Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Kory?” Dick says when he picks up the phone. She’s in his contacts, but he hasn’t gotten a call from her in months.

“Hi, Dick! I heard you’re in Amsterdam.”

Dick flops back on the guest house bed, letting his head dangle off the edge of the mattress. “For the next week, yeah. Bruce trained with an aikido master here.”

“Is there any city that Bruce didn’t train with someone in?”

“It’s starting to look like no.”

Kory laughs, and Dick’s lips twitch at the corners. Even after everything, Kory’s laugh is one of his favorite sounds.

“I’m in Amsterdam too,” she says. “For a photo shoot. Would you like to get coffee?”

He and Kory have seen each other since the break-up, but only during major catastrophes and potential apocalypses, and the brief, contentious periods when they’ve overlapped on new teams. They haven’t hung out, and the idea of it fills Dick with a painful nostalgia. But if there’s a chance of him and Kory being actual friends, he’s definitely going to take it.

“Absolutely,” he says.

Kory sends him directions to a place on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. Ten seconds on Google informs Dick that it’s only a coffee shop in the euphemistic sense.

I think this place sells weed not coffee, he texts her.

Oops, she texts back. Want to check it out anyway? :D

Which is how Dick ends up meeting Kory at a weed dispensary. She’s waiting outside when he gets there, lounging in one of the woven chairs on the sidewalk. She looks—God, she looks stunning. It’s been ages since Dick saw her in civilian clothes. She’s wearing high-waisted jeans and a yellow knit crop top, one knee kicked up over the other.

“Has anyone ever told you you should be a model?” he says.

“Dick!” Kory leaps up and catches him in a hug.

He squeezes back. “Nice to see you too.”

They buy two joints and a tray of hummus from the clerk inside and settle down at a little wooden table. For the first fifteen minutes, they keep the talk light: Kory’s photo shoot, Dick’s sightseeing. Then the high starts to set in.

“I’ve never done this in public,” Dick says, taking a drag off his joint.

“You barely did it in private. Donna had to sit on you.” Kory blows a smoke ring. “I’m surprised you agreed.”

“Well, I’m on vacation.”

Kory smiles warmly. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Mmm.” Dick leans slowly toward the table, propping his chin up on his fist. “I didn’t believe it when you called.”

“Why not?”

“We haven’t exactly been social.”

Kory nods, her hair gently swaying around her face. “I regret that.”

"Yeah?" Dick says. He has a buried feeling that he'd be embarrassed by the open longing in his voice if he were sober.

"Yes," Kory says emphatically. "You're a very important part of my life."

Dick would write that off as the weed speaking, but Kory always talks like this. And she's never lied to him.

His heart fills up with a kind of buoyant affection that makes him feel like he really has to do something about it or he'll explode. That definitely is the weed, so it would be a bad idea to vent the feeling by kissing Kory.

"Want to go to a museum?" he says instead.

"When did you become interested in art?" Kory says as they wander through the main display room of the Van Gogh museum.

"I never did," Dick says. He stares in fascination at the almond blossom painting. It's so blue.

"Well, it seems like you're enjoying yourself."

"I think the problem," Dick says, "is that I never went to an art museum high before."

“Neither have I.” Kory grabs his arm. “Oh, look at the colors in that one!”

It’s just a painting of a wheat field with some crows, but Kory’s right. The colors are gorgeous: golds and rust-reds and a green that looks like Kory’s eyes. Maybe the problem is actually that he’s never gone to an art museum with Kory before.

Kory’s hand slides down his arm until their hands dangle next to each other. Dick twitches, and suddenly their fingers are interlaced.

He knows he wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for the weed, but that’s not enough to make Dick pull away. They walk the rest of the museum hand in hand, and exit out into a sunset so brilliant it's like they've stepped into one of the paintings they just saw.

"Oh," Kory sighs, tilting her head up to the sky. "What a perfect end to the day."

Maybe it's the weed, or the light, or the warmth of Kory's hand in his that makes him speak. Maybe it's just that Dick doesn't want the day to end.

"We're going to Paris tomorrow," he says. "You could come with us."

Kory shifts her gaze from the sunset to Dick’s face, without any indication that she’s trading down. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Stick around for a while.”

