Archive of Our Own

He feels like he’s about to pass out, every breath a heave of his chest and a reminder of the foreign object sticking out of it. The small silver metal box, once cold but now warm from his own body heat. It’s heavier than it looks, the weight pulling at his skin uncomfortably. Dick swallows against his dry throat, slapping a hand out against the wall as he makes it through the door of Wayne Manor. His memory is coming in blurs, pieces of a fuzzy puzzle he can’t quite seem to assemble. He remembers flashes. A phone call, a pool of freezing water the colour of seaweed. A green far too potent to be healthy. He remembers a sharp pain then nothing until he could feel the press of swimming pool tiles against his bare back, a box pressing against his heart.

Dick doesn’t remember fumbling with his clothes, managing to button up two buttons on his shirt before giving up with the rest. He doesn’t remember the cab ride to the Manor or even paying for it but he knows he must have. A glance down at his shirt makes him dizzy, his vision swirling in and out of focus as he pushes himself forward. He needs to find the others, he needs to find the strength to give a little more.

His shirt is plastered to his chest, that small box outlined against the fabric like an ominous beacon where his heart rests underneath skin and bone and blood. The material is soaked through with his blood now, his chest feels slick under his shirt where the blood that is meant to be inside his body is trailing down it, oozing sluggishly from the line where skin meets metal.

He almost falls, catching himself at the last second to keep to his feet. Dick hears the sound of something crashing onto the floor but it’s echoey and far away despite the fact he knows he caused it. He feels glass crunch under his feet and presses forward, letting out a grunt of pain at the way the move pulls against the gift Jason left in his body.

It was a mistake to go to him, to trust him. Dick has often thought handling things alone is the best way to protect the team but now he knows he messed up. Jason was waiting for him, playing up the lost little boy act to play on Dick’s protective nurturing nature. A lesson he learnt from Bruce no doubt, to identify weakness in your opponent and exploit it.

Dick should have fucking seen it coming.

But how could he refuse Jason’s plea for help, how could he turn away a boy he’s already failed more times than he can count. A boy he thought to be dead only days ago. Jason knew he wouldn’t be able to, he knew Dick would come. That he’d want to save him. It was almost too easy, Dick thinks, Bruce would be disappointed that he fell for it.

But Bruce was wrong about a lot of things, Dick is realising, and he wasn’t about to let Jason turn his own pain into a weapon for war like Bruce trained him.

Perhaps it was always going to come down to this. Two sons of The Dark Knight, two legacies born of bloodshed and grief. Because that’s what they are, that’s what Bruce seeks out in the people he surrounds himself with. Dick and Jason are circling the same sun, getting closer and closer like they don’t know that same sun will burn them alive.

Dick makes it to the entrance of the batcave, doubling over at the top of the stairs, leaving a bloody handprint against the wood of the clock. He wants to call out, he wants to slump down the wall and let Jason win.

But he didn’t come this far to let go now.

He presses his shoulder against the wall as he descends the stairs, using the solid surface as a brace so he doesn’t collapse. He feels sweaty and sticky, his eyes fluttering closed for longer stretches of time each time he blinks.

Just a little further.

He can hear the murmurs of voices now, his team, his family. The same family Jason was once a part of. Dick doesn’t know what Jason has done to him, why he’s even still alive, but he knows it can’t be good. The blood, the metal box. This is another game, another form of torture in Red Hood’s plan.

Dick wonders if Jason is really gone, not in the way he thought when there was a body and a crowbar, but in a different way. One just as painful and devastating. He wonders whether there’s no Jason left to save. Or worse, if there is a Jason still in there that realises what he’s done with horror and guilt. Dick doesn’t know if Jason will ever be able to come back from that.

Gotham (and Bruce) has claimed another broken soul, another lost boy. Only this time, that boy let the darkness swallow him whole rather than fight against it.

“Where the hell is Dick?” It’s Kory’s voice that grounds him as he hits the bottom step, the dim lights in the batcave guiding him forward.

“Here.” Dick’s voice is gravel, a scrap against sandpaper in his throat, “I’m here.”

He tries to focus on their faces. Dawn and Hank standing to one side, clustered together. Conner sitting at the console, clearly trying to scan for him. Gar, eyes wide and mouth agape as he takes Dick in.

Kory takes a blind step towards him, her eyes glistening with something close to dread. She knows something is wrong, she can see it.

Dick meets her gaze as he stumbles, no energy left to save himself this time, his knees crumple against the hard floor of the batcave and send sharp jolts of pain up his legs. He barely registers it, his body going with the momentum and carrying him forward, face-first.

But Kory is there, a blur in the corner of his eye before he feels her arms around him, taking his weight, trying to support him.

Her hand presses over his shirt and he knows she feels the blood, knows if she pulls her palm away it will be red and sticky.

He can smell her, a light scent that brings him comfort, something like vanilla and coffee. He lets his eyes close for a moment, lets her scent envelope him and pretends he isn’t bleeding against her hand because Jason set a trap and he was dumb enough to walk into it.

“Dick?” Kory’s voice is in his ear, urgent and fierce, “What happened?”

“I found Jason.” Is all he manages to utter.

She’s already tugging at his shirt, undoing the two buttons he managed to do up earlier. Dick moves to help her, one hand clumsily tugging his shirt to one side, revealing the square metal box protruding from the left side of his chest.

“What the fuck is that?” Hank demands as everyone surges around them, rushing over when they first saw him fall.

Dick shakes his head, trying to clear his mind of the foggy looming around him but it’s Gar that answers, his voice shaky and younger than Dick has ever heard it, “Is that a bomb?”

Something in him clicks, a feral rage, a scared panic. A bomb. Jason turned him into a walking bomb, and he came back to them, he brought an explosive device to his family like a damn suicide bomber. How much time does he have left? How big is the blast radius? He needs to move; he needs to get as far away from them as possible before it denotes.

Was this Jason’s plan? Use one Titan to take out the rest like dominoes falling in a neat little line.

Dick struggles, tries to push Kory away, tries to get to his feet. What if he only has minutes, what if it’s seconds. What if he kills them all?

“Dick, stop!” Kory orders as she slips her head under his arm. Gar comes over and does the same with his other side, hauling Dick to his feet despite his feeble attempts to shake them off. He doesn’t have the strength to do it, he can’t even manage to utter a word in his defence. He tries not to scream as they drag him over to the medical suite, trying to be as gentle as possible as they settle him against the bed.

“Kory…” He wheezes out like he’s swallowing broken glass, “Go.”

She ignores him, her eyes darting to Conner hovering next to her, “Can you scan it, tell us what we’re looking at?”

Conner nods and Dick sees his eyes flash a cosmic blue as he taps into his x-ray vision, unravelling the mysteries of the box in Dick’s chest with a single clinical focus. Dick lets his head fall back against the bed, tries to focus on Kory’s hand wiping a cloth down his chest to mop up the blood. Gar is standing with Dawn and Hank on the other side of the bed and Dick wants to reach out to him, to reassure him or tell him to run, he isn’t sure which.

Jason gave into his worst fears when he became Red Hood and now, he’s making sure Dick does the same.

“It’s definitely a bomb.” Conner confirms, hands already flying across a piece of paper to draw out the mechanics for everyone. Dick feels his heart skip a beat, feels dread pool into his gut like dark ink seeping onto a page, “It’s attached to the heart, there are these sensors which means if we try to take it out then it’s going to denote.”

