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Dick had to get out.
That was the one thought driving him. He didn't think of anything else, didn't really feel capable of it. He fell back on instinct, fight or flight, and that instinct told him to run, to get out of there. He knew they were trying to help, somewhere in the back of his head he knew that, but he couldn't cope with it, either. He just had to get out.
He ran.
They'd find him eventually, and he knew it, but he wasn't useless at evasion. He only used the zeta tubes to get out of the Watchtower and after that, he didn't remember a lot, just the need to run and the knowledge that his survival skills had to be as instinctual as his fight or flight response because he didn't know how he'd gotten anywhere, just that he was there.
Alive.
“Babs, you think you can do a favor for me while I'm gone?”
Barbara lowered her book and frowned across the table at Dick, wondering when someone would start with the shushing because this was a library and because Dick always seemed to talk too loud in the library. She'd decided a long time ago it was on purpose, something to show he had flaws because he was in many other ways some kind of perfect golden child.
Or because he was using it as a way to distinguish Dick Grayson from Robin, but there were times when Barbara doubted her own conclusion about her friend having a secret life as part of Gotham's dynamic duo.
“Sure, Dick. What do you need?”
“I...” Dick lowered his head, muttering into his uniform. “I was wondering if you'd maybe take flowers to my parents' graves. I go once a week, usually—sometimes I don't make it and I go only once a month, but that's only if things are really bad—but I don't mean you have to do it. There's just some special occasions that... I won't be able to fly back from abroad just for them and—I should have asked Bruce—no, he's too busy and he might forget—I could ask Alfred but he's got so much to do and—”
“Calm down,” Barbara told him, setting her book to the side and reaching across the table for Dick's hand. “I don't mind. I'm guessing you want to make sure they have flowers on their birthdays, father's day, mother's day, and the day they died, right?”
Dick nodded. “Yeah. You're sure it's okay? It's not asking too much?”
Other than the fact that she really didn't understand why Dick was taking a trip abroad when he was so worried about everything here—he was making such a fuss that she was starting to think he didn't want to go at all. Well, that was what someone else would think, someone who hadn't suspected for years now that her very good friend was a costumed vigilante. Dick was about to go on a mission, he wouldn't be able to come back for a long time and he was trying to fix everything he could before he went. She understood it.
A part of her was terrified by it. Dick did seem to be convinced he was coming back, but he was prepared to be gone a full year, and that was way too long in her opinion. As much as she liked Jason—the brat was kind of adorable in a way—she didn't like the idea of Dick making sure Batman had a replacement Robin before he left.
That was too much like him not coming back.
And that she did not accept. Ever.
“No,” she said, remembering he'd asked her a question. “It's not too much, Dick. I'm happy to do it for you. You have to send me cards or something I can read to them when I go, though, because it's not me they want to hear talking.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, I can do that,” Dick said, and she wondered if all of those cards would be written tonight, long before he left.
He wasn't sure how he'd ended up at his parents' graves, but he was there. He didn't know how long it had taken him to realize that he was there, but he didn't think it mattered. He didn't want to run anymore.
He sank to his knees in front of the headstones, lowering his head.
“I used to ask Bruce—and Alfred—I asked Alfred, too—if he—they—thought that you'd be proud of me. And they always told me that yes, you would. That you'd be so proud of who I'd become. You'd love it. You'd hate it at the same time because it was dangerous, but you'd love it. And I'd always say you two weren't afraid of danger, but then the trapeze wasn't like being Robin. It wasn't catching bad guys and getting shot at and saving lives and being a hero and being beaten by Two-Face or facing the Joker. It wasn't this.”
Dick felt tears on his face, hot stinging painful ones, and his words were harder to get out, but he didn't stop. He wasn't sure if he could. Dick pulled at his hair. He knew he'd had no choice but to dye it back to its natural color—being undercover had meant changing his look from that of Robin and Dick Grayson, and it needed to be something that wouldn't fade, so he'd let them bleach it and dye it and he'd lived with it and contacts but he wanted his own look back, wanted something that wasn't as much of a betrayal as what he was now and even knowing that it was under the dye that made it black again was eating at him.