The high is starting to wear off by the time he gets back to the guest house. Which is good, because Tim is waiting for him in his room, and Dick would rather not be the world’s worst influence. But also bad, because Tim is waiting for him in his room, so he gets to witness the inevitable freak-out.

“This is bad,” Dick says, pacing the room.

Tim, sitting cross-legged on the foot of Dick’s bed with his shoes on, props his chin on his fist and studies Dick like a bug. “What’s bad about it?”

Dick hops onto the narrow ledge in front of the window and walks it like a tightrope, counting things off on his fingers. “One: She’s my ex. Two…”

He doesn’t have a second thing.

“It’s just really bad, okay?”

“If you say so.”

Dick pivots on his toe and walks back in the opposite direction. “Plus, Bruce already abandoned you to go find himself somewhere in the desert.” He picks up the pace, gaining confidence with this new line of reasoning. This, this is a sensible reason for him to feel anxious and weird about having invited Kory to Paris. “I’m not going to ditch you for my ex-girlfriend.”

“Well, one,” Tim says, holding up a finger and affecting his most annoying know-it-all voice, “Bruce abandoned you too. And two, you’re not ditching me. I like Starfire. I think it’d be fun to hang out with her.”

“So… you want her to come?”

“Not if you don’t want her to.”

Dick flips off the ledge and lands with a flop on the bed next to Tim, sprawled out on his back. “I don’t not want her to. I’m just a little worried that it’s an idea that seemed really good when I was high, but is going to end in total disaster now that I’m sober.” He narrows his eyes at Tim. “Which is yet another very good reason to not do drugs.”

“Wow, they should put that in the D.A.R.E. program.’”

Dick swats half-heartedly at Tim, who ducks away easily.

“If you’re that worried about it,” Tim says, “just check in with her again tomorrow. You know. When you’re both sober.”

“Yeah. That’s probably the thing to do.” Dick sighs and slumps back, letting his whole body deflate. “All right, Timmy. Your turn to pick a movie.”

While Tim scrolls through Netflix in search of another elevated horror movie that he really thinks Dick will like, he swears, Dick considers the situation. There are reasons that traveling with Kory might be a really bad idea, and not all of them are things he’s willing to say to Tim.

For instance: Tim’s girlfriend died only a few months ago, and having him be Dick’s sounding board for his own romantic troubles feels decidedly cruel. But Tim will inevitably become a sounding board, because:

Dick and Kory’s break-up was incredibly messy, and they’ve never really talked about it, and it seems kind of inevitable that if they hang out together all day every day for a week, it’s going to come up. And if it does come up, Dick is going to make an even bigger mess of things, because:

That’s what Dick does. If he’d ever doubted that he was romantic kryptonite, his second failed engagement had pretty much cemented it. To say nothing of everything else that happened last year.

So Tim is probably right. Tomorrow, Dick will talk to Kory, and he’ll say… well, not any of that, for sure, but he’ll say that they were high, and he doesn’t want to run the risk of upsetting Tim. And Kory will understand, even if she’s disappointed, and things can go back to status quo.

Which is all well and good until he’s standing on the sidewalk in front of the guest house the next morning, watching Kory saunter up the street with the soft morning sunlight setting her hair aglow. She’s wearing a pinstriped linen jumpsuit and sandals, with a leather duffel slung over her shoulder.

“That’s all your luggage?” Dick says.

“Well, I was only packed for a couple days,” Kory says. “I can buy some more clothes if I need to.”

Tim, standing awkwardly next to Dick, clears his throat and points at the cafe across the street. “I’m gonna get a pastry,” he says, and dashes away.

Smooth.

Dick takes a deep, steadying breath, preparing for the unpleasant conversation ahead. “Kory…”

“Are you sure about this?” Kory says.

Everything Dick was planning to say flies out of his head. “Are… are you?”

“I’d like to spend some time with you. I’d like to get to know Tim better. But this is a family trip, and if I’d be getting in the way…”

It’s exactly what Dick was going to say, but he can’t. He just can’t have Kory think she’d ever be the problem.

“You wouldn’t be in the way,” he says. “Tim told me last night he wants you to come along. I just… I don’t want there to be any drama to distract him, you know? He’s had a really hard year.”

“You think I’d cause drama?”

“I think I might.” Dick turns away from Kory’s eyes, letting his gaze settle on the cobblestones in front of him. “If, you know. Our history comes up.”

