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“You can hate me if you want,” Dick said, closing the door behind him. “Wally does.”
Barbara looked at him, and Dick wasn't sure if she thought he hadn't told Wally or if she thought he had. He should know by her expression, but all he could be sure of right now was that she was hurt and angry. Very angry.
“I knew you'd figure it out,” he admitted. “I... I think I wanted you to.”
Like before. Like when she heard him confess things to his parents he still hadn't told anyone else. Like when he'd hoped she'd known all along that he was Robin so that he didn't have to keep lying to his oldest friend.
She folded her arms over her chest. Her silence was finally broken by one terrible word, the one he wasn't sure how to answer. “Why?”
Dick shrugged, moving away from the door. He wanted to make an excuse, wanted to tell her they'd talk later, after he patrolled the city, but she'd never let him get away with that. Barbara had never let anything slide. When Kent Nelson had told Wally to find someone who wouldn't let him get away with anything, Dick had laughed—in part because he knew that person was Artemis and in part because Dick didn't have to go looking for anyone else—Barbara had always called things like they were between them.
With the one exception of never calling him on being Robin, but then Dick understood that. She'd chosen to pretend not to know rather than compromise his identity or Bruce's, just like Dick figured her father did the same with Batman.
“It was never supposed to be Kaldur, was it?”
Dick sighed. He did hate how well she knew him sometimes. “No, it wasn't.”
She came around to face him. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it was past time that we stopped getting played by the Light and got someone in there who could tell us what they were really doing. I was thinking I was tired of them always winning even when it seemed like we did. I was thinking they all needed to pay for using Joker to distract us and allowing him to kill Jason,” Dick said, balling up his fists. He was still angry about that, couldn't seem to stop. He hated it. He hated them.
“And so you figured you'd be the one to do it. Infiltrate the Light.”
He shrugged. “I've done it before. Not to the Light, but I did—”
“You almost got yourself killed,” Barbara said, shaking her head. “Are you insane? You know you barely came back from that mission.”
“Exactly! I could have used that if I needed to—I could have convinced them that I had another breakdown or that the programming that coach put me through was successful, just... delayed. Or something like that,” Dick shook his head. “It wouldn't necessarily have been needed—there are still people in the League and on the team that have no idea who I am besides Nightwing. I could do what I did before and no one would even have noticed—”
“Bullshit,” Barbara said. “We'd have known. I'd have known. I did know.”
He nodded. “Yes, you did. I didn't really know that I could keep it from you. A part of me didn't want to, but it wasn't—Kaldur ruined my plan and I've been playing damage control ever since.”
She put a hand to her head. “Why would Kaldur do that?”
“He argued the same thing you did—that the last time I did it, I came back so messed up that I should never try anything like that again. He said he had a better, more convincing reason to 'betray' the team and switch sides. His father and Tula. He was more convincing and he wasn't half-broken anyway. I told him to hell with that because I was already there. Why sacrifice someone else? Why make them do what I already did?”
“But Kaldur, being Kaldur, chose to sacrifice himself rather than put you through that again.”
“Yes.” Dick shook his head. “I'm still pissed about it, but once he'd started there was no going back. I either saw it through or I got him killed.”
She continued to watch him, arms still folded over her chest, body tense and ready to strike. “And Artemis?”
“After a while, it became clear that I had to involve someone else. I couldn't always find a way to go and meet Kaldur, and it wasn't just our schedules that were the issue, though it didn't help much. I had to enlist someone else. I chose people we both trusted but who were out of the game, ones who could disappear without people tracking them closely. Ones who might not seem suspicious if they ran into Kaldur by 'accident.' They might not have known that he turned.”
Barbara winced. “Dick—”
“It wasn't a great plan. I know that. Normally I have better ones. I told you—I had to do damage control after Kaldur chose to play the defector. Everything I had set up was for me to play that role. Not him.” Dick rubbed his head, sitting down and letting the fatigue win for a change.
“How does killing Artemis come into this?”
“The Light was too distrusting. Even Black Manta was suspicious. Kaldur was having a hard time getting away to make reports. He needed a way to pass messages to me, and he needed help. I could see the toll it was taking on him when we met—I asked Artemis to do it because Wally's ability was too obvious. Killing her would 'prove' Kaldur's loyalty once and for all for the Light or so I thought.” Dick lowered his head, cradling it in his hands. “It seemed ideal. No one would think it was Artemis because she was dead and Kaldur proved how far he was willing to go for the Light without hurting anyone.”
Barbara snorted. “You really think that no one got hurt when Artemis' death was faked?”
Dick sighed. “I just meant... He didn't really have to kill anyone. What happened with the Kroloteans was already eating at him. If I didn't get someone in there, it would fall apart. I had to do something, Babs. Artemis agreed. Wally didn't. He still doesn't. He thinks I've gone off the deep end. That I'm...”
“Just like Bruce?”
Dick snorted, not lifting his head. “Everyone says that like it should be an insult. I'm sorry, but I don't think it is. Bruce could handle all of this. He'd have had a better plan, he'd have a contingency for when Kaldur took my place, he'd have so many things that I didn't start to think of until I needed them, and he wouldn't have let Kaldur take his place. He'd have done it himself. He wouldn't be stuck back where he was four years ago...”