“I was supposed to catch monsters, not become one,” Dick heard himself say. “I didn't... I used to think I was afraid of losing Batman or losing Alfred or someone on the team. I thought I was afraid of becoming like Batman. I... I should have been afraid of something else—someone else—me. I didn't... I didn't even know I was capable of doing what I did. Bruce and I discussed stuff all the time, and I always knew there was one line I couldn't cross—I couldn't kill—but I knew I was doing stuff that would hurt people. If it wasn't my fist, it was a batarang or an explosion or some kind of gas. Batman went around scaring people to get them to talk. So did I. I just... I never had to torture them before, you know? We might have roughed them up and scared them, but we didn't torture anyone. We didn't.
“I did. While I was gone. I... I did.”
He wanted to cover his eyes or tear them out to avoid the images, but they weren't going anywhere. He knew that. He just didn't want to see what he'd done. Not again. “I told myself it was part of the mission, that I had to do it to get through with the mission and because if I didn't... I know they killed other kids, gave them accidents and left them for dead, but I wasn't really afraid of that for me, not even with the stuff he did. It was torture and be tortured, not or be tortured. Whether I did it or not didn't change what happened to me except for keeping them from killing me and making them think they could trust me so I could get close to the person behind all of it, but I knew... I knew I could get out. All I had to do was activate the emergency beacon, and I could have been pulled out. Rescued. Saved. Spared.
“I didn't call. I didn't call for help or rescue or anything. I thought I couldn't. I put the mission first. I knew I could handle it even when he was putting me through complicated routines with broken bones or expecting me to use the bars after chaining my arms over my head all night. I knew I could take it so I just did and then I did what I had to, I convinced them I was on their side... I convinced them I was a monster... because I was one.”
Glass shattered behind him, and Dick jerked, looking back and staring in choked, stunned disbelief at the person standing there. The broken vase. The flowers. He didn't know what day it was. Even now he couldn't remember or be sure. Maybe he wouldn't have come if he had.
“Babs? How...” Dick swallowed. “How long have you been there? How... how much did you hear?”
She seemed to be having the same trouble speaking that he was. “I... I'm not sure. Maybe from the beginning. Most of it, I guess.”
Dick shuddered, shaking his head. “I should go—”
“Don't you dare, Dick Grayson,” she said, catching him before he could even get to his feet. She had her arms around him and he trembled in her embrace. At least it wasn't like his coach's—Babs didn't feel anything like that guy, she was a lot softer and curvier and Dick might have had some normal teenage boy thoughts about that if he wasn't so far from normal right now. “I didn't break the glass because you horrified me and I can't stand you, so don't even start thinking that. I forgot I was holding it as I heard you talk and dropping it reminded me, but it was too late to stop it from falling.”
“Babs,” he tried to start again, but he didn't know what to say. “I... I should... I don't... I screwed up. I don't even know who I am anymore. I did things... Horrible things...”
She held tight onto him. “For your mission.”
“Don't say the ends justify the means. They don't. That's not how he—Oh, no. I told you—”
“You told your parents,” she corrected. “And I already knew. I've known almost from the beginning, Dick. You're my friend. I saw things. I'm a cop's daughter. I'm not stupid. Your absences added up to times when Robin was missing. You were always hurt more than made sense, and your excuses only fooled people who weren't willing to look closer. Plus, I heard Robin doing that same annoying word butchering you do.”
“Oh.”
“It never mattered,” she went on, combing her fingers through his hair, and he tried to remember the last time someone had done that to comfort him. His mother, maybe? He wasn't sure if Bruce would ever have done it while he was awake and Alfred was the same way. “Robin just seemed like a natural extension of who you are. You know what your biggest flaw is? This, right here.”
He felt her hand on his chest, right over where his heart should be. “I don't—”
“You care so much. You care about everyone. You'd save them all if you could. I don't believe you're a monster, and I never will. I know you can be stupid and there are times when I get mad—furious, even—at you, but you're still a good person. You know how I know that? Because a bad guy wouldn't even stop to question if he'd done right or hate himself for what he'd done. You do. You still know right and wrong and you crossed a line, but not the line and you do have to live with that, but you didn't do it lightly and you are going to fight your way back from this. That's also who you are.”
“I don't... I lost myself... I became someone else for the mission... I don't know... Can't go back. Not to Robin. Don't even know... Not sure... Maybe not even to... Not to...”