Kory takes hold of Dick’s hand. “We don’t have to talk about history. Let’s not talk about anything dramatic at all. Let’s just have a fun trip.”

Across the street, Tim exits the cafe with a small paper bag. He stops on the sidewalk and takes in Dick and Kory’s posture, then raises an eyebrow at Dick.

“Okay,” Dick says. “No drama. Let’s do it.”

Kory has never been to Paris before. She was in talks with a magazine to do a shoot here, years back, but then the wedding happened. Since she and Dick have agreed not to discuss anything dramatic, she doesn’t bring it up.

Still, it’s exciting. They travel there by train, another thing Kory has never done before. She buys a coffee in the dining car, and she and Tim and Dick play rummy and talk about all the places they’ve been on their trip so far.

It’s barely noon when they arrive, so they drop off their bags at the hotel. (“You can stay in Bruce’s room,” Dick says. She can hardly even hear the bitterness when he says it.)

They visit a tiny dojo where Tim trained when he first became Robin, and Tim excitedly shows them around. Then Tim takes off with one of the other students, and Kory and Dick spend a few hours wandering the Marais district, picking out new clothes for Kory. They all meet back up in the evening for dinner at a restaurant whose waiters get marginally friendlier when Dick orders in perfect French.

It’s a lovely day, almost as lovely as the one before, and Kory doesn’t want it to end. The past few years have been so stressful, often so tragic—she savors the chance to simply have fun with people she likes.

Later, when the movie night in Dick’s hotel room is over, Kory wishes him and Tim goodnight and quietly slips back to her own room. She changes into pajamas, sinks onto the extremely fancy bed, and calls Donna.

“Kory!” Donna says, a little out of breath, but up-beat. “How’s Amsterdam?”

“I’m in Paris, now.”

“Another shoot?”

“No, just sightseeing.” Kory pauses, not sure she wants to have this whole conversation—but Donna will find out soon enough. “I’m with Dick. And Tim.”

For a moment, Kory hears only breathing on the other end of the phone. She imagines the face that goes with it: surprised, concerned, eyebrows furrowed. Even though she’s sure she won’t like what Donna’s about to say, Kory’s heart softens. She’s never met anyone who loves as fiercely and protectively as Donna.

“With Dick?” Donna says at last.

“Not like that. We met up in Amsterdam, and it was really nice, that’s all. We could all use a vacation.”

“Well, that’s definitely true,” Donna mumbles. She sighs. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Are you worried about me, or about Dick?”

“Both of you,” Donna says. “I’m always worried about both of you.”

Kory wishes she could hug her—and give her a vacation of her own. “Don’t be. We’ve agreed: no drama.”

“Well, if you’ve agreed,” Donna says, but then she sighs. “Okay, tell me about Paris.”

They chat for a while longer, about Paris and then about how Donna’s doing in New York, and then Kory hangs up. She turns out the lights and settles back into bed.

But despite the long and satisfying day, and the expensive mattress and sheets, and the soft city sounds outside the window, sleep doesn’t come. After an hour, Kory gets up and wanders out into the suite.

The suite is dark, but there’s a light on the balcony. Dick is out there, leaning on the railing and staring at the city. He shifts easily to make room when he hears Kory coming up behind him.

“Can’t sleep either?” he says. He looks tired and distant, and Kory might have asked him what’s wrong, or if he’s as worried as Donna is—but she remembers their agreement.

“It’s too nice a day to end,” Kory says. “Donna says hi.”

Dick’s face comes back to life. “I should call her. How is she?”

“Busy. But I think she likes being Wonder Woman.”

“Who wouldn’t? Wish Diana would ask me to fill in for her one of these days.”

Kory laughs. “Maybe I could fill in for Batman.”

“Oh, I would love to see that. Does that mean Donna’s stepping in for Superman?”

They keep on like that for a while, swapping Titans for JLA members and occasionally pausing to think up ways they could lure Donna over the Atlantic to vacation with them. Eventually, Kory starts yawning. She squeezes Dick’s hand, goes back to bed, and falls asleep immediately.

Donna may be worried, but Kory thinks that here and now, with nothing threatening them and no terrible responsibilities crushing them, being with Dick is the least dramatic thing in the world.

Every day in Paris, Dick and Kory sit a little bit closer to each other. Tim’s not sure if they’ve noticed, but how could they not? It’s gotten to the point where during movie night, they’re practically on top of each other.