Dick squeezes his eyes shut, blinding reaching for Kory’s hand with shaky, bloody fingers. Only seconds ago, he wanted her to leave but now he selfish needs to hold onto her. He needs something to keep him from drowning. Kory’s fingers curl around his, warm and sure despite the fact she never takes her eyes off Conner’s diagram.

So, this was Jason’s revenge. His payback for everything he blames Dick for. A bomb in his chest, nestled right against his heart.

Such destruction embedded in such a delicate muscle. The thing that keeps him alive, keeps blood flowing and his body moving is now attached to the very thing threatening to take it all away.

Conner moves forward, fingers brushing Dick’s chest as he pulls off the top casing of the bomb, revealing a mess of wires and a countdown underneath. Dick looks down at the numbers, “It’s counting down his heartbeats.” Conner explains grimly, avoiding Dick’s gaze, “Not in seconds or minutes.”

Dick tries to tune him out, focusing on the bomb stuck to his body, even though he’s looking at it upside down he feels something pulling at the corner of his mind. Something important. Something he needs to remember.

Kory squeezes his fingers, “His heartbeat? What kind of bomb functions like that? How did Jason even find it?”

“The average resting heartrate is about 80 beats per minute.” Dawn tells them softly, “Which gives Dick… four hours.”

“It’s WayneTech.” Dick cuts her off, “That’s how Jason knew about it. I’ve seen blueprints in Bruce’s files for security tech.”

Conner is already moving, heading back over to the computer to search through the files, to find the schematics of the bomb.

“What does Jason even want?” Gar asks, his voice frantic. Whereas Conner avoided looking at Dick, Gar doesn’t seem to be able to stop as his eyes stray down to the bomb while he talks, “He can’t actually want Dick to die, right?”

Dick swallows thickly, tries to hoist himself up but fails miserably. He thinks that’s exactly what Jason wants, he thinks that’s what this whole thing has been about. Two former Robins at war, if Bruce could see them both now.

“He wants me.” Dick tells the boy, “He blames me for everything that went down in San Francisco. For Bruce. For Robin. I don’t think we can reason with him anymore.”

And he hates that he knows it’s true. He hates that Jason drew this line, crossed this line and Dick can’t do a damn thing to change it. There’s a bomb attached to his heart and every breath is counting down his life span. He has less than four hours to live and the truth is Jason has already won this war. He won it before Dick even started playing.

By the end of the day Gotham will claim another Robin, only this time there won’t be any miracle resurrection.

“I say we find Jason; we force him to get this thing out.” Hank cuts in, “He must have a way.”

He’s gearing up for a fight, Dick knows, ready to kill Jason if that’s the price it takes to save Dick. Trading lives, one for another. Dick isn’t sure it will do any good.

“It’s a prototype.” Conner calls out, confirming Dick’s suspicious, “That one in Dick’s chest is the only one in existence. There are no plans attached for a deactivator.”

Of course not, Bruce never imagined his tech, or his weapons being used against the good guys. Being used against Dick. It was probably why Jason picked this particular method, getting Dick’s own past to do the job for him.

Kory throws both her hands up, letting go of his in the process. She lets out a growl of frustration, “I’ll turn him to ash.” She warns them.

“He deserves it.” Hank is just as angry, egging her on to fuel his own rage.

Dick watches them, ready to burn the city down, to burn down a boy they once called family for him. He feels sick, he feels cold, he feels desperate.

He shakes his head, grabs Kory’s hand again despite the pain it sends through his chest at the action, “Kory, not for me.” He pleads softly, “Don’t turn into this because of me.”

This isn’t some random murderer. This is Jason. This is something dark she wouldn’t be able to come back from and he doesn’t want that for her. He doesn’t want to be the reason for it. Especially if it doesn’t help in the end. If he still dies.

“Where I come from if you come after family, we show no mercy.” Her eyes are burning with defiance, with sadness, with pain. Dick rubs his thumb over her knuckles, a soft gesture from a living bomb, and tries to convey everything inside him in that moment. The fear for her, the fact he doesn’t want her to end up in a bed next to him with her own countdown, the fact he doesn’t want her to do something she can’t erase.

“Kory…”

She shakes her head, her voice soft and quiet, “You have less than four hours, Dick.”

She doesn’t say the rest of the sentence. She doesn’t need to. The bomb in his chest is enough.

“Killing Jason won’t change that.” He reminds her.

Everyone else, everything else fades into the background then. There’s just him and her, a million things between them they don’t say. Her eyes are luminous in the dim lights of the batcave, the sorrow in them hits him like a physical blow.

This is the moment Kory allows herself to realise the one simple fact she’s been putting off since she saw the bomb in his chest. Dick’s dying and there’s nothing she can do about it.

He wants to tell her it’s okay, he wants to hold her and promise her they’ll figure it out together. But the truth is they don’t have enough time, they never seem to have enough time.

Maybe they’ve just been wasting too much of it.

He watches the shift in her, the way she squares her shoulders before she lets go of his hand, he’s watching her prepare for battle. If not to kill Jason, then to save him. It makes his chest ache again, making him look down at the countdown on his chest to watch the numbers flicker. She looks more like a Queen in that moment than he’s ever seen her, ready to fight a war for him.

“Well, I’m not sitting around to watch you die either.” She tells him, firm and regal, “Hank, Dawn, try and track down Jason. Start at his storage unit and see what you find. We need him alive.” They both nod, sparing one glance at Dick before they set off, they need to get moving, time is running out. Dick wants to admire the way Kory assumes command of their team when he’s out of action, the way she leads with a confidence and a grace he’s never had. “Conner, can you build a deactivator using Wayne blueprints? Use the bomb schematics and reverse engineer it?”

Conner nods, “I can try.”

Dick doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t tell them how small the chances of any of this working actually are. He doesn’t tell them he’s sorry he messed up. He doesn’t tell them he’s sorry he brought them here.

Gar shuffles forward, eyes still on Dick’s chest, “What about us?”

“We buy Dick as much time as possible.” Kory replies, “You’re good with medical stuff, right? The Chief taught you the basics. Is there any kind of drug we can use to slow his heartrate down?”

The boy thinks for a moment, eyes widening, “Yeah, hold on.” He’s already moving, rushing to the cabinet Bruce keeps vials he gets from the hospital to find the one he wants.

Dick watches him go, the line of Gar’s shoulders, the panic in his movements.

“We’ve got you, Grayson.” Kory tells him, drawing his attention back to her.

Dick knows that they always do.

He just isn’t sure it’s going to be enough this time.

He isn’t sure there isn’t going to be another coffin in the family plot before the day is over.

/

They move him up to his room so Conner can work in peace. Gar stays with him to help, the need to feel useful and busy is one Dick understands well. He doesn’t get that option though, attached to a heart monitor and an IV line in the back of his hand to deliver a drug into his system to slow his heartrate down. Dick’s only job is to sit there and try not to look at the numbers counting down in his chest.

His only job is to wait to die.

Kory fusses around him, arranging his blankets and settling more pillows against his back. She wants to be out looking for Jason, he knows, she wants to be tearing Gotham apart to save him. Instead, she’s playing nurse as she pretends she isn’t checking his heartrate feed every few seconds.

“How are you feeling?” Kory asks, eyes darting to the box on his chest, she’s playing with her fingers as she does it.

Dick closes his eyes and lets out a sigh, “Sluggish.” He decides, “Slow.”

“It’s the drugs.” She replies softly, “Gar said that might happen.”

He knows that but he still hates it. He isn’t in pain, he just feels heavy, and Dick isn’t sure whether that’s another side effect of the IV line or whether that’s just him. He swallows thickly and shifts a little against his pillows, feeling the softness of them against his bare back.

