Chapter Text
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” Nightwing asks from Neal’s balcony.
“I’m a grown man. I can stay angry at anyone in this family for as long as I want.”
He pours himself a glass of red wine.
“B is freaking out about your FBI agent knowing about Blackbird.”
“And that affects me how? Blackbird is a grown man and gave his permission.”
“Neal.”
“Nightwing,” he turns to stare at him. “Why are you here? Do you want to watch Disney movies and relive the good old days?”
“I’m here because I’m tired of this distance between us and I want to fix it.”
“Yeah, well, some things aren’t so easy to fix.”
“But Hood gets a second chance? Talk to me, Tom.”
It’s the use of his birth name that snaps Neal’s tenuous control over his temper.
“I didn’t trust Jason before! I sure as hell never trusted B! But I trusted you, Dick. I trusted you to have our backs. I trusted you to be there. Because no one ever gave a damn about either of us like you did. No one fucking cared, but you did. You made me think that you did. More importantly, he trusted you!”
“I never stopped caring.”
“You did the second Damian came into the picture! You did the moment you thought he was lost in grief and I was letting him have those delusions.”
“I was grieving too. And I had to be a parent. I apologize for how I handled it, but—”
A tightness winds its way around Neal’s throat. Tears pinprick at the corners of his eyes. He hates getting really, truly angry. He always has been an angry crier and he hates it so much.
“And we needed our brother to fucking listen to us! We needed you to give it a chance. After all that time, after all those years of ice cream and sleepovers and those Disney marathons, and getting involved in dozens of arguments between me and B, I thought you had our backs. I really did. But you just…you just disappointed me the most. I don’t give my trust easily, not like Tim. But you had it.”
He takes a shaky breath, “I don’t like Damian, but I understand having a responsibility. I just wanted you to listen. But you didn’t and it was just like our parents all over again. That hurt the most out of everything.”
A quietly stricken look passes over Dick’s face.
Neal turns his head away, walking past the older man to head to the shower.
“If you can fix that, then you would be a better magician than Zatanna."