Are they already hooking up? The three of them usually spend the mornings together, sightseeing or exploring, but they often split up in the afternoon—once Tim and Dick visited a Batman Historical Site while Kory shopped, but Dick and Kory also sometimes go off and do their own thing while Tim visits friends. And they could be getting up to anything at night.

But no, Tim doesn’t think so. There’s still a pervasive sense of unresolved tension, for one thing. And for another, he’s starting to suspect that Dick won’t do anything unless Tim nudges him. He’s being extremely responsible and big-brotherly on this trip, which is great, so great, but also, Tim’s a little tired of being handled like he’ll fall apart if the wind blows on him slightly wrong. In addition to being really cool and fun in her own right, Kory’s been a welcome presence just because she’s relieved a little of the pressure of Dick’s constant concerned attention.

He gives Dick until the night before their last day in Paris to act, but the situation doesn’t change. So he waits until Kory has gone to bed after movie night (Dick’s turn to choose—A League of Their Own, which Kory loved) and then ambushes him.

“When are you going to make a move?”

Dick doesn’t even bother to sit up from where he’s sprawled on the sofa. He just rolls his head over to glare at Tim. “I’m not.”

“You should.”

"I really shouldn't."

"You guys are still really into each other," Tim says. "It's obvious."

Dick scowls. "No, it isn't."

"Dick, you were playing with her hair. When's the last time you did that platonically?"

"The last time I saw Donna."

"Dick."

"There's… Look, there's really good reasons we shouldn't hook up, no matter how much it feels like we should."

"You don't have to stay celibate to cushion my feelings," Tim says, with a bit of bite.

"That's not what I'm doing."

"Yes, you are, and you've got to stop. This trip is supposed to be for both of us."

"It is. Tim, Kory's and my breakup was messy. There are reasons we shouldn't hook up that have nothing to do with you."

"Such as?"

"Such as mind your own business, kid."

Dick’s tone is friendly but firm, and Tim knows from experience he won’t get anything else on the subject. He is curious, though—maybe he’ll do a bit of poking around, next time he’s talking to someone who knew Dick back then. If they aren’t in the middle of a universe-threatening crisis, anyway.

“Fine,” Tim says. “But you should at least invite her to come with us to Munich.”

Dick buries his face in the couch cushion.

“Come on, she’s super fun to have around! She can come with us to Munich and London, and then jet before we meet up with Bruce in Oslo.”

Dick groans. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I ask,” Tim says, holding up his hands placatingly.

Dick tosses the throw blanket over his head.

"How goes no drama?" Donna says as soon as Kory picks up the phone.

"Extremely well," Kory says. A little pointedly, since she resents the skepticism in Donna's voice.

"Good," Donna says. "And I'm sorry, but I'm about to bring some up."

"If this is about—"

"It's nothing to do with Dick," Donna assures her. "I got a call from Amanda Waller today."

"Okay?"

"She has Komand'r in custody."

Kory's mouth goes dry. "Why did she call you?"

"She couldn't figure out how to contact you, I guess. She wants your help convincing Komand'r to join Suicide Squad."

Slaves with bombs in their brains. Kory shudders. "I won't."

"I didn't think so. But I thought you might want to see her yourself."

It's Dick and Kory and Tim's last night in Paris. They're going to see the Eiffel Tower. Kory has been asking about it for days—of course she has, it’s the Eiffel Tower!—but Dick’s been dragging his feet, muttering about tourist traps and how crowded it would be. But tonight they're going. And it's going to be beautiful and exciting and fun, and Kory just doesn't want to ruin it by thinking about her sister. She wants to focus on being in this beautiful city with these beautiful people, and… not have drama.

"Can it wait?" she says.

"She's in Belle Reve, and I don't think Waller is planning on moving her. If you need time, you should take it."

"Okay. Thanks for letting me know, Donna."

And then Kory puts her sister as far from her mind as possible.

At the Eiffel Tower, they take the stairs to avoid the lift line. (Kory offers to fly them up instead, but Dick laughs her off. “If we’re going to be tourists, let’s do it right.”) Halfway up, Tim announces he has a stitch in his side and needs to rest.

“Tim, I’ve seen you run more steps than this,” Dick says, narrowing his eyes.

