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"You're bleeding."
The words should be clipped, impersonal, perhaps tinged with a bit of smug sadism. That would be easy, understandable, almost safe—as safe as anything he could hope for now. That, at least, Dick could handle.
Instead, they are soft, laced with concern and an underlying command implicit in the three little syllables. Dick freezes halfway to the doorway, and something in him cries at the interruption. He wants to go to his room, to his bed, to the closest thing he has to time alone.
(He never feels truly alone, not with the disappointed faces his guilt always throws at him, or the omnipresent eye he never fully escapes.)
He is bleeding. He had hardly noticed, even with his hand pressed against the blood gushing from his shoulder, warm and sticky and far too familiar to register as important.
"It's nothing," Dick says, not turning around. He gets hurt training all the time. It was just one lucky shot by one the sparring bots among dozens, nothing to hold him up now. He's done his time for today. He was dismissed. "It's only a scratch. I can patch it up with the kit in my room."
"Let me see it." Still that soft concern, but underneath it the command lies darker and firmer; he has a choice, now, to comply. He won't if he brushes it off again.
Dick turns. He keeps his eyes on the ground, on the shoes which move slowly towards him, and drops his hand from his shoulder.
Another replaces it. Larger, sturdier, pressed tight to stem the blood flow rather than to simply keep from leaving a trail. The cut flares with pain, but he's had worse, he has worse, so he merely bites his lip and holds to his detachment. Twenty seconds, and then the pressure releases. The torn strips of his uniform near the cut peel away with a wet, sucking sound and more flares of pain, and chilly air hits the fresh blood.
"A flesh wound. Not terrible, but it could be serious if it's not well treated. Come."
Dick follows. He spares a strand of regret, a small grimace, as they head away from the door to another on the opposite end of the room. It looks the same — dark grey metal blending in with the shadows of the training room, shadows that flood the whole haunt, with the same size, the same bar for a handle. But where the other door unwound the stiff muscles of his shoulders with the promise of relief, this one has him coiled tight, stretching the skin by his wound as he hardens himself against hitching breath. He hates this door. Hates what lays behind it, and the panic it stirs in him.
But it's just a door. It's just a room beyond. Just a few moments in the eternity it seems he'll spend here.
He keeps his eyes down as the door opens and a bleach-white light flicks on. A finger taps the medical counter; he braces his palms on it, hoists himself up, and waits. There's rummaging off to the side of him, a search for medical supplies, but he watches his knees instead. They sway the slightest bit as his feet dangle in the air, an inch or two above the ground. The old him would have been so annoyed at his shortness that it's almost funny, but the reminder of his weakness is disheartening. He feels pathetic.
The harsh light dims a little as a large shadow falls over him. A bottle rattles; the sharp smell of disinfectant hits his nose a moment before it's burn touches his wound as a rag presses against his shoulder. Dick bites his tongue, unable to catch the slight hiss that slips between his teeth in time, and focuses on holding back the ripped part of his uniform. The fabric feels slimy between his fingers.
After the cleaning comes a bandage, which sticks unpleasantly close against his skin. It's nowhere near his nose, but he feels stifled, suffocated; he wants to tear it off. It's a stupid wish. Dick wears bandages all the time, now more than ever, but this feels somehow worse.
It always is, when he puts it on.
The last bit is secured; a hand smooths over the bandage one last time, and then through his hair, pushing wavy strands back behind his ear before brushing over skin and lifting his chin.
He doesn't want to look up. He keeps his eyes down, on the ground, and he stays... not safe, but better. That's his strategy. But he doesn't have that luxury this time.
Slade's face is shadowed heavily by the light behind him, yet his eye glows almost silver as it bores into Dick's own blank stare. For a long moment the man holds his gaze, reading into it things Dick would never guess even if he cared to. He doesn't care to; he only wishes the man would blink, that he could blink, that the man would release his chin and let them both part ways. His skin prickled.