She knelt down next to him. “You are not where you were four years ago—”
“Yes, I am. I want out,” Dick said, clawing at his hair. “I want out of this, I want it to end and to run and be free of all of this mess. I want to give the burden to someone else. I want the pain to stop. I want to go back and have none of it happen. I want to save myself and I can't.”
“Dick—”
“I let them blow up Mount Justice. I let it happen,” Dick said. “Because it was the mission. It was necessary. Kaldur had intel to pass he couldn't get to me any other way, and the damned Light still didn't trust him. He had to do something big, and Mount Justice was the cost. It was just a place. Not lives. It was an acceptable loss. Hell, if I could torture people to preserve my cover, why would anyone think I would balk at letting the cave go? Not that I'd have needed it. Given what I did before, I would already have proven myself to the Light.”
Barbara let out a breath. “I want that vase back. I want to break something. I need—”
“There's a whole liquor cabinet over there if you want to wash the taste out of your mouth.”
“Damn it.”
He looked up at her. “Oh, give me some credit, will you? I have a lousy plan and am barely holding it together, but I am not leading the team while I'm drunk. It's just the most effective way I've found of washing out the taste of bile.”
She shook her head. “You know you're under the legal drinking age in this country. You shouldn't have any of that here. It's—”
“Illegal?” Dick snorted, almost falling over with laughter. “You've got to be kidding me. I'm a teenage vigilante who leads a team of kids on covert ops. What about my life is legal?”
She frowned, and he knew she couldn't come up with an answer any more than he could. He'd tried, but the thing was—he wasn't some kind of superhero. He did break the law. He did it almost daily. Technically, he should be arrested right alongside the people he put away.
“What about Conner and M'gann? Why didn't you include either of them in your plan?”
Dick shrugged, leaning his head back against the wall. “I thought about M'gann. A lot. Sometimes I wish she wasn't quite as... Well, her personality doesn't usually mesh with covert operations, and she has Gar to take care of. I didn't want to separate them. Plus... when she and Conner split, I found out he had... concerns.”
“Concerns?”
Dick nodded. “About the way she was using her mental abilities.”
“And you chose to ignore his concerns?”
“Not so much ignore as... exploit what M'gann was doing anyway,” Dick said, and Barbara reached for him. He ducked the attack, rolling back and getting to his feet again. “Hate me if you want, but I am sick and tired of being manipulated by the Light. If M'gann could get information we needed, I was willing to overlook how she got it.”
Barbara shook her head. “No. There's a thin enough line between what we do and what—”
“How is hanging someone off a building and threatening their life until they confess all that different from letting a telepath loose on someone's mind?” Dick asked. “I do know how to torture people. What Bruce and I do is not that different from that. Trust me, I know. It felt almost... natural, like a step further than what we did, nothing more. That was why it was so damn easy to lose myself before.”
“But M'gann's abilities could damage minds,” Barbara said. “Didn't you learn anything from that training scenario you did before I joined the team? You all sit there and shudder if it gets mentioned, so don't pretend that didn't affect you, either.”
“It did.” Dick looked away. “I... I learned how much I hated the idea of being Batman, of making his kinds of decisions... Now look at me. I'm doing the same damn thing, the thing I didn't want to do... Sacrificing friends and family to the mission. Putting it first. I... What's the point in saving the world if you lose everything in the process?”
“I don't know,” Barbara admitted. She reached for him, and this time he didn't pull away even though she could change her mind and decide to hurt him. “You haven't lost me. Yet.”
“You want to know why I didn't tell you.”
“Yes.”
“If you'd known the original plan, you'd have tried to stop me,” he began. She gave him a look. “No, admit it, Babs. You would never have let me do it. You were there the last time, more than anyone else besides Bruce. Neither of you would have let me do what I was planning on doing just like Kaldur didn't.”
She considered that. “Maybe I would have stopped you. Maybe I would have insisted on being with you. You don't know what I would have done because you didn't give me a choice. And that doesn't explain why you didn't tell me after Kaldur changed your plans.”
“I was a little busy trying to fix things.”
“I could have helped.”
“I didn't even tell Bruce.”
“You really are an idiot.”
“That's not anything you didn't know before,” Dick told her. He closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall. “Damn it. I was supposed to be planning the mission to get everyone back. I haven't really started and—”
“Let me help.”
He frowned. “Why would you want to do that? I thought you'd be just as pissed at me as Wally is and if anyone else knew, they'd be angry. Even if this works, people are going to hate me for a very long time, and it probably won't even work.”
“I agree. It won't work,” she said and he sighed. “It won't work if you keep pushing everyone away and keeping things from them. It won't work if you try and control all the variables yourself—you can't. Even Bruce couldn't. You can be everywhere, and you know we all adapt in the field anyway. Your problem is that this time you're not in it. You can't make decisions for Kaldur or Artemis or anyone else. You're not there, so you can't stop or change what's happening. On top of all of that, you're exhausted and not thinking straight. You need to back off and let someone else handle it for a change.”
“We are way too short-handed—”
“I am making the plan to get our friends back. End of discussion.”