“Well, you know how it is. Vacation, things get out of shape.” Tim leans against a railing, clutching his side.

“We can take a rest,” Kory says.

“No, no.” Tim waves them along. “You two go on without me. I’ll catch up.”

“How, with your withering vacation body?” Dick says.

“I’ll catch a second wind. Go! Shoo!”

They’re obviously in some kind of silent standoff that they haven’t clued Kory in on, and she decides impulsively to take Tim’s side. He’s a bright kid, and from what she’s seen he always has Dick’s best interests at heart.

“Let’s go, Dick,” she says, pulling him along after her. “He can meet us at the top.”

“Yeah, Dick.” Tim grins widely. “I’ll meet you at the top!”

They take their time getting there. The view truly is stunning, and gets more so the higher they climb. It's like nothing Kory ever saw on Tamaran—a field of lights, stretched out forever. Like the stars themselves have settled down over France.

At the final esplanade, they crowd up to the edge, seeing as much as they can. Dick leans his shoulder against hers, and Kory alights.

"Tim wants you to come with us to Munich," he says, eyes on the lights below.

"Oh," Kory says. She's never been good at hiding her feelings, but she wishes her hurt were less obvious. After all these years, Dick still can't open up enough to ask her himself.

He looks up, into her eyes. "I do too."

Their faces are very close. It's only natural for Kory to let her lips fall an inch to meet his.

"This feels like it could lead to drama," Dick says, without pulling back. His lips tickle Kory’s as he speaks.

Always so worried. “Not if we don’t let it,” Kory says.

She feels the moment he makes his decision—his lips widen against hers, a smile, and his body falls into hers as he deepens the kiss.

Someone whistles behind them. They turn around to see Tim cresting the stairs.

Dick slumps against Kory's shoulder. "He's going to be insufferable," he says into her collarbone.

Kory laughs.

Dick really hadn't intended to hook up with Kory again. He'd meant what he said to Tim. But her face so close to his, bathed in the light of the Eiffel Tower…

Stupid tourist traps.

But for all his anxiety, it's going really well. It's like the first couple of months of their relationship again, when everything was new and exciting and good, except better, because no one's trying to kill them this time.

In fact, Munich is a lot like Paris and Amsterdam, except instead of staring at each other longingly in museums and tourist sites, they—well, they stare at each other longingly, but then they find a secluded corner to make out in. They hold hands during the nightly movies. Dick loops his arm around Kory’s waist as they walk.

And it’s easy, and fun, and warm, until their fifth night in Munich, when Tim leaves them alone after they finish Amelie (Kory’s choice) and Kory’s basically sitting in his lap, and they start making out, of course, but this time Kory’s hand finds its way under Dick’s T-shirt, and Dick’s hand is somehow tracing the outline of Kory’s bra, and Dick thinks, We’re about to have sex again, and then he thinks, It’s been three years, and then he thinks, The last time was the night before the wedding, and then he thinks, Well, actually, the last time for me with anyone was—

And by then his heart rate has picked up in a bad way, and he pulls away. Kory looks maybe concerned or maybe hurt, and Dick would much prefer she weren’t either of those things, so he smiles and presses his forehead against hers.

“Let’s pick back up on this later,” he whispers.

“Sounds good to me,” she whispers back, kissing the corner of his mouth.

But when Dick gets back to his room alone, he wishes he’d let it keep going. Because even if he’d been anxious the whole time, he would’ve done it and gotten it over with, and it would’ve been great, because Kory’s great. But now he’s just fretting about it.

He lies wide awake for an hour, thoughts running laps around his head. What would’ve happened if they’d done it? (Nothing, it would’ve been fine.) Does Kory think he’s being weird? (Probably, because he is.) Would he have freaked out? (No, because there’s nothing to freak out about.)

Finally, he decides to stop being stupid and do something about it. He throws the covers off and strides into the suite’s common room. Kory is still up, watching TV on mute while she braids up her hair for the night.

“Couldn’t sleep?” she says.

“Not a wink.” He heads toward her, and she slides along the couch, giving him room to kneel next to her and plant a long, decisive kiss on her lips.

“Is it later already?” she says, when they part for air.

“It is,” Dick says.

The words are hardly out of his mouth before Kory has his T-shirt up over his head. “Kory,” he says, as she starts unbuttoning her pajama top. “Tim is in the other room.”

