Chapter Text
Koriand’r is in her garden when she finally gets the call she’s been waiting for.
She’s given Dick three weeks to adjust; to figure himself out. But she knows it has been quite the transition period. He’s had a lot on his plate, even after Bruce’s unlikely return. Once Bruce was back, DIck should have been free of those new responsibilities immediately. And yet, he had stayed in Gotham with Bruce. He had even continued being Batman.
At least, Kory thinks, she had believed Tim. Even when she hadn't, at least she had helped him with his case. Tim was grieving and lost, but he had still been family. And, he was Dick's brother. Kory kept an eye on him for Dick. No matter Kory's reasons, it had been nice to have him around the Tower. It is still nice, to have him here. Anything to keep the Tower full of her Titans family. After all, it was not just Gotham that had lost many heroes. The Titans had, too. After Conner and Bart's funeral, Kory had been tempted to go back to Tamaran, just to distance herself from the grief. But one look at the teen heroes' empty rooms -- empty, because they had died while she was their team leader -- and she had remembered her responsibilities. She was still team leader, and she still had others to take care of. Others who needed a family and a place to call home.
So she had stayed. And she had convinced the others to stay, too.
Even Raven and Garfield -- who were, like her, far too old to still be Teen Titans. Together, they stayed on the team alongside Jaime, Cassie, and Tim. Just for now, she had told them. Just until they could heal. They had lost enough of their team this year. Just give it time.
That had been a year ago. Two months ago, Bart and Conner had returned, against all odds.
And after that miracle, Kory had taken far more interest in Tim’s research.
Enough of her friends had returned from the dead that his theory hadn’t seemed so ridiculous. And with more of the superhero community fully behind Tim, Bruce had been found within the week.
Kory shakes her head. She wonders how much faster it would have been, if Tim had Dick on his side. Not just as his brother, but as the next best detective. Though sometimes, she thinks Tim might have stolen that title out from under her partner.
Kory is grateful she’d been able to help. And even more grateful that the world, finally, is as it should be.
All that remains is this. This call. And for Dick to return to her.
She presses her phone between her shoulder and ear, careful as she waters her plants. Ficuses. Finicky things, these. She really ought to cycle them into the sunnier half of the greenhouse -- they look less vibrant than usual.
“Hello?” she asks, when Dick isn't the first to speak. “What a surprise, Dick! You haven’t called in ages.”
She says it glibly -- too much so. Kory can hear the wince in his voice. “...Is that a hint?”
"That depends. What do you believe I'm hinting at, hm?"
Dick swallows. "Not reaching out. Were you waiting for me?"
“How could I not?" Kory sets the watering can on the bench, satisfied for now. "Even on break, we were still friends, were we not?”
“...We’re always friends, Kor.”
And oh. There is the warmth in his tone. There is the him that she had missed. It sends heat to her belly just to hear his voice again. It's been far too long, and Kory has missed him like she has missed breathing.
So even though she is frustrated that he could so easily shelve her, Kory can’t help but smile. Even when he immediately starts up his excuses. “I did miss you," he says. "I just didn’t have time to call.”
“Aside from the once.”
Kory remembers that night all too well. Five months ago -- when he’d called at three in the morning, voice so strained it hurt to hear. He'd sounded more lost than when Jason had died. Gotham was too much, he'd told her. And she knew what he meant. The fighting was too much. The company was too much. The League, the Titans, the constant Arkham breakouts. Batman was too much. And privately, Kory knew that even Damian was too much, though it wasn’t his fault.
Dick had called Damian had gotten hurt. The first time since becoming Robin -- and Dick couldn’t handle that stain on his conscience. He’d needed Kory to make sure he wouldn’t go out and get someone killed. To make sure that 'someone' wasn't himself.
So Kory had come. She stayed for three days, and cared for him in every way she’d known how.
“...Aside from the once,” Dick agrees.