"You're progressing well," Slade says as he lets go at last, his hand slipping down to the counter. The praise comes seemingly from nowhere, and Dick hopes his eyes remain carefully neutral and don't give away his confusion. Slade is not exactly shy of giving praise, but he's not one for excessive flattery either. Every word and timing of all that he says has some purpose behind it, some manipulation, and Dick has learned to look for those deeper meanings. He hadn't done particularly spectacular today. If anything, the statement is ironic in light of their current situation, but it didn't have a hint of irony.
Dick voices none of this. He avoids questions most days even more than eye contact, and talking at all in general. Slade, as ever, seems to guess his thoughts anyway.
"One year today," the man says quietly. "In one year, my apprentice, you have come so far, just as I told you you would. I'm proud of you."
One year today...? Oh, one year at the haunt. A year. For three hundred and sixty-five days, he had been away from his friends, his freedom. Even longer, so much longer, from his home.
Moments before he had felt his time here had stretched on for an uncountable length; the Dick Grayson, the carefree Robin, of the time before now felt entirely separate, a different person who shared the same body, once. But now, now that he knows how long he'd been here, he can hardly believe it. An entire year. Twelve months. Three hundred and sixty-five days, and Bruce had never come for him.
He can't help his breath then. It catches, and then gasps out, and catches again, a humiliating, vicious cycle he can't stem. He'd thought he'd given up hope somewhere in the muddle of unnumbered days — three hundred and sixty-five, now — but he can feel the last feathery bits of hope nested deep in his mind crumble away to nothing. Bruce never came. The Batman, the world's greatest detective, in three hundred and sixty-five days hadn't bothered to look for his ward.
Dick is fifteen now, he realizes. Had Bruce even remembered his birthday? Had Alfred? He misses Bruce, misses him so badly that it aches, more even than the first night he had left. Then it had felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest, his ribs shattered like a jewel case punched through by a clumsy crook. Now everything feels broken, like crushed glass scattered carelessly over concrete, crunched under foot as people went on with their lives. He draws his legs up tightly, a knee pressed against his injured shoulder, and tries to hold himself together.
Hands tug his knees back from his wound. They smooth over his hair as a calm, soothing voice hushes him, but it's the firm grip that locks gently on his upper arms, the undercurrent of command that he has come to know so well, that brings him back.
"It's all right," Slade says. "Breathe with me, now, in, one, two..."
Dick knows this. He learned it years before, and long ago became familiar with the firm, grounding grip and coaxing voice full of warm authority that brought him peace, hope, security. He lets it pull him back until his gasps even out, and the spots he had hardly noticed before his eyes clear to the harsh light and the bulky silhouette that shielded him from it. He lets it wash over him even then, and leans into the offered touch.
Strong arms wrap around him, tuck him beneath a sturdy chin as a hand rubs circles into his back. If he closes his eyes, he can smell Bruce's cologne, and see the man as he was in the early days of their partnership, before everything soured. Back when Bruce would still hold him close and pledge to protect him.
But Bruce isn't there. The soothing voice is Slade's, promising honeyed lies with the same tone his guardian once had used. Bruce can't be there, because Bruce had given Dick up. He'd thrown him out like so much trash, something ugly and useless and broken. Bruce didn't want him. Bruce doesn't care.
Slade, however... It's a horrible thought, but it comes to Dick nonetheless, and he's too drained to push it away. Slade wants him. Slade has gone through so much trouble to get him, to keep him. He'd picked Dick, not out of a sense of responsibility or pity, but because he wanted him. Slade was here now. He did, in whatever twisted way of his, care.
"It's all right," Slade says again. He's still rubbing circles against Dick's back, and doesn't seem to mind that a sobbing face is pressed against his arm, dripping snot and tears into shirt. "It's all right. I've got you."
Dick closes his eyes and breaths in the scent of oil, of electric sparks and sweat and everything that made up the familiar and distinctive smell of his new mentor, and lets the promises sink into him. He can only hope, this time, that they won't be broken.