“Right! Yes! Bedroom.”

She grabs Dick’s hand and pulls him eagerly behind her to her room. Even as he pushes down surges of anxiety, Dick is a little thrilled to have made her so excited. They tumble onto the bed, and Kory resumes work on her buttons, while Dick kicks off his sweatpants.

When they’re both good and naked, Kory sets a hand on his shoulder, running her thumb over his clavicle. Dick’s heart picks up again.

“We don’t have to,” Kory says. “If it’s too much drama.”

She knows him so well. It’s thrilling, and it’s terrifying. He feels made of glass: utterly transparent, and utterly breakable. If he shuts down his face right now, Kory will see it, and she’ll know. Know that he’s feeling something he doesn’t want her to see, even if he doesn’t really understand it himself.

Instead, he surges in to kiss her.

The sex, like everything else, feels pulled from the first months of their relationship. It’s frantic, passionate, and basic. The nerves even feel familiar—his actual first time with Kory, Dick had been obsessing over how things ended with Liu, whether he could even do this with another person, whether he should.

When it’s over, and he lies tangled in Kory’s arms and her hair, he remembers something that he’d let fade into the background over the years, obscured by fresh tragedies and his eternal desire not to think about Liu: the relief he’d felt, after it was done. Because it had felt good, had felt right, and that meant that he could still do this, and better yet, could do it with Kory.

He feels that relief again now.

Things go well for the rest of their time in Munich, and even better in London. They eat fish and chips in pubs; they see a play at the West End; they visit all the tourist spots and don’t even mind waiting in line. Dick and Kory make out in front of Buckingham Palace, beside Big Ben, at the top of the London Eye. Tim pretends to retch, which is pretty rich for someone who went out of his way to set them up, and Dick swats the back of his head. They watch movies in the hotel at night and sleep late in the mornings.

Dick is as close to carefree as he’s been since he was eleven years old, and Kory and Tim are clearly also happy. He starts to feel like maybe vacations are a real thing, not something movie producers made up.

Then they get to Oslo, and Bruce isn’t there.

They track him down, all three of them, to the deserts outside Ma’an, Jordan. Tim stays to make sure Bruce is okay, and Kory and Dick head back to Gotham to make sure the Intergang situation they caught wind of in Jordan is handled, and then before Dick knows it, the problem is managed, the action is over, and it’s just him and Kory. Alone. In costume. On a Gotham sidewalk.

For the first time in a month, things feel awkward.

“Do you want to get some ice cream?” Dick says.

It’s actually too late to get real ice cream, so they stop in a gas station and buy an ice cream sandwich for Dick and a push-up pop for Kory. They take them up to a nearby rooftop and eat slowly, and mostly silently. Kory shivers.

“The weather’s changing,” she says. “We’re almost done with ice cream season.”

“Yeah.” Dick breaks a chunk of his ice cream sandwich off between his thumb and index finger. It leaves brown smudges on the bright blue stripes of his costume. “I guess vacation’s over.”

“I guess so.” Kory pushes a little more of her sherbet out of its cardboard tube. “Are you staying in Gotham?”

Dick decides to blame his sudden shudder on the chill in the air. “No, I need a little more distance than that. I was thinking New York, maybe. Donna’s there, and I know the city. And it’s close, but not too close, you know.”

He waits for Kory to respond, not sure what he’s hoping for. This is the conversation they’ve been putting off all summer. This is the thing he should’ve known from the start was a bad idea.

“I’ve always liked New York,” Kory says. “And I’d like to be near Donna too.”

Dick nods, staring down at his hands. The ice cream sandwich is melting. “Is this… Are we…”

“I love you,” Kory says. “You know I’ll always love you. And I’m ready to try again, if you are.”

God, Kory is so brave. So much braver than he’s ever been.

The wise thing to do, the adult thing, would be to say he’s not ready. It hasn’t even been six months since things ended with Babs, and he’s still raw and gun shy about the idea of even being Nightwing again. He doesn’t have the confidence he had a year ago. He’s not sure he can do any of this without fucking up.

But if the summer has taught him anything, it’s that he loves Kory. He’s sure of that. And she makes him feel brave, and confident, and all the other things he hasn’t been in a long time. She makes him feel like himself.

“I love you,” he says. “And I want to try again.”