Kory pulls out a pair of shears from her overall pockets, then looks to an overgrown tree in severe need of pruning. “Have you been alright since then?”
“As alright as I can be,” he admits. “You helped a lot. But it would have been -- selfish, to do that to you again.”
“Yes.” She snips away at the tree with no small amount of vindictiveness. “It would have been. But I would have allowed it, even so.”
"You know..." Dick hesitates. “You shouldn’t let me get away with being so selfish. A better man would have broken up with you all the way. A better man could have let you get on with your life.”
“I am aware.” Kory snips at another branch, letting the dead leaves fall away. “But I am not as hurt as you might be worrying. We were volatile when we were children -- but we aren’t children anymore. I know you didn’t mean any harm by it. The only reason we took a break was because of your father’s… I suppose I cannot say his untimely passing anymore, can I?” She hesitates, too, just for a moment -- carefully considering both the tree’s needs, and her words. “But, seeing as he has been back for almost a month, I was hoping you would have found time to call by now.”
“In my defense, it’s not every day that Batman comes back from the dead. It’s just been crazy over here.”
“Crazy, in Gotham? Yes… truly, I am shocked. How could one possibly adapt to such a strange circumstance in such an ordinarily calm city?”
This time, she clearly hears him wince. “Aw, geez. Is Garfield teaching you sarcasm again?”
“Rachel, actually.” She shakes her head, then smiles despite herself. “Let us move on to lighter news. Please, get to why you called. Of the four possibilities, what news should I expect to hear?”
“Only four?” She can picture the crinkle between his brow, the one he always gets when he is confused. She wonders if he had a permanent line by now. It has been months since she had seen him, after all. And the stress of raising Bruce’s son, on top of being Batman, could not have been kind to him.
Kory decides to go easy on him.
“The first two would be the obvious choices for anyone but you,” Kory says -- tone light enough that he’d know she isn’t angry. “Either we’re getting back together, or we’re not. We were only on break because of your responsibilities, and now, you no longer have them -- or, you shouldn’t. Not if Bruce is back. But I’m afraid the other two options are far more ‘you’. Either you’ll tell me that you still need more time to figure out what you want… or you’re calling for purely business reasons, and this has nothing to do with our relationship.”
Silence on the other end.
“Well?” Kory prompts, trying not to gloat at his very telling hesitation. “Am I right?”
Then, Dick chuckles. She can almost see him sheepishly looking at the ceiling, rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah, alright. You caught me. It’s the last one.”
Kory sighs. “You have two more weeks before I expect an answer for my real question, my love. After that, I won’t be so generous. Now, what is it you need?”
“I’m having trouble tracking Tim down.” And immediately, his business voice. Kory sighs again and puts the shears in her pocket, wiping her hands on her overalls. “He came back to Gotham to help find Bruce, but he left almost as quickly.”
“Have you considered that he might not feel the most welcome there?”
Dick is quiet for another moment. Considering.
He’s always been good at considering, that one. Kory wonders what he might do if he knew what had happened in the Tower over the last few months. What he’d do if he knew about Tim’s battle with himself. The risks he’d taken in combat. The obsessive, sleepless nights spent poring over the facts of Bruce’s death. The tenseness in his shoulders when he heard that Damian was officially Gotham’s Robin.
That night, he’d confided in her that the Titans Tower might be the only home he had left.
“I can’t move Damian out,” Dick finally says. “He lives there, too.”
“That is not your problem, my love." At Dick's confusion, she says, "There is no ‘too’ about it. Damian does not live at the Manor 'too', because Tim hasn’t lived in the Manor in almost a year.”
“All his stuff is-”
“It’s here,” Kory says firmly. “Check his room. You’ll find that he removed most of his clothes ages ago. It may be messy -- but that mess hasn’t changed in a year.”
Dick falls silent. So Kory picks up the slack.
