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Artemis died.
Dick brought her back for a mission, one mission, and she died.
She was killed by a former teammate. A former friend.
The world should have stopped. It should have shattered and broke into pieces and not kept spinning. That wasn't how life worked, though. Barbara already knew that. She had seen it enough as a cop's daughter, had experienced it herself both as a civilian and as Batgirl. Life moved on when it should have stopped, should have at least acknowledged what had happened, what they'd lost, but it didn't even so much as pause.
When Jason died, a part of all of them wanted to go with him, a part they couldn't get back and couldn't begin to replace. She wouldn't have thought that punk could become so essential to all of their lives, but Bruce and Dick were right when they said they were family. Jason was her brother. She'd lost him. It ripped a hole in her that took a long time to heal, and if she was bad, then Dick...
Dick was ten times worse.
He blamed himself. He hated himself. He'd been the one to talk Bruce into adopting Jason, into letting him be Robin, and if he hadn't, Dick insisted, Jason would still be alive. Dick after Jason died was an empty shell, almost the same void that he'd been when he came back from that undercover mission that forever altered him.
If they were honest about it, they were all watching, waiting for him to break. He'd fought his way back from the mission, fought back from losing Jason, but he'd had to fight. He hadn't been whelmed, hadn't been able to keep it all together. It was when he didn't break that she knew something was wrong.
She would have accused him of being too much like Bruce, of feeling nothing at all, but that was not and never would be Dick—it wasn't even Bruce, it was just what everyone thought Bruce was like. Dick cared too much. Dick should be completely and utterly overwhelmed.
Artemis was dead. Dick had pulled her out of retirement and gotten her killed.
So how was it Dick seemed like he didn't feel a thing?
No. Barbara didn't believe that for a second. He'd perfected an act for the others, for the team, and he used it more often than not when he was leading, but she knew him. She met him the night his parents died, before Bruce took him in. She was his best friend—she'd known he was Robin years before he admitted it to her. She had been the one he broke down in front of after that disastrous mission—he hadn't intended to, but he had—and she'd been there when Wally finally forced him out of the grotto and away from Jason's memorial. She knew his grief.
Dick wasn't grieving. He wasn't even holding the grief in, wasn't trying not to blame himself. He would have—should have, if he was acting even remotely like himself—but he was not.
That was why she stood outside his apartment in Blüdhaven in the middle of the night. That was why when he opened his door and frowned at her she was able to speak.
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”
And just like she knows him, he knows her, knows what she means by those words. He let her in, saying nothing. He wasn't broken and she wasn't broken but their relationship might just be.