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Dick’s hands were cold.
Gotham City was never cold. Never too cold, never colder than what her citizens could plausibly bear. Never cold enough to wrap jackets around yourself and wander with small steps over hidden ice to arrive at your destination. Never cold enough to justify taking someone’s hand in yours and tucking them into your jacket pocket.
But he was cold.
That much was evident. Rose-coloured cheeks, trembling frame, body cowed—and the temperatures hadn’t dropped below anything manageable. Especially for the one who usually left the house in a suit made of fine materials.
The evil that had taken Dick hostage was permeating through the atmosphere of the Manor. Chilly, dark—darker than it was—and repetitive, it sucked you in, and it told you a story. It laid Dick out, victim as he was, tragedy as it was written. Every sharp inhale, every shaking exhale, it was all too rife with the upset that had upturned the steady rhythm of his life.
He had always known this was coming. Always. He had jumped in head-first knowing he would one day trudge away, alone, uncaring of the consequences and bearing the misfortune of having it happen to him. And he had told himself he would move on, find someone else, just like he had done with all the rest.
Did he do something wrong?
He had never expected a happy ending. Sure, he had hoped for one, but hope always came hand in hand with grief—that much was a match made for heavenly perfection.
Dick loved unforgivably. He gave too much, took too little, and yet left nothing all the same, and he had been lied to, excluded, and hurt and every time—every damn fucking time—he forgave, forgot, and loved. And this was how he was repaid. And every wave that surged into his mind was a reminder that he had failed and that the fault was his.
He had already failed Jason. More than once. A promise broken, left broken, whispers unsaid, left unheard, he had planted the seeds, watered the garden, shone the lights, and then trampled all over his hard work, his efforts, his happiness—god, he missed it.
“You always want to be a hero,” Jason whispered. “A saviour. My saviour.”
Dick inhaled sharply. “I care about you.”
“I have a lot of regrets about that,” Jason told him, not unkindly. “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“You can’t blame yourself for me,” Dick said. “Not like this.”
“No, I can’t,” Jason said sadly, as if that was the root of all their problems. “I can’t blame myself for who you are. But we can’t get along. This doesn’t work if all you see me as is a resurrection, the one who ran away, the one you need to love to prove something.”
“That’s not true,” Dick whispered. “That was never true.”
“Yes, it was,” Jason affirmed. For all the silence in the room, their conversation never amounted to anything more than a breathy whisper past their lips, and yet it was the loudest exchange Dick had ever had to bear.
“No, it never was.” Dick’s voice was akin to a plea. “I loved and love you.”
“Not at the beginning,” Jason looked away, his eyes trailing to wander the twinkling skyline just outside the window. “You wanted to show Bruce you were capable of something. I was your project. That’s all… that’s all I ever was.”
No, Dick denied in his head. But he couldn’t force lies, not to Jason. “You were never my project.”
“I was Bruce’s project,” he murmured. “Stealing the tires, then taken under his wing not because he loved me—like he loved you,” he added, as if it was an addendum, “—but because he thought I would one day wander too far into crime, too muddled in my own rage to think straight. And I would become a mess-up in his plans,” he continued. “Ruin his life.”
Dick moved to say something, say anything really, but Jason raised a hand—almost patiently—telling him wordlessly to let him finish.
“Then I was Talia’s, like I was an earthworm brought home for school in a box to be taken care of and raised, spoonfed and told every instruction, every little memory. Truths that were lies all the same fed as some cast-off experiment, as if one day there would be someone the Pits wouldn’t be wasted on,” Jason paused there, carding a hand through his hair almost restlessly, suddenly seeming harrowed with nights of no sleep.
Dick didn’t move. He lowered his head, closing his eyes.
“Then it was you,” the words were spoken closer than the rest. He could reach Jason if he put his hand out, now.
“You lied. And when I found out, you became skittish. Lied some more. All in an effort to get Bruce to recognize you past the Robin costume. That you were your own person, now, and more than just a childish caricature.”
Dick squeezed his eyes tighter. This wasn’t true. This was never true.
“You did this to yourself.” Dick could feel Jason’s words carving themselves into his skin, digging deep into flesh, burying themselves in his veins, sharpening themselves on his heart.
There was a shift on the couch as Jason left, leaving Dick sitting there alone, head bowed, barely a breath in him. It was like Jason had taken a gun and shot him. And really—really so—Dick would have preferred that.
He was going to cry.