Kory watches him, “Let me get you another one.”

“I’m fine.”

She’s already shaking out a stray pillow she collected from the bottom of his bed, puffing it up before placing a hand on his shoulder to move him forward, slipping the pillow behind his head. Dick lets her do it despite the fact she’s already given him about five other pillows before this one. She needs this, he knows, this sense of purpose, of control when everything else is sliding away from her.

“Better?” She asks as he settles back against the pillows again, feeling them mould against him.

Dick smiles, “Much.”

It’s weird between them, the air awkward and melancholy and he hates it. He has less than four hours left and they are still wasting time, dancing around the big conversations because avoiding them is safer territory.

He wants to reach out and grab her hand again, he wants to make her stop and look at him. He wants her to slow down, to breathe. But Kory can’t seem to do any of that, and he knows this is her way of keeping it together, stopping herself from shattering until the crisis is over.

Dick isn’t sure it’s going to work this time.

“Kory…” He watches as her eyes go back to the monitor, her fingers tugging his blankets straight, “We need to talk about the team.”

Her head whips round to face him and Dick doesn’t miss the way her eyes linger on his chest, on the bomb before she speaks, “No, we don’t.”

But they do. Because there is a bomb in his chest, and they don’t have a deactivator and in less than four hours he’ll become shrapnel made of blood and bone.

They need to talk about a lot of things.

“They need a leader. They need you.” Dick presses forward despite her protest, watching the numbers flicker down against his chest.

“They have you.” Kory snaps, “We have you. I’m not having this conversation with you, Dick. I’m not.”

Her voice strikes him, the desperate edge to it, the despair looming behind every word. She’s closer to the edge that he realised, clinging onto it by the tip of her fingers. His sun goddess, closer to drowning in the darkness than he’s ever seen her. He wonders how much of this has to do with him, how much of this is an undercurrent of something else, something he’s clearly missed. Something she’s been hiding from him.

He sighs, lets that conversation go. He won’t be the thing to push her over that cliff, he doesn’t want to be the one to cause her pain.

Dick forces down the knowledge that his death might just do that anyway.

“We never should have come here.” Dick tells her softly, “We should have stayed in San Francisco.”

Her shoulders lose their tension, this is a safer topic, one she doesn’t fear, “I really do hate it here.” Kory replies, trying to keep it light and playful.

The walls are crumbling around them, the foundations are cracking, and the sky is ripping open until the stars fall out and she’s still trying to pretend it’s going to be fine. Dick doesn’t know whether to be impressed or worried about her denial, about her belief in a miracle. Because that’s what it’s going to take, he knows, a miracle. Gotham isn’t in the business of miracles; it’s better suited for nightmares.

But if she wants light and playful then he’ll give it to her. There’s not a lot he can give her now, not with only four hours to go and a heart attached to a bomb. But if this is what she wants from him then he’ll play along, he can’t think of a better way to spend this countdown than giving Kory whatever she needs from him.

“Getting killed with Bruce’s own tech.” Dick lets out a huff of a humourless laugh, “There’s got to be something poetic about that. I always knew Gotham would kill me.”

He knows he said the wrong thing when Kory’s eyes flash like she wants to burn him from the inside out. His impending death is not to be joked about, that much is clear.

“Fight, goddammit.” Kory’s voice is hard as steel, the words an explosion of colour against a grey backdrop. She’s angry, underneath the sadness and the pain she’s a volcano about to erupt, “Stop acting like you’ve already given up.”

Dick’s pretty sure if he was on his feet without a bomb in his chest she’d hit him, the waves coming off her burn hot and bright like a forest fire devouring everything in her wake.

“Fight how?” Dick retorts, “I’m stuck playing patient because anything else might speed up my heartrate. What do you want me to do? Kill Jason? Be more like Bruce and swing a crowbar around Gotham to get some justice?”

Kory scoffs, “If it was me with that bomb, or Rachel, or Gar, you would rip apart anyone who stood in your way to save us. You’d fight to the death and probably find a way to fight after it as well. You, Dick Grayson, would not waste time throwing a pity party like you’re already at your own wake.”

She’s pure rage, a palpable thing that is so much bigger than her body, than her grief, her helplessness. She’s wild and untameable and in that moment, Dick understands that she wants this fight with him. She wants him to fight back, to get angry, to yell. She wants him to react, to do something more than this passiveness he’s been displaying since the batcave.

And she’s right, if it was any one of them he wouldn’t hesitate to go to war. To kill Jason, to hunt him down and exhaust every possibility to ensure their survival. But he can’t seem to do that for himself.

Maybe because deep down Dick doesn’t think he deserves to be saved. Jason is right to blame him, for some of this mess at least, he didn’t handle things well in San Francisco. He should have done better, went after Jason when he left. Stopped the boy from going back to Gotham when Dick knows what Gotham is, what Gotham does.

His eyes meet Kory’s, flaming green and impossibly beautiful and he shrinks in on himself, lets everything deflate inside him like a popped balloon, “I’m sorry.” He utters, the words hanging in the space between them.

Her anger melts away as well, those eyes no longer blazing with rage but sparkling with a sadness Dick feels like a physical force burrowing beneath his skin.

“Fuck.” She breathes out in a rush, “I just can’t…”

“I know.” He nods, reaching out a hand for her to take, Kory does, curling her fingers around his as she leans against the side of his bed, “I know.”

There’s so much to say, so little time to say it, the world turns to ash around them and yet they don’t choke. Not yet. Dick doesn’t think Gotham grants miracles, but he does think that if Gotham bent to anyone’s will then it would be hers. This Queen of starfire and kindness.

Miracles must exist because Kory is with him, holding his hand as everything implodes around them.

If that’s not a miracle than Dick isn’t sure what else to call it.

“Just fight.” Kory asks him, begs him, “For me.” She leans in closer, raising her free hand to brush his hair away from his forehead. It’s such a tender move and it makes him want to shy away from her. How can she touch him like this when he’s walking destruction and she’s the sun reincarnated? Dick forces himself to open up rather than shut down, lifting his free hand to grab her wrist and turning his head to press a soft kiss against her palm before releasing her.

Dick nods, “Okay.” He agrees with a squeeze of her hand, “But promise me, if we can’t fix this then you will take the kids and you will leave before I… Before it happens. You and Conner might be able to withstand the blast, but Gar won’t, and I don’t want any of you to have to see that.”

She nods with tears in her eyes, “Okay.”

It’s one of the hardest conversations they’ve had to have, to make the promise to walk away from each other if nothing can be done. She doesn’t want to agree, Dick can feel the fire in her eyes return but she does for him. For those kids.

It’s killing her like she’s made of her own bomb, but she agrees anyway.

Dick wishes they had more time.

He wishes he could tell her everything he feels when he looks at her, the way he burns for her with a single glance, a coy smile. The way his skin ignites and his heart flips at the sound of her voice or the brush of her hand.

He wishes he could tell her he thinks he might love her.

“I should go see how Gar and Conner are getting on.” She tells him, letting go of his hand and brushing down her skirt. She needs to retreat, he knows, he can read it in her eyes. This is her surrender not his and she needs to deal with the aftermath in private.

Dick nods, lets her have this, “Can you pass me the iPad before you go?”

Kory frowns but moves to get it from the dresser and bring it back over to him, “Going to play solitaire to pass the time?”

He wants to lie to her, to spare her from the reminder of what they are facing, what they might lose but he can’t do that when he’s hooked up to machines and his heart is wired to an explosive, “I want to record something for Rachel. Just in case.”