He buried his face in her shirt, feeling tired—exhausted—and everything was sore and he didn't want his eyes open anymore. He thought maybe she gave him permission or maybe he was dreaming it, but he didn't care because he didn't even want to fight passing out.
“Barbara.”
“I should be so angry with you right now,” she said. “I should hate you for the rest of my life for getting him into this, whatever the hell it was, but I can't. Because I know him. I know he would have wanted to do this, as twisted as that is.”
“I could have stopped him,” Bruce agreed, not bothering with the voice because it was obvious that Dick had either said too much or he'd been right about her knowing all along. Then again, Bruce wasn't sure he would have tolerated Batgirl if he hadn't been almost certain that she'd secretly working with his first Robin since the first time Dick had mentioned the idea of her to him.
Barbara snorted. “By locking him in a cyrogenic chamber and freezing him? That's about the only way you could have managed it. He'd have figured out a way to escape almost anything else. He's so stubborn. And you taught him too damn well.”
“I did,” Bruce agreed, regretting it and not for the first time. He went through this every time Dick got hurt. He'd almost lost it when the boys broke into Cadmus and so many times after that. Sending Dick out on missions was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but he trusted his son to see himself and the others through it safely. This shouldn't have been any different.
Except it was, they'd both known it, and Bruce had still let him go anyway.
“I am going to take him home now.”
“Bruce,” Barbara said, her eyes meeting his and the same resolve Bruce had always admired in her father in her voice. “Don't tell him that the ends justify the means, but don't you dare let him go on thinking he's a monster for doing what he did to survive and complete that mission.”
“Dick? A monster?” The idea was so foreign to Bruce's head that he actually said the words aloud. He'd prepared for the Justice League turning on him, had contingency plans for it, but his son? Never. Even with Scarecrow's fear toxins and Poison Ivy's pheromones, he'd never given any real thought to his son turning against him or going against the principles he'd installed in him.
“He thinks he is one,” Barbara said, her fingers in Dick's hair again. “Don't let him believe that. He'll listen to you. Your opinion still means the most to him. It always has.”
Bruce had his doubts about that after how Dick had run from him on the Watchtower, but he nodded. “You will still need to be around more. And not just because you need additional training.”
She nodded, and Bruce knelt down. Dick had always been on the small side, but lifting him into his arms now almost broke Bruce. How much weight had the boy lost? How close had he really been to losing his son?
Too close. Too damn close.
“Dick.”
He jerked and almost screamed when he felt Bruce's hand on his shoulder. He bit down on his lip, hard, willing himself to stop the reaction from going any further. He hated himself for that weakness, though everyone told him it was understandable under the circumstances. He hadn't wanted to tell anyone anything of what had gone on during his undercover mission, but he had blabbed half of it to Babs before he went back in front of the Justice League, so it wasn't like he could hide it. He couldn't even deny it. He didn't remember all he'd said, but it didn't matter. Anything about that mission was too much. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to think.
“You haven't left your room in days. That's not like you, even when you're injured or sick. You haven't asked about any of your friends, the team, the league, Barbara or Jason.” Bruce knelt down next to him. “Don't shut me out. I can't help you if you won't let me.”
“Like you let anyone help you.” Dick winced at his own words. “I... I'm sorry, Bruce. I...”
“Would it be easier if you spoke to someone else?” Bruce forced a smile. “I know I'm not the easiest person to talk to, and even if I was, it wasn't me that had the breakthrough with you before.”
Dick grimaced. “I'm not sure that was anything more than right place at the right time. Wrong place, wrong time. I... I didn't mean to tell Barbara any of that.”
“I know.”
Lowering his head, Dick pulled at the fabric of his jeans. They didn't have a lot of give, but he didn't care. He hadn't been allowed jeans on his undercover mission—Coach didn't approve of jeans for his acrobat—and being back in them made Dick feel more like himself. Not much, but some.
“I should have called it off. I should have asked for help months ago, but I thought... I thought I could handle it, that it was worth it for the mission—”
“Look at me,” Bruce said, lifting Dick's chin. “Listen to me. Losing you for the mission is never acceptable. Not to me. I know that is how some people see me, how I appear to the others, as some cold, unfeeling person who can always make the next chess move and who can see the lives of his colleagues and friends as nothing more than tools to be used, but you are my son. I will never be prepared to lose you, will never be able to accept that, and I swear I should have locked you in your room and never let you go. I should have spared you from this pain. All of it. I could have. I should have.”