“He’s the Robin of Jump City,” she reminds him gently. “Much like you were, once. Is it so different than you and Jason? He’s even your same age, when you first left.”
She can hear Dick bristle on the phone. “It’s not the same.”
“Then tell me how it’s different. Do you think Batman was any happier about your absence than you are with Tim’s?”
Dick goes quiet again. This time, Kory waits him out. She can’t guide him to every answer. Sometimes, he has to sort through the emotions himself. So she waits patiently, and walks through her greenhouse to find any other plants that need attention.
A full minute passes. Kory waits him out.
“Sorry,” he finally says. “I’m sorry. Really. And I need to tell him that, too. I know I have already, but he'll need more than that." Kory makes a small, satisfied hum. But there is more to it, and she waits for Dick to get to the root of the problem. "...Kory, I... I’m just calling to ask about Tim. Can you pass on a message to him? Tell him to come home for a few days?”
“Have you tried calling him yourself?”
“Three times.”
“And he isn’t picking up, because…?”
Dick is too smart to play dumb. He must at least have a guess. “Because I didn’t believe him that Bruce was alive. But like I said. I already apologized.”
“He’s been staying here because we did believe him.” Kory pauses. “Or, perhaps we didn’t. But we helped anyway. He is family to us, and he was hurting. Just as we’ve been hurting over the loss of our team members.” And she let it hang in the air for a moment -- a reminder that for much of Bruce’s apparent death, many of Tim’s closest friends were dead, too. He was surrounded by death from all sides, and the people who loved him most had made him feel unwelcome. So he had stayed in Jump City, with Kory. With Cassie and Jaime and Garfield and Rachel. And eventually, they had become as much of a family to him as Dick was. “I shouldn’t need to spell this out to you, love. You know it’s true.”
Dick swallowed. “Yeah. I know.”
“Then why do you need to pass on a message? If he is happier here, then why ask him to leave?”
Dick falls silent.
Again, Kory waits him out.
Then finally, Dick sighs. "Because I miss my little brother," he says. "I know it's selfish, but I want him to come home. We all miss him. And it’s not fair for you all to hog him -- he’s our family too.”
Kory smiles. Finally. “I’ll pass on the message. But only if you tell him that.”
Dick's tone immediately shifts. Relieved -- grateful. She can almost hear the smile in his voice. And that, she thinks, is always worth it. “Thank you. Really. I’ll make it up to you soon, I promise.”
As if. No, Kory knows her ex-everything too well for that. She is sure he’ll get distracted -- as sure as she is that he still loves her. She is sure that he will be hers again, but she knows he won’t find time for her until he is ‘ready’ -- whatever that phrase means to him. Likely not until they live in the same city again, and he has nothing tying him to the million responsibilities he’s taken on as Batman.
She is well aware that he is half-raising Damian, even now. He can’t just abandon the brother that is now more like a son.
“I know you will,” she lies. “But remember -- two weeks. I have a life to get back to. If you would like to be a part of it, you'd better hurry.”
“Two weeks,” Dick says, as though it’s another promise. “I’ll call you back ASAP. But I gotta go now. Gotham needs me.”
“It always does.”
With that, Kory ends the call and puts her phone in her pocket, next to her shears. Between the two bulky objects, her overalls are getting tight. She makes a mental note to expand the pockets too, when she expands the rest of the overalls.
She hates to adjust such a nice pair of overalls, but she can't imagine gardening in anything else. Even just for a few months.
Of course, Kory has already switched her uniform to something more modest. Bright purple with more cutouts than fabric does little to hide her muscles or golden skin. Normally, she was proud of her form and unashamed to show it. But if she didn’t want the papers to gossip, she'd needed to change. Her new suit is still purple, but it has a loose tank-top over the top two-thirds of her suit, and a heavy hem-line to keep it from flying up in combat. She still had fully bare legs, but for once, she isn’t flaunting her usually toned stomach.
