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Dick is different when he comes back from Milwaukee: Quiet, distant, his usual laser-sharp focus just a step out of phase. Usually he reacts to new developments faster than the others can even pick up on them, but now it’s like he’s lagging, his mind a million miles away. Rachel smells the hurt on him the second he walks through the door of the safehouse. She’s out of her seat in an instant, half-expecting him to be bleeding out—only to stop, surprised, when Dick looks at her with a wan smile, seemingly unscratched. “Hey,” he greets her. “You okay?”
Rachel swallows and looks him over. He’s in his civilian clothes, tactical case in hand, his only injuries the bruises and scrapes on his face from being attacked by “the organization” the day before. “Yeah,” she says, unsure. She wishes he would look her in the eye. “Where’s Jason?”
Dick stills for a moment. “He had to go back to Gotham.” He crosses the room to set his gear on the table. “Where’s Kory?”
“Um.” Rachel’s eyes flick down the hall. “Bathroom, I think. With that creepy doctor guy.”
Dick exhales. “Stay here. Don’t come in unless we tell you it’s okay.”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “Yeah.” She watches as Dick disappears down the hall.
Gar stirs from where he fell asleep on the couch watching late-night cartoon reruns. He sits up, rubbing at his eyes, and catches sight of the case on the table. “Dick’s back?”
“Mm.” Rachel flops next to him on the couch. “Something’s wrong with him.”
Gar straightens. “What? Is he hurt?”
Rachel chews on her thumbnail. She can’t shake the ache that hit her stomach the second she laid eyes on Dick. “Yeah,” she says, brow furrowed. On the TV, a girl in a blue dress commands a wave of water with her hands. “But not physically.”
Gar looks confused, but he doesn’t question her. “What happened?”
Rachel’s gaze darts down the hall again. “I don’t know,” she says. “But I’m gonna find out.”
By the time Dick and Kory emerge from the bathroom, Avatar: The Last Airbender has turned into Danny Phantom , and Rachel and Gar are both dozing against their respective arms of the couch . It’s the smell of that hurt that wakes Rachel again: Sharp and cold, like liquid nitrogen. She blinks heavy-lidded eyes open to find Dick leaning over her.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says. “You should get some sleep. Pick any of the bedrooms; there are five.”
Rachel pushes herself upright. “What about the doctor?”
“We moved him to the containment unit,” Dick says. “He won’t be getting out of there anytime soon.”
“There’s a containment unit?” Gar says, incredulous. “Who built this place?”
Dick’s mouth twitches, but it’s not his usual half-smile; this is something much tighter, tense at the edges. “Someone with a one track mind.“ He ushers them up. “Come on, bed. We can talk in the morning.”
Rachel purposefully trails behind the others just so she can catch Dick while Kory and Gar choose their rooms. “Dick,” she says. He looks back at her, brows raised. She doesn’t know how to do this, what to say. Usually it’s Dick asking after her, not the other way around. “Um. Are you alright?”
“‘Course,” Dick says, immediate. Lie, Rachel’s otherworldly instincts supply. “Why? Is there something wrong?”
“Uh.” Rachel bites her lip. Kory is looking back at them, questioning. “No. Just wanted to make sure.”
The hard line of Dick’s mouth softens. “Get some sleep.”
Rachel chooses the room next to Dick’s and lies on top of the covers, trying to ignore the unease twisting in her chest. Why did Dick look like that when he came back—like he had lost a piece of himself he would never get back? What happened in Milwaukee?
Rachel must drop off at some point, because she wakes in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, awash in a torrent of guilt and fear and anguish so strong she feels for a second like she’s going to drown. It takes her a moment to realize that the emotions aren’t her own. The second she does, she’s rolling off the bed and running next door.
Dick is sitting upright in his bed, sheets tangled around his legs, the heels of his palms pressed to his eyes. His breath is rapid and shallow, like he can’t quite draw it deep enough. Rachel pulls up short in the doorway, eyes wide. “Dick.”
But Dick doesn’t respond, like he doesn’t hear her, and that scares Rachel more than anything—Dick is the most vigilant person she knows. She eases the door shut behind her and tentatively crawls onto the bed. “Dick?” she tries again, and hates herself for how her voice shakes.
Dick jerks and looks up. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. “Rachel?”
“Hey,” Rachel whispers. The sight of Dick’s wet eyes and shuddering chest makes her feel frantic, panicked. “Are you—are you okay? I heard—I mean, I felt—you were so upset—”
Dick sucks in a deep, harsh breath and holds it until it looks like it hurts. When he finally lets it out, his breathing eases back into something approximating a normal rate, even if it is a little unsteady. “I’m fine,” he says, at last. His voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming. “Go back to sleep.”
Rachel swallows. Dick looks awful: Besides the split lip and bruises still purpling his cheekbone, there’s a bloodless quality to his face, like something gripped hold of him and wrung out every last drop of energy, leaving him twisted and empty. And as much as Rachel loathes to admit it, Dick has wormed his way under her skin; even with Kory and Gar watching over her now, Dick still feels like the only thing tethering her to the ground. The sight of him so broken makes her feel ill.