Kory beams and pulls him in for an overly sweet kiss. When they part, he says, “You should know… I mean you do know, right, that I’ve got a little more baggage than I did last time around.”

“So do I,” Kory says. “Let’s figure it out together.”

Chapter Text

Donna would’ve thought that once she was living in the same city as Dick and Kory again, she would immediately see them both all the time. But it turns out that when everyone is an adult with a job and a night job, and no one is living together, coordinating hang-outs gets complicated. Finally, when Dick and Kory have been in town for two weeks, they have a night free to come over to Donna’s for dinner.

She feels for injuries while hugging them hello, and studies their expressions for any signs of unhappiness. There’s no reason anything should be wrong—they’ve just come back from vacation, and there have only been minor dust-ups since then—but it’s habit at this point. Donna knows they do the same for her.

They are, to all indications, whole and happy. Maybe wholer and happier than she’s seen them in years. Donna can’t remember the last time she saw Dick without a bandage or a brace somewhere, and the last time she saw either him or Kory hold someone’s hand as steadily or stare into someone’s eyes as besottedly as they are tonight, none of them had been legal to drink.

Still, she worries.

They eat Thai food straight from the takeout containers, Dick perched on the armrest of the easy chair with his curry noodles in his lap, Donna and Kory at the coffee table. Donna catches the two of them up on local superhero gossip, and Kory and Dick tell tales from their vacation. It’s fun, and Donna finally lets herself feel how much she’s missed this—having her two best friends in the same room, not arguing or tense or awkward, but just happy.

She relaxes enough to forget the thing that she knows Kory and Dick have both been trying to ignore—that their relationship is riddled with poorly concealed landmines.

“Amanda Waller called me again,” Donna says, as she—the slowest eater of the three of them by far—finishes up her last bites of pad kee mao. “Should I give her your number?”

Dick raises his eyebrows at Kory. “What’s Waller want with you?”

Donna hadn’t realized that Kory hadn’t told Dick about Komand’r. Kory’s never been big on secrets.

“She has my sister,” Kory says, tightly but as far as Donna can tell without any irritation. “She wants me to convince her to join the Suicide Squad.”

“I thought she was dead,” Dick says.

Kory shakes her head. “I ran into her during the Crisis. She survived the destruction of New Tamaran, but I think it…” She sighs. “She tried to kill me again.”

Dick grimaces. “Looks like we have a bumper crop of murderous formerly-dead siblings this year. And now she’s in Belle Reve?”

"Yes." Kory sighs. "I guess I'll visit her this week."

"You're going?"

"I won't help Waller, but I want to talk to Komand'r."

"Why?" Dick says.

Even though Donna privately agrees with him, she buries her face in her hands in frustration. For such a great natural leader, Dick sure does have a knack for saying things in the most alienating way possible.

No offense to the aliens in the room, of course.

"Because she's my sister, and it's my decision," Kory says tightly.

Dick, thank God, reads the vibe and backs off. "You're right," he says. "It's your call."

But he doesn't sound happy about it.

“She’s in sub-level 7,” says Amanda Waller, leading Kory briskly into a clean, gleaming jail cell of an elevator. She punches a button and they descend. “It’s got facilities for containing people of your sister’s… abilities.”

Waller glances at Kory’s hands. Kory resists the urge to make them glow a little.

The elevator arrives at its level, and Waller strides out into the hall, not looking to see if Kory is keeping up. This level doesn’t look like the Earth prisons Kory has seen—it looks more like the Citadel, with high-tech doors and heavy locks and sensors every few yards.

“Komand’r has been extremely resistant to the idea of working for us. I'm hoping that you—"

Kory goes ahead and lets her hands flare with power. "I'm not here to help you enslave her. Komand'r can decide for herself if she wants to be part of your squad. I'm just here to talk to my sister."

Waller rolls her eyes. “Whatever you say.”

She presses her palm up against a scanner next to one of the doors, and pushes through when it unlocks.

They step through into a grey, featureless room, divided down the center by a translucent force field. On the visitor’s side of the field sit three chairs. On the other side, a bed, a small metal table and chair, and in the chair, wearing a plain white jumpsuit, Komand’r.

Komand’r looks up as Kory enters. “Koriand’r. Here to gloat?”

“Nothing about this makes me happy.” Kory drops into the chair closest to the force field.