He doesn’t say it’s a goodbye message but they both know it is. It kills Dick that she isn’t here, that he can’t hear her voice one last time, he can’t hold her in his arms for another precious minute. Maybe it’s a kindness that she can’t see him like that, that she doesn’t have to watch the moment…

“We still have time. We’ll figure it out.” She tells him although Dick knows she’s having trouble believing it despite her order for him to fight.

“I just want to be prepared.” Dick replies, letting the iPad rest in his lap.

He has so much to say, not just to Kory but to Rachel, to Gar and he needs to use the time he has to say it. There’s so much he wants them to know, so much he’s never said, and Dick needs to say it before it’s too late.

This is him fighting, it’s him trying to give them something after he’s gone. He knows what it is to lose a parent without a chance to say goodbye and he doesn’t want that for his kids.

The countdown in his chest clicks down as Kory leaves and Dick is left with silence, another ghost in this house, in this city, another lost soul. His heart beats down his life span and he tries to figure out how to say goodbye to the people he loves.

/

Kory is a hurricane as she makes her way into the batcave to check on Conner and Gar, she’s walking on autopilot, has been since she left Dick’s room. Dick might be the one with the bomb in his chest but she feels like she’s the one imploding.

Her heart is too heavy in her chest, her mind too loud in her head.

Dick’s upstairs recording a message for Rachel in case they can’t fix this, and all Kory can think is that isn’t not good enough. Rachel needs to be here; it will kill her to know Dick is gone and she didn’t get to see him one last time. A message will not be enough to pacify Rachel’s grief, nor Kory’s guilt.

Because Dick can’t die.

He can’t.

She sees her world in muted tones of grey right now, has ever since Dick came home with a bomb attached to his heart, but whenever she thinks about a world without Dick Grayson in it those muted grey tones turn black, as if they turn to charcoal at the mere thought.

Kory thinks about his smile instead, his laugh, those conversations they shared in the tower when the kids slept. Those nights they shared on the road trying to keep Rachel safe and figure out who they wanted to be. Those memories fill the grey tones with explosions of vivid colour. Warm rich blues, passionate reds. Kory clings to them because if she doesn’t, she’ll crumble.

“How’s it going?” She asks as she walks over to the boys. Conner’s hands are a blur at work as he tries combination after combination for a 100% success rate.

It’s Gar that answers her, “34%, it’s not even close.”

“There’s thousands of combinations.” Conner cuts in, “It will take hours to try them all.”

“Dick doesn’t have that many left.” Kory bites out then instantly feels guilty, “You’re doing a good job, Conner. Thank you.”

Her mind wanders up a few floors, to Dick’s bedroom and the way he looked at her. Like he had so much to say, like he wanted to say goodbye to her. Kory shakes her head, she can’t say goodbye to him, she doesn’t know how. Somewhere along the line, Dick became someone she couldn’t lose. Someone she can’t even think about functioning without.

“How is he?” Gar asks and Kory knows part of the reason Gar is holed up down here with Conner is because he doesn’t know how to look at Dick when it might be the last time. He’s scared, she knows, she is too. But Gar is just a kid faced with the idea of losing his dad.

None of this is right.

“Stubborn.” She responds, moving over to the computer to tap away at the keys, “We still have time.”

Gar nods, his eyes watching as she types in Themyscira into the computer, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find a way to contact Rachel.” The answer is obvious but to say it out loud makes the situation seem all the more doomed. As if she doesn’t believe for a second they can save Dick and is bringing Rachel back to say her goodbyes to the father she loves.

“There is no way to contact Themyscira. It’s completely isolated.” Gar points out.

Kory knows that she just doesn’t buy it, “I don’t believe for one second Bruce doesn’t have a way to get in contact with Diana, even if she’s on the Themyscira. Justice League perks and all that.”

Conner looks up from his work, “I could go and get her. With my superspeed I could be there and back in an hour.”

Kory sighs, “You’d never be able to find it and even if you could, they don’t allow men on the island. Besides, I need you figuring out the deactivator. We need to get that thing off him.”

It’s Gar that moves, his hand resting over hers on the keys and stilling her movements, “Kory, if we lose him…”

She shrugs him off, goes back to tapping at the keys angrily, “We’re not going to lose him.”

They’ve lost too much already. Donna, Jason. She’s so sick of losing people but if they lose Dick, if she loses him?

Kory doesn’t think she can survive that.

Dick has always been there for her, since they met, he’s given her whatever she needed. Time, space, love, understanding, support. Whatever she needs from him. Even now, while he’s dying, he’s still playing her game. Letting her be angry, giving her the fight she wants from him.

Because that’s how Dick is, that’s what he does.

He gives and gives and gives until he’s dry, until he’s empty and hollow.

Kory refuses to contemplate a world without Dick Grayson in it. A world where they don’t have time to find their way back to each other.

Later, one dark night when she can’t sleep, Kory will question why they wasted so much time. Why they couldn’t see what was staring right in front of them before it was too late. But that thought isn’t for now, she doesn’t want it to be a goodbye.

The computer screen flashes with contact information for Diana Prince. A way to contact Themyscira. She feels a pang of joy in her chest, one step closer to getting Rachel home. Her mission there is important, and Kory would never want to take her away from it but this is more important. She needs her. Dick needs her.

If he fights for anyone then he’ll fight for Rachel.

Kory just needs to hope the Amazonians can get her here.

/

He must have zoned out or drifted off because when he forces his eyes to focus again, he finds Gar lingering in the doorway of his bedroom watching him with worried eyes. Dick tries to sit up higher against the pillows, tries to offer Gar a reassuring small but the boy stays where he is, fingers picking at the chip of paint on Dick’s door.

Gar looks scared, as if taking a step into the room with him will make it real, mean he’s there to say goodbye. Dick thinks about the boy he has come to love as his own. He thinks back to Gar’s fear at The Chief’s house, the very thing that prompted Dick to invite Gar along with them in the first place. He thinks about the nightmares that plague him after Cadmus, all the times Dick has sat at Gar’s bedside until he falls back asleep.

He’s seen a lot of fear in Gar’s face before, but he’s never seen it like this. He’s never seen it for him.

“You can come in.” Dick tells him softly, “I’m okay.”

Gar lifts his head to meet Dick’s gaze and seems to crumple in on himself, “I’m not saying goodbye.”

Dick feels a spike run through his chest at the words, Gar’s conviction in them, his refusal to accept this fate they’ve been handed. He’s so much more confidence now that the boy he used to be, so much stronger and yet, he’s still just a boy.

“Okay.” Dick nods, extending an arm out towards his son, “That’s okay.”

There’s a small shuffle of Gar’s feet as he crosses the threshold into Dick’s room, and he thinks the boy might even be holding his breath as he does it. Once he’s inside his chest seems to heave with sadness as he makes his way over to the bed.

“Can I?” Gar asks, nodding at the free side where Dick’s arm is still outstretched.

He smiles then, patting the pillows beside him, “Climb up.”

Gar does, kicking off his shoes first before crawling onto the mattress, Dick feels the bed dip under the new weight as Gar shuffles in close to him. He thinks Gar will settle on the pillows, looking back at the ceiling but is pleasantly surprised when the boy moves even closer, resting his head against Dick’s ribs, avoiding looking at the bomb altogether.

Dick is overcome with a sense of longing for more time, more days like this, more opportunities to spend like this. Gar settles against him, his body pressed against Dick’s side, and he brings a hand up to stroke the boy’s vivid green hair, carding his fingers through the long strands.