“You couldn't have. I'd have gone without your approval. You wouldn't have been able to stop me. I'd have used a similar plan but with less preparation. It would have been worse.”
Bruce let out a breath. He knew what Dick said was true. They both did. “I still wish I hadn't agreed to this.”
“They were trying to make kids like me into weapons. What choice did we really have?” Dick asked. He shook his head as he did. He had tried to figure out other ways, even before he'd realized just how much trouble he really was in. “We needed to know who was behind it, and it wasn't any of the usual suspects or anyone we could get to another way. Even now I can't believe it was... It's just... He covered his tracks so well, they all did. I wouldn't have thought any of them could be a part of this.”
Bruce nodded. “I admit, I didn't see it, either. We're talking about a guy whose campaign I endorsed, a man I shook hands with and still missed the deception. My instincts are usually better, even with people who know how to keep their hands clean of their twisted activities.”
Dick shrugged. “He really did have the creep factor hidden. It was probably one of those political things. Like you know he's sleazy because of the business he's in, so you allow for that part to get past you, just a little. At least... I'm trying to tell myself that's what it was.”
Bruce pulled him into his arms, and Dick panicked, trying to shove him off, not wanting to be touched. He hated that, too, that the mission had twisted how it felt to be in his father's embrace. That was Coach's doing. He'd mixed his torment with some demented form of pride, still acting like a coach—a mentor, a father—would even as he'd hurt Dick. He'd smile and talk like he cared while he was breaking fingers or locking wrists into chains. He radiated a sick form of this is for your own good and it made Dick want to heave.
“Let go. Please.”
The difference between Bruce and Coach was that when Dick asked, Bruce did, and he didn't make Dick do something horrible just to get a few moments peace. Bruce sat back, watching him. “Dick?”
“I... He... I think the coach I got... I think he was the one that did the killing. You know, of the other kids?” Dick choked on that part, lowering his head again. “He was sick. Joker sick. He acted like a friend even while he... while tortured people.”
“While he tortured you.”
Dick nodded, putting his head in his knees. “Half the time he was like the gymnastics coach at school. You know him, right? He was a good guy. He is, I mean. And that was what was so hard about it. There were times when I could almost believe that guy wasn't... evil. Maybe that was a defense thing. Maybe I was doing it to cope with what was happening. Is that Stockholm syndrome?”
“Not quite,” Bruce said, but they both must have been thinking the same thing, that it was too damn close for anyone's good.
That wasn't even the worst of it. Dick swallowed down the nausea and crawled closer to his father, wanting comfort that only Bruce could give, no matter what his memories and that sick freak had done to twist that. “Bruce... What I did...”
“You made choices, Dick. Not all of them were right and not all of them were good, but you did what you thought you had to do,” Bruce said. He took Dick's hand, looking it over though those breaks had already healed. “I think I would have done what you did, under the circumstances. I wouldn't have called for help, would have seen it through. It doesn't make it right. It just makes us... who we are.”
Dick shook his head, pulling back his hand. “This whole thing has me so... messed up I don't know what's here or there. I was playing that role for so long I think it's become a part of me and it sickens me, but I don't know how to stop it. I don't want to see my friends. I don't want to see anyone. I don't... I don't want to risk being that person around them.”
“I feel that way sometimes. I was scared when I first brought you here. I didn't want to be Batman in front of you. I didn't want that darkness touching you. I wanted to protect you from all of it. I couldn't. I didn't. I... I let it be a part of you.”
“It's who we are,” Dick reminded him quietly. “Batman and Robin.”
“Yes.”
“Only... I know... I... I couldn't... Even if you hadn't taken Jason in and I hadn't helped train him and he wasn't good at being Robin... I can't go back to that, Bruce,” Dick said, looking up at his father and feeling tears stinging his eyes. He was so weak and he still hated it. “I can't be Robin. Robin is smiles and laughter and jokes and butchered English... Robin was innocent. I... I'm not.”