Kory is already showing, if anyone looks close enough. But she has perhaps two weeks before even the least observant start to notice.
Once that happens, tabloids would pick it up, and then it would likely become national news. A pregnant superheroine was always an interest piece. Especially one as well-known as Kory.
She certainly hopes Dick Grayson would have his answer by then. Otherwise, he’d have to hear he was a father through the tabloids.
But, she reminds herself as she presses a hand to the swell of her stomach -- If he did, that would be his own fault.
--
“Tim,” Kory says, after she gets back to the living quarters of the tower. “Dick called.”
“I know. Let it keep ringing,” Tim says, still seated in front of the desktop in the entertainment room. Kory is half sure he isn’t using it for entertainment as much as information, but she won’t press. He seems as interested in education as he is detective-work. Always learning something. She hopes her little one will have the same thirst for knowledge. It seems an admirable trait.
“He called me,” she says, more pointedly. “He wants you to come home.”
That, at least, makes Tim look up. His face is a little pale, and still too thin, but even now, in harsh computer-screen lighting, he looks better than he has for most of this year. “Did he say why?”
“Because he misses his little brother and wants you to come home.”
For an instant, Tim looks like he is in shock -- the good kind. Then, his shoulders tense and he turns back to the screen in front of him. “That doesn’t necessarily mean me,” he says, pretending it’s an absent, meaningless comment. Oh, Tim, she thinks. “Human grammar lesson: There might be two different subject-objects in that sentence.”
“No, only you,” she said. “He wouldn’t miss Damian if Damian’s still home with him.”
Still, Tim bites his lip. Hesitates. “You think so?”
“He misses you.”
Tim ducks his head, smile not quite hidden by gravity. It makes Kory smile, too, and she walks forward to ruffle his hair. As if he was a son, and not her seventeen year old teammate who is ‘way too old’ for this. But Tim doesn’t coax her hand away for another moment. Kory takes it as an improvement.
Still, Tim is too smart for his own good. “He told you he misses you too, right?”
“Tim,” she says warningly. “He called about you.”
“I’m not saying it because I think I was the second option,” he says quickly. “I’m saying it because -- did you tell him?”
He glances down to her stomach, as if it was really a question what he was referring to.
“I told him he has two weeks to make up his mind about whether he wants to be with me. If he says yes, I’ll tell him about the baby. Otherwise, he’s going to say yes regardless, and I want him to have that choice.”
Tim lets out a low whistle. “You think he’s really going to get back to you?”
"I hope so." She pauses. "But it seems that ignoring one's phone is a bat-skill. So perhaps I ought to prepare for the worst."
As if on cue, Tim’s phone lights up. He doesn’t answer it quite yet. “...Do you think I should go back?”
“It won’t hurt,” she says. “Besides -- you spent all that time looking for Bruce. You deserve to spend time with him now that he’s back.”
With that, Tim nods. He can't help his smile as he finally, finally answers the phone. Kory leaves to give him some privacy, ducking into her usual room in the Tower. It is still decorated with plants and pink and purple -- the way she’d had it since she was a child. But now it has actual artifacts from her home world, instead of the nothing she’d initially brought.
She still feels blessed to know that the civil war has ended. That her people have peace, and freedom, and free elections. That her sister’s reign of terror has ended.
She also has a letter from her brother, opened but tucked back in the envelope, sitting on her dresser.
Like everything else, she has a timetable of two weeks to answer it.
The journey to Tamaran would be a long one. If her child was to become a legitimate heir to the Tamaranean throne, she would need to be a natural citizen. Which means that Kory would need to travel back to Tamaran to give birth. And for that to happen in time, she would need to leave within the month. Probably sooner. The journey would only be six weeks long, but Kory doesn't want to risk giving birth en route. If she does, her child would not be a citizen of either planet.
A small part of her doesn’t know if she wants her daughter to become a crowned heir of Tamaran.