“We need to get you a haircut.” Dick tells him, “You could do with a trim.”

Gar snorts, a puff of air against Dick’s skin, “Are we really going to do this?”

“Do what?”

Gar doesn’t look at him but tucks his arms against his body like a barrier, “Pretend.”

Dick’s fingers still in Gar’s hair, his eyes glancing down at the countdown in his chest. He isn’t sure they can pretend; he isn’t sure there’s time for it.

Not for the first time, Dick finds himself cursing Gotham, cursing Bruce and Jason and himself. Because whether Gar wants it to be or not, this is their goodbye. Just in case. And Dick isn’t sure how to do any of it. How to say goodbye to his son, how to say everything he wants Gar to know.

He doesn’t know how to mourn for a life he still gets to live for another three hours.

“I’m sorry.” Dick sighs, his fingers working through Gar’s hair again, “I keep failing you.”

“Do you know what I wish for?” Gar asks him gently.

“What?”

His reply is bitter but also wistful, like a dream he longs for but can’t quite remember, “That it was just the four of us on the road again. Back before San Francisco and Cadmus and Gotham. We were better on our own.”

Dick feels like swallowing broken glass, “I wanted your world to be bigger than the four of us. I wanted you to know there was good out there, we could do good.”

“Says the man with a bomb in his chest.” Gar bites out.

His anger is softer than Kory’s but that makes it worse. Gar doesn’t explode outwards, he explodes inwards. He bottles his rage until it turns to acid in his veins, corrosive and poisonous. He thinks about a life where Gar stayed with The Chief, where he could have turned out like Jason. A lost boy with too much anger and no place to call home.

“My mistake got me here.” Dick reminds him, “It’s all on me.”

Gar lifts his head sharply and Dick’s hand falls away from his hair as the boy turns to look at him with an intensity that almost scares him, “No, it’s not. Because we’re the ones you leave behind, Dick. We’re the ones who have to keep going and fighting and it’s fucking bullshit. I don’t want to do this anymore; I don’t want to lose…”

He feels Gar hunch in on himself, a sharp press of his shoulder against his chest and Dick knows why he stopped.

“You can say it.” Dick nods.

“My father.” Gar finishes, deflating in on himself as he slumps back against Dick’s ribs. He’s just a boy, Dick reminds himself, how much more can Gar lose before he loses himself?

He returns his hand to Gar’s hair, stroking and soothing in a feeble attempt to help, “You know the first time you called me that was in your sleep. I was sitting by your bed, stroking your hair just like this. You’d had a nightmare and I was trying to help you fall back asleep. You mumbled it out as I was getting up to leave. One simple word. I sat back down and stayed for the whole night just in case you needed me.”

Gar nods against him, “I know. I remember.”

“We’re not done yet, okay?” Dick replies, “I’m not done yet. We’ll come up with something, we always do.”

“Not always.” Gar reminds him and in his mind, Dick thinks about Donna lying in his arms without a heartbeat, about losing his sister and his daughter in the same day.

Not always.

In fact, it feels like they’ve been losing for a very long time. Donna, Rachel, Jason. Dick feels the weight of failure closing in around them, this team he put together, this family he created. Gar’s right, maybe they were better on their own. Just the four of them. Or maybe they would have still ended up here in some way. One of them dying, one of them bleeding, while the others try to find a cure.

“I need you to be strong for them.” Dick’s voice wobbles as he says it, “You need to keep this family together now. You need to be better than I was.”

“Are you telling me to be a better Batman?” Gar asks, “Because that is one fucked up cycle I don’t want to carry on.”

Dick smiles, the statement catching him off guard, “Never be Batman. I shouldn’t have tried either. Just be you. Look after Kory, she’s going to close off and be angry, but you can get through to her. She loves the bones of you and Rachel. You need to ground her when she’s falling, okay? Promise me.”

Gar nods, reaching for Dick’s free hand to squeeze his fingers, “I promise. Mom will be okay.”

Mom. Dick feels tears pricking at his eyes, feels the lump forming in his throat but he pushes past it, “And Rachel. She talks to you; she confides in you. I recorded a message for her on the iPad if I don’t… make sure she sees it, okay? There’s one for you and Kory as well. If she loses herself, you need to help her find her way back. Don’t let her turn out like Jason, cold and alone and scared. You stay together, you’re stronger that way.”

He feels the first tear fall at the same time he feels Gar’s own tears land on his skin. Dick untangles his hands, wrapping the boy up in his arms as tightly as possible given the angle and holds him while he cries.

“I promise, dad.” Gar whispers against his skin, “I promise.”

Dick buries his head into Gar’s hair, his nose breathing him in as he falls apart along with his son.

“I love you.” Dick tells him, hopes Gar hears it, hopes Gar understands.

The boy grips him tighter, and Dick feels the sharp press of Gar’s nails leaving little half moons against his skin as he clings on for dear life. Dick doesn’t mind, he refuses to loosen his hold on his son either.

This is about grief. This is about love. Fierce and overwhelming and terrifying but Dick is ready to face it now, to admit it. He doesn’t have time to pretend he doesn’t feel these things, doesn’t want to run out of time without his family understanding what they mean to him.

“The three of you were the best part of my life.” Dick’s voice is thick with emotion, “Always. Nothing else even comes close.”

“I love you.” Gar’s reply is muffled by Dick’s skin but he hears it. He tries to commit it to memory, the sound of the words, the weight of them sinking into his chest.

It feels like a goodbye despite the fact Gar didn’t want it to be. Dick wonders if it’s because Gar knows they are running out of time. If he knows something Dick doesn’t. Dick hopes Gar remembers this moment, the love he has for him.

“I’m so proud of you.” Dick utters out, repeating it over and over again like a mantra.

Gar doesn’t respond, Dick doesn’t think he can because the tears are wracking his body now, making him shudder so violently that Dick has trouble keeping a hold on him.

They stay like that for a long time and Dick doesn’t bother to look at his countdown, doesn’t try and count his heartbeats or look at the machines reading out his output. The only thing he cares about in that moment is Gar, making sure he can find all the pieces of his son and hold onto them until Gar is ready to put himself back together.

Dick used to think that no one in the world deserved anything, that wasn’t how the world worked but right now, in this moment, Dick Grayson thinks that Gar Logan is owed better than this. He’s owed more than loss and pain and death as a reward for everything he’s been through.

He really hopes he gets it.

/

Dick watches Kory fiddle with the IV line in his hand, checking the numbers and readings to calculate when to give him the next dose. Gar left a little while ago and he wonders if Kory has seen him yet, wonders if she knows that Gar came to say goodbye.

He doesn’t want to ask her. There’s this tentative between them, like they are standing on splintering ice about to plunge right down into the frigid water if it breaks. He doesn’t think a reminder about how little time they have left is going to help either of them.

“I can up the dosage.” Kory tells him, “It should buy you…”

“Another hour?” Dick cuts her off weakly, “Kory, you know there isn’t time.”

Apparently, he’s sick of waiting to see if the ice holds and is going for jumping up and down against it to break it faster. They don’t have time to pander to his feelings or hers, not when there are things he needs to tell her. Things he needs her to know.

Kory lets her shoulders slump, her hair falling down the side of her face, “I’m not doing this with you.”

“Then listen.” Dick protests, “Because there are things I want you to hear.”

She stops fiddling with the machines at his bedside and manages to find the strength to look at him then. Her eyes are clouded with everything she’s refusing to acknowledge and the pain in them makes him gasp inaudibly.