“Dick,” Rachel says. She meets his gaze and silently begs him not to lie to her. “What happened today?”
For a long, long moment, Dick just looks at her, helpless—then he shudders, violently, and presses a hand over his mouth, like he’s going to vomit. Rachel doesn’t think: Her hand darts out and grasps Dick’s free one. He lets her keep him grounded while he closes his eyes and breathes past the nausea.
“Four years ago,” Dick starts, and then stops, like it’s painful to even speak the words out loud. “Four years ago, I let a man die. A criminal. The person responsible for the death of my parents.”
Rachel’s eyes widen. She sees, in the memories of her dreams, two bodies falling to the ground with sickening thuds, the screams of a boy echoing through the air.
“That night was…after that, I knew I couldn’t work with Batman anymore. I was becoming something I never wanted to be. So I left. And I tried to leave Robin behind, too. But today I found out that because I—because of what I did, that man’s son lost everything. His mother, his sister, his fiancée. The people his father used to work for, they tracked them down and tortured them all to death.”
Rachel flinches. Dick seems to notice it, because he withdraws his hand, away from her touch.
“The son, they tracked him down, too. They tortured him, too. But he survived. He figured out who I was and what I had done to his father, and he came after me.” Dick swallows, hard. “Well. First he came after my family. My Haly’s family.”
Rachel’s stomach drops. “Are they—?”
“They’re dead,” Dick whispers. His eyes are empty, lost somewhere in the distance. Rachel stares at him, horrified. “He tortured and killed them all. Today I faced him for the first time, when he took the last friend I had left from Haly’s. And the only reason he didn’t kill the both of us too was because Jason saved us, just in time.”
Dick’s face crumples. “But Jason—god, he’s just a kid. And he’s so… angry. He’s there already, he’s only a kid and already a weapon—he’s going to make the same mistakes I did and I tried to tell him but I couldn’t—I couldn’t make him understand, I couldn’t say what I wanted to say and he—he was right about me, Rachel, he saw right past me, he saw that I couldn’t help him, that I can’t help anybody—”
“ Hey. ” Rachel’s voice comes out sharp, despite the tears welling in her eyes. This time, when she grabs Dick’s hand, she doesn’t let it go. “Stop. Don’t talk like that.”
Dick looks at her like he doesn’t see her, and Rachel wants to shake him, wants to slap him until the Dick she knows is looking back at her again. “You saved me, Dick.”
“All those people,” Dick whispers. “My friends—Zucco’s family—”
“ Stop .” The word comes out echoing with the voices of all the forces inside her. Dick startles and finally seems to look at, really look at her. Rachel takes a deep breath and pulls all of her writhing darkness back inside her. “You’re being so stupid , Dick.”
Dick looks suddenly guilty. “Rachel—”
“Remember what I told you when we first met? What I said about you?” Rachel thinks about a cold interrogation room in the bowels of Detroit, looking into the first pair of kind eyes she had seen in days. “You help people, Dick. You helped them when you were a kid, as Robin, and when you tried to give that up you became a cop so you could keep helping people. You’ve saved—so many people, Dick. You saved me.” Rachel grips Dick’s hand tight. She remembers standing in the basement of that old mansion where Gar used to live, facing a screaming void and wanting nothing more than to yield to it, wanting nothing more than for someone to come for her so she wouldn’t have to. And she remembers Dick. Coming for her.
“I know it’s hard,” Rachel whispers. She finds Dick’s gaze and keeps it. “Knowing what you’ve done. Being afraid that you’ll hurt your friends. But you’re not a monster, okay?” Her lips twitch. “Trust me. I would know.”
“You’re not a monster, Rachel,” Dick says, fierce, immediate, and Rachel—Rachel rolls her eyes. He’s back, I guess. “I’m serious,” he continues. “You’re a kid, Rachel, just a kid. You shouldn’t have had to deal with any of this. The adults in your life have let you down.” He swallows. “Including me.”
“But you came back,” Rachel says. It’s funny: Just a few days ago, when Dick was repeating those very words to her, all she could think was that he was lying. And now here she is, believing it more than he is. “That’s what matters.”
Dick smiles, just the barest curve of his mouth. Rachel huffs, relief rushing through her. Finally. She hesitates for a moment. “Can I, um. Hug you?”
Dick’s brows jump to his hairline. “You, asking me for a hug? The world is flipping upside-down.”
Rachel rolls her eyes and tackles him, unable to stop the smile that comes when Dick laughs and catches her in a bear hug. “Rachel,” he says, quiet. “Thank you.”
Rachel buries her face in his shoulder. She has not stopped being afraid since she watched her mother die, but with Dick, it is just a little bit better. “We’re going to be okay, right?”
Dick’s arms tighten around her. “Yeah, kiddo,” he says. “We’re going to be okay.”