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He wakes up with a pounding headache, the kind that pulses throughout his entire skull, turning his brain into soggy jello. The groan slips out of his mouth without his permission as he throws all his remaining effort into trying to raise his chin from his chest. His head lolls sideways, fighting him every step of the way, but he finally manages it.
Yay. Congrats, Grayson. You did a simple task. If only Batman could see you now.
The thought makes him pause. The last thing he remembers concretely is eating dinner, but judging from the stabbing that has now migrated primarily to the base of his skull, he would not be shocked if he lost some time somewhere along the way. The question is, is the missing time Dick Grayson time or Nightwing time?
He flexes his fingers, searching for the familiar feeling of his gloves. He finds nothing, although he does come to the mildly horrifying realization that his wrists are secured tightly to something. A chair, he realizes, much slower than he would have liked, hard and uncomfortable. His wrists are duct taped, and so are his ankles.
Except… he’s not Nightwing right now. The Gotham Knights hoodie he’s wearing is familiar and comfortable, if slightly rumpled now, sleeves pushed uncomfortably up his arms to make room for the duct tape. His feet are bare and cold, having at some point been stripped of his shoes and socks and left to settle on the freezing cement floor.
Despite all his training, he can’t manage to get his brain to focus enough to pick up on a location. Everything just seems… gray. A warehouse, possibly? Maybe a basement somewhere? It feels like his head has been stuffed with cotton.
“Oh, you’re up. Good.”
Dick whips his head around as fast as he’s currently physically capable, although it makes the world spin again. By the time it levels out again, the guy who’s apparently kidnapped him is crouched down in front of him. He grins, wicked and sharp, and it’s only then that Dick realizes he has three other guys behind him.
Four men, unknown location, and he has a secret identity to worry about. Great.
“Nice of you to finally join us, prettyboy.”
“Thanks for having me,” Dick says dryly. “I would’ve been here sooner, but I didn’t exactly know you were putting together this little shindig.”
The guy laughs, stringy blond hair swinging in front of his face. He looks a bit like a dirty mop. “You got a smart mouth, Grayson. Wonder why Wayne even likes having you around.”
Dick’s heart drops, his limbs feeling suddenly as if his veins had filled with lead.
They’re after Bruce, or it’s connected to Bruce at the very least. Bruce, who wants absolutely nothing to do with Dick, who threw him out of the place he’d thought was his home and told him to leave his key, who’d let his eighteenth birthday pass without a single word, officially marking Dick as nothing more than Bruce Wayne’s former ward.
Bruce doesn’t care about Dick anymore. Maybe he never really did.
He can’t help the bitter laugh, which makes Mophead frown.
“You went through all this trouble to kidnap me, but you didn’t even notice I live in Bludhaven now? Bruce and I parted ways a while ago. We’re not exactly on the best of terms.”
The understatement tastes sour in the back of his throat.
“You think I’m dumb enough to believe that?”
“Well, yeah kinda.” It’s a mistake, and he knows it, but he’s feeling raw and a little bit scared—his brain-to-mouth filter is no longer working.
Mophead’s fist collides with his mouth and knocks his head back, banging his already bruised skull against the back of the chair.
“You really should just sit there and do what I tell you to, kid,” he says, voice cool. “It’ll be a whole lot easier for the both of us if you just shut up and say hi to Daddy.”
“Bruce doesn’t care,” Dick hisses out, aware that he probably sounds as hysterical as he feels. He can taste metal, blood staining his teeth. “He’s not even my guardian anymore. Just let me go. You won’t get anything out of him, not for me. And do you really want a murder charge on your asses? Just let me go now and this can all be over.”
“Nah, prettyboy, I don’t think so.” Mophead grabs his hair, yanking his head roughly and forcing him to look up at his ugly mug. Dick does his best to glare up at him as his scalp burns. “I wanna make his pockets hurt, but if you think he’ll take some extra convincing, then we’ll make sure to be extra convincing. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Wha—”
“Now, shut it. I have a phone call to make.” He whistles, and one of his little cronies passes him a cell phone. “What’s Wayne’s number?”
“He won’t answer—”
The backhanded slap snaps his head painfully to the side so hard it makes his ears ring. He spits out a glob of blood, feeling somewhat vindicated when it lands squarely on the toe of one of Mophead’s shoes.
“Number, now. I know you know it, circus freak.”
Dick grits it out between clenched teeth. Weirdly enough, his stomach churns with anxiety, face burning with humiliation. Bruce made it very clear that Dick means less than nothing to him, and here Dick is crawling back to him crying for help. Admittedly, it’s pretty much against his will, but still. He was weak and stupid enough to get himself kidnapped; it just reinforces the fact that Bruce never needed him.
Bruce won’t pay. It doesn’t matter what these guys do to him, Bruce doesn’t care.
Mophead puts the phone on speaker, lazily holding it in between them.
“Hello?” Dick hasn’t heard Bruce’s voice in months, and it’s been even longer since he heard any tone of voice from him other than vicious screaming and disappointment. Even tinny and slightly muffled, something in Dick’s chest pangs at the sound. He hates himself for it, but a part of him misses Bruce so bad it hurts.