“I don’t want to hear them like this.” She responds quietly.

Dick grabs her wrist, pulling her to perch on the edge of the mattress, “If I don’t say them now, you might not hear them at all.”

Her eyes drift down to the bomb in his chest before flicking back to his face and he sees the resignation in them. She gives him the tiniest nod, a sign for him to continue. Suddenly, Dick doesn’t know how to start. In the video he recorded for her, the words came easily, flowing out of him until he was breathless but now, looking into her eyes, Dick can’t begin to find the words he wants.

“I’ll look after them.” She tells him, clearly thinking this is where this conversation will go.

Dick shakes his head, “You made me the man I wanted to be, Kory.” He blurts out, watching the surprise on her face.

They don’t talk about this, the emotions they trade between them in stolen glances and unspoken stares. They don’t articulate it even though they both know it’s there. But he can’t do this, he can’t say goodbye to her without acknowledge why this goodbye was always going to be the hardest.

“Dick…”

“It’s true.” He cuts her off, “God, I wish we had more time. I wish we didn’t waste so much of it thinking there was going to be more. But this is the only time I get to say it to you then you need to know…”

Her hand clamps down over his mouth and stops his words in their tracks, “I know.”

Dick reaches for her wrist, pulling her hand away, “You don’t want me to say it?”

“I don’t want those words to be a goodbye from you.” Kory admits.

He gets it. If he dies today, then she’ll have to carry around those three little words from him forever. A source of pain and mourning that will taint them forever. She knows he loves her but she doesn’t want to hear it now. Not like this.

He nods, “I won’t say it.” He replies, “But I need you to know how sorry I am for wasting time, for focusing on things that weren’t important. I should have been focusing on you. On the kids.”

Kory gives him a watery smile, her eyes searching his for a brief moment. Dick reaches up to cup her cheek in his hand, guiding her head towards him until their noses brush, “I won’t say it.” He repeats against her lips, “But feel it.”

He dips his head, pressing his lips to hers softly. Kory kisses him back, tender and slow like they have all the time in the world. Like this is their first kiss, the start of something special rather than the end of something undefined. Dick pours everything he has into her, his love for her that he’s been running from because he’s scared. His passion for her that makes him catch fire. His hopes for her, brilliant and bright and beautiful.

His pulls away breathlessly, opening his eyes to see Kory looking at him. The love in her eyes makes him dizzy and he doesn’t protest in the slightest when she surges forward to connect their lips together again. She kisses him like a hello after months apart, like a goodbye that’s more painful than anything else she’s ever had to do. Dick is desperate and full and he craves this to last forever. He pulls her closer, one hand on her waist to pull her over him. Kory understands, helping him move her over his lap, her legs on either side of him as she slides her hand into his hair.

Dick’s hands dance along her waist, sliding under her t-shirt to feel the smooth skin of her back under his palms. When Kory breaks their kiss for air, he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t move his mouth away from her body. He trails his lips over her jaw, down the column of her neck to her chest. He feels his heart hammer in his chest as Kory grips him tighter, moving closer, Dick’s hands pull at her t-shirt, trying to untie the wrap that holds it together as his mouth moves against the swell of her breast.

“Dick.” Kory sighs, soft and regretful and he knows she’s about to pull away by the squeeze she gives his shoulders, “Your heartrate.”

He lets out a sigh against her skin before pulling back, her t-shirt crooked and wrinkled from his hands, the peek of her lacy purple bra over the fabric.

He nods, lets out a deep breath through his nose as he tries to keep his heartrate under control, “Right.” He agrees, keeping his hands on her hips so she doesn’t try and move off him. If he is going to die today then he wants to be selfish for five minutes, he wants to keep Kory close, he wants to give himself this moment to imagine something better than this mess they are stuck in.

“Promise me you’ll be happy.” Dick asks, “That you’ll have a bright future. Tell me about it, what you want it to look like.”

Kory tilts her head to the side, her fingers warm against his skin, “I don’t want to think about a future without you.” She’s holding back tears; her voice is thicker than normal and when she looks at him all Dick can see from her is pain.

“Then keep me in it. Tell me about our future. The one we could have had. Lie to me, Kory, please.” He’s pleading with her, his eyes stinging, his throat like sandpaper as he tightens her grip on her. It’s selfish to ask her to do this for him, it’s selfish to want it as much as he does. He’s never wanted anything this badly. And it’s not even fucking real.

Kory kisses him softly, a simple press of her lips on his until she pulls back to speak, “We’d wake up together every morning. You won’t even complain that I steal the covers.”

God, he loves this woman, “I’d just have to hold you closer.” He tells her, playing along, giving this to her as much as she’s creating it for him.

“We’d still fight. You’re infuriating and hopeless at the laundry.” Kory chuckles, “But we’d always make up.”

“Never go to bed angry.” Dick nods, “Even if that means we are up doing laundry at 2am because I’ve turned everything pink.”

A tear slips from her eye followed by another one, but she pushes ahead, never taking her eyes off him, “We’d give Gar and Rachel a proper home. A proper family. Somewhere safe and good.”

He cups her cheek again, using the pad of his thumb to wipe away the tears that fall down her cheeks, “I’d ask you to marry me.” He tells her gently, a smile stretching on his lips, “I’d probably mess it up though.”

“How would you do it?”

Dick tilts her head forward, pressing his forehead to hers, “Dancing under the stars. I’d have the whole thing planned out, but I wouldn’t be able to wait when you’re in my arms and it feels right. I’d lean in close, whisper the question in your ear and watch the surprise on your face.”

Kory’s fingers squeeze his shoulders, “I’d say yes.”

“The kids would be in on it.” Dick tells him matter-of-factly.

“You’d need all the help you can get.”

She lets out a shuddering breath he can feel from her body against his and holds her tighter, bumping his nose against Kory’s, “A small wedding. As long as I can call you my wife.”

“More kids?” She asks in a whisper that makes his heart soar.

Dick smiles, “As many as you want.” He’d love to give her children, to fill a house with laughter and love and family.

“Two.” Kory decides, “Another girl and another boy. I always thought you’d look good holding a baby.”

He can’t let but let out a soft laugh then, one hand slipping down to her flat stomach, “You’d look gorgeous pregnant. You always do but god, you’d take my breath away.”

“Mar’i, for the girl. She’d be stubborn like her father.” Kory replies.

“Jake for the boy.” Dick fills in, “He’d be as headstrong and kind as his mother.”

He can’t keep up with the tears slipping down her cheeks now, there’s too many and he knows his own are damp as well, “They’d have the best big siblings in the world.”

Dick hums, “We’d be outnumbered.”

“Aren’t we always?” Kory smiles, “Big family dinners. Mar’i would want to impress you with her handstands, she’d probably spend the whole day practicing with Gar to make them perfect.”

“And Jake would paint picture after picture just like his big sister. Our fridge would be full of artwork.” Dick adds, imagining a house they made into a home. A house filled with children’s drawings and a hurricane of mess that comes with having kids. Toys and books in the unlikeliest of places, rows of different sized shoes by the door. Family photos everywhere. Him and Kory, Rachel and Gar, Mar’i and Jake. He’d frame every photo he could, be the doting dad and husband he’s always wanted to be with them.

He imagines Kory pregnant with his child, large and glowing and happy. He’d talk to her bump at night, hold her hand through the birth, he’d never want to let his kids go. He’d always be there to protect them.

But all that evaporates when he hears Kory’s sob escape her lips, the sob she’s been holding back since they started this game of pretend. He lets that life go, the life they don’t have, the one that doesn’t exist.