But, if Dick does not want a family -- does not want her -- then she would leave and raise her daughter on Tamaran. It is peaceful enough now. She won't need to worry about her daughter getting involved in apocalypses on Earth, or superhero conflicts, or the many small-scale wars that still rage on this planet. A smarter, less selfish mother would have already packed her bags and flown to Tamaran.
But… if her lover does want her…
She would stay, for him.
That is why she needs his decision. And soon.
If he does not value her enough to call her back within a fortnight, then she would leave for Tamaran that very day.
It is not a happy thought. Kory catches herself frowning -- but she knows there is nothing she can do to force his decision. Instead, all she can do is make choices based on what she does know. And right now, she only knows she feels tired.
So she reaches over and grabs hold of the pillow next to her. It is the one Dick used to use, when he stayed the night -- but more importantly, it smells of lavender, and it calms her to hold it close. She hugs it against her chest, stomach pressing against it more than before. She falls asleep within minutes, and her sleep is blessedly dreamless.
--
It takes a total of five calls to finally, finally reach Tim. Fortunately for Dick, Kory had made good on her promise to talk to him. Almost immediately, it seemed -- Tim picked up not ten minutes after his conversation with Kory.
Dick can’t help but smile. He really doesn’t deserve her.
“I was hoping you’d pick up,” Dick says, forcing a little extra cheer into his voice. “Do you have a minute?”
“A few.” Tim sounds a little guarded, even now. It breaks Dick’s heart to know that he caused that tone. “I can’t believe you used Starfire to wear me down.”
“I can’t believe I had to,” Dick counters. “Normally, you answer when I call.”
Dick can almost see the guilt on his little brother’s face. “Well… I’ve been busy.”
Dick raises a brow. “And here I was thinking you were celebrating a victory against all odds.”
“It wouldn’t have been against all odds if you would have believed me from the start.”
And ah. That one stings. “I’m sorry,” he says with a wince. And he even means it. “I shouldn’t have said that. And I am sorry I didn’t believe you before. I was just focused on other things.”
Tim mutters something under his breath that Dick doesn’t catch. Dick doesn’t ask him to repeat it, and Tim doesn’t say it again. Instead, he takes a breath. “So. I can be in Gotham tomorrow, if you can book me a last minute ticket.”
Dick perks up immediately. “That soon?”
“Do you… not want me there?”
“No! I mean, yes. Of course I always want you here. I just thought I’d need to fight you on that. Tomorrow works great.” Dick pauses. “Will you be just visiting, or moving?”
“In what world could I pack up all my stuff in 24 hours?” Tim huffs through his nose. “Plus… I like being Robin. I like patrolling, and making a difference. There can’t be two of us in Gotham.”
Dick closes his eyes. Of course Tim would mention Damian. “Tim, it’s not like I took Robin away from you. You were in Jump City half the time as it is. Damian just needed someone to trust him. To believe in him.” Shit. Backtrack. Or else Tim might hang up on the spot. After all, Dick hadn't believed Tim. Not in the slightest. "I just mean -- he's from the League of Assassins, and Ra's. He needed someone to take a chance on him. To give him a chance to be a good guy.”
Tim is quiet for a long minute. Dick half worries Tim had hung up -- but he doesn’t hear dial tone, so he stays on the line.
Then, finally, “Like I said, I’ll be there tomorrow. See you, Dick.”
This time, Dick does hear dial tone. But at least it was after another yes. Dick counts it as a win.
He turns and leans against the wall in the kitchen, pocketing his mobile. Bruce would kill him for how badly he’d messed up with his brothers. But then, Bruce was going to have his work cut out for him with them, too. And it's not like Bruce has been calling Tim trying to get him to come home. Dick's still the only one in his family that does the emotional heavy-lifting. It's just that he's got to start doing better.
He'll relearn it, he's sure. It's just going to take some time.
But hey. At least tomorrow he’d get another chance to fix this.