up. He’s not sure what he did to earn even that most basic level of consideration, but it’s sweet.
“You don’t understand.”
“No. No, I can’t with you.” Hood returns to his little angry circles, like an upset cat. “I mean, what the fuck is Bru— Batman doing? How are you still loyal to him?”
That same question Wally and Donna and Roy have asked a million times. Of course he was. A circus tent full of people gasping at bodies and Bruce Wayne was the only one who came to take his hand. Batman was the one to show him how to keep flying.
“It’s not his fault I’m this fucked up.” Dick says.
Hood makes a highly disbelieving noise Dick doesn’t think he could replicate if he tried.
“Why don’t we talk about your issues?” Dick switches tactics. Hood, seemly unconsciously, starts to shake his head.
“Hell no. I’ve already said way too much, and I’m not the one who got roofied with truth drugs.” Hood shoves his gun into his belt and his hands into his pockets. “And you can’t change the subject that easily. You need to talk-“ Hood’s phone chimes, and he flips it open, scans the message, groans, and begins to type furiously.
"Hold on a sec." He says, and then mutters. "Fuckin' goons these days, they just don't make criminals like they used to. Honestly, can't remember a single bloody order..."
In the silence, Dick is suddenly all too aware of where he is. His head is getting less cloudy with each breath, and he really needs to move before he overstays his welcome, or reveals any more embarrassing truths. Dick quietly takes stock of the room while Hood’s distracted. He’s got everything he needs, plus a faded Gotham Knights hoodie on the couch Red must have given him at some point. He can leave- could have left long before.
He creeps back towards the other window. Hood straightens for a second, still staring at the phone but clearly noticing Dick starting to sneak away. He looks conflicted, like he’s not sure what he wants- but eventually he just just sighs and falls into a resigned sort of slump.
“Thank you, Red Hood.” Dick says. Hood just nods, not looking up. On impulse, he adds- “And we’re friends now, so I expect you to say hi!”
“We are not friends.” Hood scoffs as he types. “More like enemies.”
“Mmm, agree to disagree. I’m going to make us matching bracelets,” Dick singsongs as he slings on the hoodie.
“Make us matching bracelets and I will shoot you next time.” Hood deadpans, and Dick just laughs.
He makes it to the window, wrenching it open and peers outside. It’s perfect for a hot exit. Red Hood has good taste in safe houses. He gets onto the still, and pauses, unable to keep himself from looking back. Hood’s staring at him.
“Hey Grayson.” Hood says, after a moment of tense silence, with the intensity of wanting to say something very badly. “Maybe your brother didn’t like that poem."
Dick inhales, a little sharper than he means to.
"Maybe he fuckin' hated it. Maybe he highlighted it because he thought it was fuckin’ stupid, that there was nothing good, nothing to be celebrated in someone dying young, no matter what.”
The wind blows through Dick’s hair, and he swallows the lump in his throat. Hood takes a step forward, inclines his head like he’s going to say something else, and then appears to think better of it.
“Take care of yourself. It’s a stupid poem.” Hood finally says, oddly insistent. Dick, in that moment, wished he could see Hood's face, so dearly. He wished he could see what the man was thinking, who Red Hood was. Hood twitches, like he wants to reach out and touch him for a moment- and Dick thinks he might even let him- but he just settles for saying again: "Take care of yourself."
“Okay.” He whispers. “You too.”
Dick turns before he can say anything else or do something insane like hug a crime lord and slips out the window. He thinks he may be even telling the truth, this time. He climbs up on the roof, pulling the hoodie down low, and looks around at his surroundings.
He’s always liked this area of Crime Alley, where the roofs are so close together you could jump from one to another without even a grapple.
He breathes in the shitty Gotham air, cold. He hasn’t felt this alive in a very very long time. Yeah, he owes Hood a lot.
Maybe he’ll call Bruce today.
Try just one more time.