“Oh Kory.” He sighs as she deflates against him, her body shaking as Dick holds her, burying a hand in her hair as he wraps the other around her waist to pull her closer. Kory hides her face into his neck, she doesn’t want him to see her fall apart, he knows, but he refuses to let her go either.

“I do love you.” She utters against his skin, her lips tickling his throat as she says the words.

“I know.” Dick soothes her, “And I’ll always love you.”

But it’s not enough. Those words don’t give them anymore time. Those words don’t grant them a miracle or help Conner find the right combination to make a deactivator. Dick has less than an hour to live and a dream life he knows he’ll never be able to have.

He presses his cheek against the top of Kory’s head, drinks in the scent of vanilla from her skin and tries not to think about how he promised not to let their family down again. Because this feels like he is. This feels like he’s having the world ripped out from underneath him and all he can do is wait to go with it.

Titanic meets iceberg. Dick Grayson meets bomb.

/

“Please don’t tell me I missed the big epic romantic moment.” A voice startles them both and Kory shoots up, wiping her eyes as she smiles at the figure in the doorway.

Dick stares at the doorway in complete shock and disbelief, “Rachel?”

“Gar owes me 20 bucks.” Rachel tells him as Kory moves, rushing over to their daughter to envelope her in a hug.

“You got my message.” Kory tells her, squeezing Rachel to her as Rachel latches onto Kory’s back with her pale fingers.

“Please tell me I’m not hallucinating.” Dick cuts in as they pull apart, “That’s you’re real.”

Rachel turns to him, so much different that when he last saw her. Her hair is lighter, more of a purple than a blue now. She’s taller too, carrying herself like a Queen the way Kory does. His little girl, where did she go? The girl who asked him to turn her mirror around and woke up screaming from her demons. The woman standing before him now doesn’t seem like any of that happened, she’s strong and powerful and Dick can’t help but keep blinking in shock like she’s about to disappear.

“I’m real.” Rachel tells him, her voice the same as ever, “I’m home.”

He doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to think in that moment. His only thought is that his daughter is home, standing in front of him and she’s still not in his arms. Dick needs to fix that. Rachel is watching him with those same blue eyes, expressive and unfiltered and he can see the warring emotions behind them. Her anger, her fear. Her disbelief. He wants to shy away from it, he wants to tell her he messed up. Rachel’s eyes move to the bomb attached to his heart.

“Come here?” Dick asks softly, stretching an arm out to her.

Rachel doesn’t move, “You didn’t call me.”

“There’s nothing you could have done.” Dick sighs, hates this is the start of their reunion.

“Kory found a way to bring me home.”

Kory stands there awkwardly, fiddling with her fingers as her eyes dart between the two of them, “I’ll go check on Gar and Conner.” She tells him, already backing out of the room.

Dick thinks that’s a smart move because their little girl – so not little anymore, he corrects mentally – is looking at him like she wants to set him on fire.

“You didn’t want to say goodbye to me?” Rachel’s voice drops, vulnerable and betrayed.

He shakes his head, “I didn’t know how to. Not to you. I recorded you a message just in case but…”

“I brought Donna back.” Rachel blurts out then, her eyes meeting his, “She’s on Themyscira. She’s alive.”

He feels something loosen in his chest, heart filling with pride. She’s magnificent. “Rachel, that’s…”

“No.” She cuts him off, “It was so difficult, Dick. It felt like I was dying but I did it anyway. If you think for one second that I won’t come after you if you die then you really need a reality check.”

Donna is alive because Rachel willed her to be. She’s alive because Rachel fought and sacrificed and endured. Dick knows she’d fight even harder if it were him, he knows she’d rip herself apart trying to resurrect him even without a body.

“I really need you to come over here before I get out of this bed and come to you because we both know Kory will kill me if I move.” He tells her, his throat closing up at the sight of her.

Rachel takes a step forward, hesitating as if she’s holding herself back from jumping into his arms. She’s angry with him, she isn’t going to make this any easier.

Dick sighs, makes a show of throwing the covers off his lap, prepared to get up if he needs to. Rachel knows he isn’t bluffing and immediately rushing over to his side to pull the covers back over his lap with shaky hands.

“Stop trying to make it better.” Rachel warns him, “I’m mad at you.”

“I know.” Dick replies.

“You can’t leave me.” The words hit him like a freight train, every single one cutting deeper than the device in his chest.

“I don’t think I get a say in it.”

Rachel lets out a sob, startling herself as much as him as it bursts from her lungs. It’s a harsh sound, brittle and bitter. Dick grabs her arms before he can hear another one from her, hauling her into his embrace until she’s half sitting, half lying with him on the bed, her arms wrapping around his waist.

“You can’t leave me.” She repeats, “I just got you back.”

Dick closes his eyes, tries not to fall apart with her even though it would be so easy to do. He’s the parent though, she needs him to be strong.

He holds her tighter, one hand cupping the back of her head, “Look at you, my little space witch. You don’t need me like before. You’ll be okay, Rachel.” He promises.

And he knows she will. It will hurt her, his death, it will feel like her world is ending but she’ll recover. She’s stronger than she knows, much stronger than him. She’s proven that so many times and now she’s in his arms, a woman rather than a little girl, and all Dick can do is hold her and wonder what she’ll become without him. Someone good, he hopes, someone better than he was.

Kory will make sure of it.

Rachel pulls away sharply, her nails digging into his skin, “No, I need you.” She pleads frantically as if the choice is his to make, as if he gets a say in what happens when they run out of time, “I’ll always need you.”

He doesn’t have the words for that. He pulls her back to him, letting her curl up against his side with her head against his shoulder, “I love you.” He tells her but that only makes her sob harder. She knows it’s a goodbye.

“Dad.” She whispers, “Please.”

She’s never called him that before. It feels like a different sort of bomb denoting in his chest now. Dick kisses her forehead, “No tears, sweetheart.” He asks of her, “We don’t have time.”

He starts stroking her hair, feeling her curls spring up against his fingers as Rachel snuggles in closer, squeezes him a little tighter. Dick buries his nose into her hair.

He thought Gotham was a place of nightmares, that Kory would be able to barter a miracle from it and he was right. Kory brought Rachel home, brought Rachel back to him. Maybe Gotham grants miracles after all.

“Does it hurt?” Rachel asks softly, fingers tracing the edge of the weapon in his chest. Dick glances down, the numbers steadily clicking over. They have less than twenty minutes. She should leave him soon.

“No.” He replies, “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Kory said they can’t take it out without it detonating?”

She reminds him of himself then, trying to get all the facts, review the evidence, try to work a different angle. His little space witch would make a good detective, he wonders whether she’d have a thing for helping troubled kids as well?

“There are barbs that cut through the muscle, if we try to remove it then it activates.” Dick tells her, tries to pretend they aren’t talking about him, tries to keep a clinical detachment as if he isn’t explaining the details of the device meant to kill him.

Rachel sits up suddenly and Dick misses the heat of her against his side, the reassuring weight of her presence next to him.

She kneels on the bed to loom over his chest, watching his heart beat count down the numbers, “We could short it out.”

Dick frowns, “Conner’s working on it, a deactivator that will…”

Her fingers brush against his chest where the bomb is embedded into his skin, “I could do it.”

He sits up, dipping his head to meet her gaze, “Rachel, no.”

“I could. I understand my powers better, I have control of them. I could save you.” She insists, her eyes sparking with conviction. She wants to do this, he knows, she wants to try.