“If, and I stress the if, you decide you want to go back to... to work,” Bruce said, struggling a bit with his words, “because you don't have to and you shouldn't rush into it. You're still healing mentally and physically and you can take time for that. I want you to. Still, if you decide to do it again, we will find you something that... that represents who you were and who you are and the crucible you've survived. Because you have come out of the darkness again, Dick, even if you can't see that yet.”
Dick sighed and let his head rest against Bruce. “I'm so tired... Tired of all of it...”
“Just rest, then, son. Just rest.”
“How is he?”
“The League will get a progress report when I damn well feel like giving it to them,” Bruce snapped, and Clark folded his arms over his chest, not budging from where he stood blocking Bruce's path. “Don't make me get the kryptonite.”
“I won't if you'll answer Uncle Clark instead of Superman,” Clark said, earning a skeptical look. “I know I haven't been good with... Well, when Superboy came along, I messed that up more than once, but you know I've been working on that. Now that I've gotten to know him—I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through with Dick, but even if you think you don't want our help, Dick needs it.”
Bruce hated that the other man was right. He hated it more than he wanted to think about. “Dick doesn't want to see anyone right now.”
“Out of fear or out of guilt?”
“Guilt. He blames himself for carrying on with the mission, assumes everything he went through is his fault because he didn't call for a rescue, and hates himself for what he did to keep his cover.” Bruce shook his head. “Don't bother asking me what it was—he won't talk about it, not even with me. He may have said something in front of Barbara, but that just goes to show out of it he was. He didn't even realize she was there when he broke down in front of his parents' graves.”
“J'onn said he wasn't able to get into Dick's head—that the boy has higher walls than he did when he left here for the mission.”
Bruce shrugged. “I'm not surprised. He didn't want to do anything that would compromise the mission. He also had to build up more walls as he went along just to survive. The... It wasn't all physical. This... 'coach' of his tried to break his mind and will as well to bend him into the kind of killer they wanted. He didn't break, but I think he's afraid he bent too much.”
Clark frowned. “Do we have any idea how far he bent?”
“Leave Barbara alone,” Bruce said. “You're not going after her for answers, either.”
“I would have thought you'd be doing that.”
Bruce hesitated. “I think I might have, a few years ago, but I've learned things over the years, and if there was one thing that Dick and Jason have taught me, it's that no kid is alike. You can't treat them the same and expect them to respond like you want or think they should. Dick surprised me more often than not, and Jason... Well, I learned fast that if I treated him like I did Dick, I got a bad result. I could have lost two sons if I'd stayed on that path. It's harder than hell to stop it in the middle, but I will not lose either of them. Dick will find his way back from this, and I will help him. I have to help him without alienating Jason by making him feel that Dick is the only one who matters—he isn't, even if he has been my focus of late—and now that I've taken Barbara under my wing, I have a responsibility to watch out for her as well. She'll tell me what she thinks I need to know. She's not shy about that. I don't need to put her in a position where she feels she's betraying her friend to get answers that aren't as necessary as I want to believe they are.”
“They aren't?”
“What are the details of what Dick went through going to do? Make me so angry I want to kill everyone involved in that conspiracy? I'm already there. I don't need more fuel for a fire that's almost out of control as it is.”
“Good point.”
Bruce grunted. He didn't care how sound the logic was. It didn't help his son, and he didn't know how to fix that.
“I think you should bring the team by.”
“No.”
“Dick thinks he doesn't want that, but if he's worried about losing who he was, then what he needs is people who remind him of who he was. If nothing else, get Kid Flash over here. He's Dick's oldest friend, and Dick needs him.”
“I'll consider it,” Bruce said, still unwilling to take a step that would harm his son. “In the meantime, would you consider taking Jason somewhere... special? I know he doesn't have the same hero worship for you that Dick did when he was younger, but I don't want him seeing me like this, and I don't want him thinking Dick is the only one that matters. If I can give him something special without leaving Dick when he needs me...”
“Consider it done,” Clark said. “Where is the little guy?”
“Probably breaking another punching bag. It's all he's done since Dick got back.”
“Bruce,” Clark began. “Have you even started to address how Jason will feel about Dick being back? He must fear that he's going to lose Robin now—”
“He won't. Dick has already made it clear that he'll never be Robin again.”
Clark didn't say anything to that. There wasn't anything to say.