“Hiya, Brucie,” Mophead grins. “How are you doing today?”
“Who is this?”
“Straight to the point, huh? I like it. You don’t need to worry about who I am, I just wanted to let you know that I found something you may have lost.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who is this?”
“I already told you, you don’t need to know who I am. I will, however, reintroduce you to our mutual friend here. Say hello, Grayson.”
Dick glares, refusing to grunt out a rough “Hey, B” until a boot connects with his gut.
“Dick?” Bruce asks. He’s a bit harder to get a read on through the phone and the effort it’s taking to catch his breath, but Dick knows Bruce pretty well. He can speak Batman better than pretty much anyone, except maybe Alfred.
Bruce is angry. He’s mad at Dick for calling him, for getting himself kidnapped. He’s disappointed that he's still having to deal with Dick. He sounds surprised, too, like he can’t even believe Dick would dare to try and contact him for help.
Dick kind of wants to cry. He knew, okay? He knew Bruce wouldn’t care, but it still hurts.
“10 mil, Wayne,” Mophead snaps, “in cash. You have twenty-four hours to deliver it to the coordinates that will be sent to you following this call. And since Dickie here thinks you might be a bit hesitant to pay up…”
He trails off, setting the phone down in Dick’s lap. “Wha—”
He can’t help it. The scream tears out of him as his shoulder lights up in agony. Dick blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision up. He barely manages to make sense of the knife handle sticking out from beneath his collarbone before it’s twisting, slow and deep. His whole arm is on fire, acid crawling to spread across his chest. He doesn’t even know if he’s screaming or not, concussion and shredded nerves both working against him so he can’t concentrate on anything other than the pain, so hot and sharp that he feels like he’s freezing.
“—ick?!”
By the time he can think again, he’s panting and dizzy, chin resting on his chest. Bruce’s voice cuts through, years of Robin training coming through. He tries to answer, but all that comes out is a low groan.
“What the hell did you do to him?”
Bruce actually sounds worried—no, scared. He sounds borderline frantic. Dick doesn’t understand what’s happening. Is Bruce pretending? Maybe there’s other people in the room with him, and he needs to keep up some sort of image.
“Nothing he won’t recover from,” Mophead tells him, finally picking the phone up from Dick’s lap. “So long as you give us the money.”
“You don’t need to hurt him. I’ll pay.”
Mophead shrugs even though Bruce can’t see him. “Grayson doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he thinks you might need just a bit more convincing…”
Whatever Bruce says next is completely lost to Dick as a loud bang sounds and all of a sudden pain erupts in his left hand.
“Gah!” His head falls back, breathing harshly as he struggles to get his bearings. One of Mophead’s buddies is holding a hammer, and Dick is suddenly terrified to look down at his fingers. They’re already throbbing, agony climbing up his arm slowly to mingle with the pain from the knife still firmly lodged in his shoulder.
It’s getting incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything other than the fact that his whole upper body is on fire and his head feels like he’s floating. He misses Bruce. For the past four months he’s waited and waited in rapidly dwindling hopes that Bruce would call him or show up at his apartment, that he would apologize and Dick could have a family again.
And as much as Dick prides himself on his independence, he doesn’t want to be alone. All he wants right now is for Bruce to come for him. He would even settle for Bruce caring enough to not let him bleed out here.
He drifts in and out for a while until a sharp slap yanks him out of his half-consciousness.
“Daddy’s taking an awfully long time,” Mophead says. “Maybe you weren’t lying after all.”
“Told you,” Dick mumbles. He loathes that he was right. A freezing-cold tear escapes before he even knows it's there, rolling down his cheek and soaking into the leg of his jeans.
“What are we supposed to do with him if Wayne doesn’t pay up?” one of Mophead’s goons asks.
Mophead shrugs. “We kill him and try again. Maybe Wayne’ll get himself a new pet project, one we can grab while they’re still tiny and cute and worth something. Or maybe he’ll be willing to cough it up for his own life.”
“No,” Dick gasps out, can’t help it. “Leave him ‘lone.”
He hates Bruce right now, hates him for abandoning him, but he doesn’t want him to get hurt. There’s a part of him that still feels so obligated to his former mentor. He might not be Bruce’s son, but Bruce still raised him, and Dick loves him just as much as he hates him.
The men are making noise, but it’s all merged into white noise around him. It takes everything he has left in him just to peel open one eyelid, and even then everything is blurry. The only thing he manages to make out is a big black shadow that doesn’t make any sense.
Batman, the back of his mind supplies, reigning fury down on Mophead and his goons. Hopefully not some bloodloss-induced hallucination of Batman either, although he’s pretty sure he can hear the distinct sounds of gauntlet on flesh as the kidnappers go down.
Bruce is here. He really actually came. For Dick.
It doesn’t make any sense, but he doesn’t really care, too busy sliding back into old memories, back when Batman meant safety, security. Meant that all the pain would go away soon.
He can let go. Bruce is here. Bruce is here, and everything is okay now.
Dick can rest.