“If something went wrong, if it detonated then you’d die too.” Dick reminds her, “I’m not risking your life to save mine.”

Rachel scoffs, “You’d risk yours to save me. You did with Trigon. You did when you took me with you knowing people were after me. You’ve been saving my life for years, Dick. Just this once, let me save you.”

He drops his head, lets out a sigh of frustration, “It’s my job to protect you.”

“I never asked you for that.”

“You never need to ask.” Dick shoots back, “It’s my privilege, okay? You’re one of the best things in my life.”

Rachel’s eyes dance with tears, too many to contain as they start to roll down her cheeks. She grabs his hand in hers and Dick marvels at the fact that despite how grown up she looks and sounds now; her hand is still tiny compared to his.

“So, you’re allowed to love me, but I’m not allowed to love you?” Rachel asks, “Is that it?”

Dick shakes his head, “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“We’re meant to save each other. This is just my turn.”

He scoffs, “Jesus Rachel, not like this, okay? If something happened to you…”

“If something happened to you,” She cuts him off, “I couldn’t stand it, Dick. I wouldn’t survive it.”

He softens then, the desperation in her voice matching his own. They’ve reached a stalemate, he knows, neither one willing to back down because they love the other too fiercely to give in.

It’s laughable really, the dedication they have to one another even now. Dick doesn’t know whether to cry or be mad at her. She isn’t his, he knows, but she is. She’s in his heart, his soul. Dick thinks there must be a frayed edge to it that matches up with Rachel’s perfect, two halves of a whole, like they were meant to be part of each other lives but got ripped apart. But then, they found each other anyway like two ships drawn to a lighthouse.

Rachel’s hand closes over the bomb in his chest, a gentle touch for a thing of destruction (both him and the bomb) and Dick knows she’s trying to cover the countdown, trying to block out the inevitable.

She leans down and kisses his forehead, right between his eyebrows and he laughs. She stole that move from him.

“I’m going to save you.” She whispers gently.

Dick freezes as he explodes in a deep panic, watching the gem on her forehead glow red when she pulls back, her fingers warm against his skin, “Rachel, don’t…”

It’s too late, his voice gets drowned out as dark clouds curl from her body, crawling up her wrist towards the hand she has over the little metal box in his chest. Dick can’t move, he can’t breathe. He wants to throw himself away from her, wants to stop her from risking her life for him. He can’t though, she’s already doing it.

Rachel Roth picked up more from him than he thought. Rushing head first into a situation by herself without thinking? That’s definitely a Dick Grayson move.

There’s a pressure against his chest, a warm sensation that’s a little too hot to be comfortable and he watches Rachel’s eyes glow red, wonders if he’ll ever see them blue again. His chest heaves and stutters and for a moment, Dick loses all breath.

Then his chest feels lighter again, the darkness around them receding as Rachel stops glowing. He looks down at his chest, a faint outline of a square over his heart and a metal box with prongs out the back lying in his lap against the blankets.

Dick slaps a hand over his chest, reaching for the bomb with the other to turn it over. The screen is blank, no countdown, no activator.

When is a bomb not a bomb, he thinks to himself, when Rachel Roth decides she isn’t playing this game.

Rachel’s watching him with wide eyes like she’s as surprised as he is.

“How?”

She shrugs, “I have a lot to fill you in on.”

Dick wants to hear it all but right now, he needs to hold her again. He moves, hauling her to him again in a hug that’s brutal, squeezing her to him with every ounce of strength he can muster. Rachel clings on, lets out a breathless laugh of happiness in his ear as she wraps her arms around his shoulders.

“You’re incredible.” Dick tells her.

“I take after my dad.” She replies and Dick knows she’s talking about him by the way she clings to him, pressing herself closer like she’s fourteen again, finding solace from the nightmares in his arms.

“I have it!” They pull apart at the sound of Conner’s voice, triumphantly holding what Dick assumes is the deactivator.

Rachel smiles softly, “Thanks Conner, but I have this one.”

He looks confused until he sees the square of Dick’s chest where the bomb is meant to be, “I’ll get Gar and Kory.” He tells them, blurring out of the room as quickly as he came in.

Rachel launches herself back into his arms and Dick lets out a huff of surprise as she throws him off-balance.

“Thank you for saving my life.” He tells her softly, her hair tickling the side of his face.

He knows she’s smiling by the sound of her voice when she answers, “Thank you for changing mine.”

Dick isn’t sure that’s accurate, she changed his first. A little girl who snuck past his defences, got into his heart, and helped him find the light.

Dick’s starting to think his hero was never Batman, it was always the girl who found him through a dream.

/

Having them all together in the same room feels like coming home and Dick never realised how much he took it for granted before. The ease of their little foursome, the comfort he finds in them. Rachel stays curled up against his side and Gar quickly sprawls himself against Dick’s other arm, so he’s blocked in on all sides, Kory props herself up on her elbow near the foot of the bed, watching them all with a wide smile. She feels the same thing he does. Complete.

They stay like that for the rest of the day, leaving Hank and Dawn to their own devices as they try and teach Conner how to cook downstairs. Dick is grateful they don’t try and interrupt, selfishly, he just wants this moment with them before he has to face the rest of the world, go into leader mode and come up with a plan for Jason.

But that’s for tomorrow.

Today is for them.

They talk about everything and nothing, changing from topic to topic with an ease that makes Dick’s heart swell with love. These people, they’re his people, and he knows he’d be nothing without them.

Rachel drifts off to sleep first, using her power still seems to take it out of her and Dick makes a mental note to treat her to her favourite breakfast tomorrow. He’ll wake up early to prepare pancakes, he knows Kory will help.

Gar goes next and Dick has never seen him look so tired, it’s been a stressful few hours for him. All of them really, but he knows how scared Gar was. He’s thankful the boy can find some peace now, gripping Dick’s arm with both hands like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he doesn’t.

Kory watches their kids sleep with the softness of a mother, her face is serene and happy, her smile reaching her eyes in a way that makes her seem otherworldly. Dick is in awe of her even now.

“Kory?” He says softly, catching her attention and drawing her gaze away from the kids surrounding him, “I still want it. That life we talked about.”

He’s been wrestling with whether he should bring it up or not. They said a lot of things to each other, but Dick doesn’t know what that means now he’s going to be okay. He doesn’t know whether Kory said them in the moment or whether she feels as strongly as he does about it.

But he’s done wasting time.

“Ask me when we leave.” Kory tells him, her eyes tender when she takes him in.

“Why then?” Dick asks, confused at the timeframe until he understands that she’s not doing this with him while he’s battling his ghosts. She wants them to work – so does he – and Kory knows that isn’t going to happen while they’re in Gotham, circling the edge of a hole Dick has been trying to crawl out of for years.

She seems to echo his thoughts, “Because it will give you something to fight for when Gotham is threatening to pull you back to the man you were.”

He’s never loved this woman more.

The way she understands him, reads him, accepts him for the things he isn’t as much as the things he is. She’s given him a lifeline here, something to hold onto when Gotham takes the toll on him Dick knows it will. When the darkness surrounds him, and ghosts sneak up to claim him again. He’ll have her to think about, a life with her and the kids (and any future kids that might come) to remind himself to fight, to push forward. Gotham doesn’t get to win this time; Gotham doesn’t get him.

But he wins. He gets Kory and Rachel and Gar, the promise of a life and a future and a home.

Gotham has taken a lot from him but Dick refuses to give this city anything more. He can’t. Everything he is belongs to these three people now.

He knows they’ll guard it well.