He had sat there for some time—minutes, hours, years—before he had stood up, and meandered his way through the city on foot, managing to get to one of his safehouses, collapsing on a couch. And then he had wondered.
Wondered if he had done anything differently, would Jason still be here? Would he be the one apologising, or would Jason do it too?
It had been the thought I want to go home that spurred vitality in Dick, leading him slowly yet surely to the doors of the Manor, where he had entered, deaf to all noise, before finding himself on the couch by the piano, the setting sun illuminating the shine of the floor.
He had watched those rays extend, extend further than aeons, as if all could be forgiven if he watched the dust collect and the clock turn. Maybe this was how it was meant to be.
With Barbara, his heart had split. It felt like a thousand pieces had fallen, left in the smoke for him to collect all alone, and he had dealt with it by simply running away, choosing to hide his face and all he could recover behind a glass pane, as if that alone could keep him from Barbara. And then he had returned, and he had been shown grace. Comfort. Kindness.
With Kori, he had cried. He had sobbed uncontrollably for some days, lost in the haze of that youthful desire of proving himself, finding somewhere with someone where he belonged, truly belonged, like his home was in the Tower and not with his acceptance. Acceptance he wrongly believed that only Kori—and the others Titans, by default—could have given.
After Jason, there was nothing. He was numb. He didn’t quite believe it.
Still didn’t believe it.
Dick knew all his life he liked the feeling of being loved. Of having good parents, a happy childhood in the circus, growing up vivacious and nine different ways of smiling, just picture perfect in all the immaculately picket ways. Then becoming Robin, having a job to fulfil, something to prove—then the Titans, where he excelled and led, and became everything and more that Bruce had taught him—and then looking back, seeing a replacement and facing fear, hatred, anger—and realising it was irrational when he looked at a corpse, a coffin he couldn’t face, a body, just a body , he told himself.
Nothing more. Bruce had—was—lonely, needed company, needed to fulfil his saviour complex, and all those problems that had once been his had cascaded onto Dick, and as the eldest and the first Robin, he had shouldered it all, angrily taking it like it was his burden to bear because it was , he owed Jason this, owed Bruce, owed Tim, owed Damian, for goodness’ sake, and then he had taken the one good thing in his life and fucked that up, and how could he forgive himself now? Had he ever forgiven himself?
“Master Dick,” was the voice knocking him out of his stupor, the soft click of the other’s heels, the quiet comfort the presence brought. “Have some water.”
Dick lifted a hand to wipe away tears—inconspicuously, but Alfred always noticed everything—and when his hand came back dry, he accepted the water.
Jason had always moved—well—swiftly, to say the least. He had always hopped from safehouse to another, ditching plan after plan, leaving obscurity and shadows where he had once occupied. To Dick, whose life was as fast-paced as any, this was a rhythm he found steady, slowly lurking in the back of his heart to remind him to follow the one he loved. Even before anything had happened between them, when the most they did was share looks and graze hands, Dick chased the thrill of it.
He supposed for Jason the monotony was gruelling. To Jason, monotony was the beat of a heart in the Pit, drowned and suffocating and lost, able to spell its own name but unable to speak it. It was the function that rooted itself in disorder and terror, and sought to destroy its owner from the inside out, which Jason experienced far too many times. Routine, he found, was something that Jason shied away from.
Until they experienced routine themselves, sitting at a coffee table at some time past their patrol, up until early morning, talking and kissing and whispering and laughing—and it was then Dick knew there was a balance to the routine Jason enjoyed and the unpredictable dangers he chased. Dick knew there was a give and a take and he was fully willing to throw himself down the fall along with Jason, and catch him sometime along the way.
Dick hadn’t ever foreseen a day where Jason would leave him behind, chasing saliency and novelty, as if Dick was only something he had amused himself with for a brief period of time. No, Dick saw them relinquishing their vigilantism—Jason his crime—and finding a nice home in the woods, maybe, and adopt three puppies, maybe all Labradors or some retrievers or a German shepherd—anything, everything, if it made Jason happy, if it made the home filled with noise.
Dick was fully willing to follow Jason anywhere, granted he held his hand to lead him there. He had been hoping—and it was almost there, almost, just in front of his eyes, past where his fingers could reach.
And Dick wanted to. Had wanted to.
Would have, if Jason asked. Would now, if he asked.
And he had been so close. So, so close. But somewhere, sometime, he had fucked up, and lost Jason, and himself, stranded in that enrapturing unpredictability Jason so loved.