“I’ll be just outside,” Waller says, and backs out through the door. Kory assumes she plans to listen in on everything they say.

“Of course you’re happy,” Komand’r says. “Here I am, imprisoned, with my fate in your hands. You must think it’s exceptional revenge.”

“I hate seeing you in prison. I hate seeing anyone in prison.”

Komand’r laughs. “But trying to kill me, you don’t mind.”

“You don’t seem to mind killing or imprisoning me,” Kory says.

“But that is revenge.” Komand’r leans forward, and for the first time since she entered, Kory sees the gleam of life in her sister’s eyes. “For the birthright you stole.”

“What does it matter? Tamaran is gone. Neither of us is queen of anything.”

Komand’r bares her teeth. “Some things always matter, Koriand’r.”

A wave of exhaustion crashes over Kory. Just keeping her head up, just looking Komand’r in the eye, feels more difficult than any test or trial on Okaara. It doesn’t seem to matter what she says to Komand’r, or what happens between them. Nothing ever changes. The cell is dead and oppressive; it feels as far from Tamaran as she’s ever been.

“Do you remember the flowers?” Kory says. “Outside the temple?”

“Is that what you want to talk about? Flowers?”

“You used to pick them. You loved those flowers.”

“You’re thinking of Ryand’r.”

“No, I’m not. It was you.”

Komand’r closes her eyes. “Well, it’s like you said. They’re gone, now.”

Now that Waller knows that Kory’s not going to help get her sister on Suicide Squad, she’s limited to the official visitation hours: Saturdays, noon to 3 pm.

Dick really thought, after she came back from the first visit looking wrecked, that Kory would give up. But she doesn’t. She visits every week.

Today, she arrived at Dick’s apartment just after four pm, curled up on the couch, put on an old episode of Forged in Fire, and fell asleep. She said maybe three words to Dick.

He wakes her up for dinner at seven, and they eat on the couch in front of the TV. The nap seems to have done her some good; she joins Dick in critiquing the weaponry on the show, and gets up for a second helping of stir fry.

But then 9 pm hits, and Dick stretches and gets up. “I guess I’ll go get suited up. Where are you headed tonight?”

“I don’t think I’m going out,” Kory says. “I’m still tired.”

He runs his eyes up and down her, trying to see an injury that he knows fully well is internal. She keeps her gaze on the TV.

Have you considered taking a break from seeing your sister? he thinks.

But he knows what her answer would be, and he doesn’t want a fight.

“Okay,” he says. “See you in the morning.”

Donna is happy Dick and Kory are back together. Really. Truly! And she's thrilled that they're all together in New York again, and actually making a point of seeing each other.

However. She's also flashing back to when they were 18, and she spent half her time playing relationship therapist.

"Dick is driving me crazy," Kory says, picking up a pear and smelling it for ripeness. She and Donna have started grocery shopping together. It's something they used to do when they lived together, and even though they now go home to different apartments, it's still fun to lazily wander the store together and talk each other into making ill-advised impulse purchases.

"What's he doing now?" Donna hovers her hand over the McIntosh apples, looking for one with the least bruises. "Overworking himself, failing to communicate, or being judgmental?"

No one insults me quite like you, Dick said to her once.

Oh, you insult yourself just fine, Donna had said.

"Every time I come back from visiting Komand'r, he glares."

"That's it? He glares?" Donna hands her an opened produce bag; Kory always has trouble opening them herself.

"And then stops talking for the rest of the night. He doesn't say anything about it, but I can feel everything he wants to say, and that's almost worse."

Donna sighs, giving up on the apples and leading Kory over to the onions. "He doesn't like Komand'r. And you know how protective he can be."

"I know," Kory says. "But she's my sister, not his."

Donna doesn't bother asking if she's tried talking to him about it; if Dick decides he doesn't want to talk about something, there's no changing his mind.

There's also the fact that she kind of agrees with Dick on this one, but if she tells Kory that, then Kory will stop talking about it.

"Maybe just take those days for yourself," she says instead. "He's back to normal by the next day, right?"

"He is," Kory says. "I'll try that."

And so the problem is resolved, until the next day, when Donna meets up with Dick for a morning run.

"I'm worried about Kory," he says as they round a bend in the park's path. "She's still seeing Komand'r every week."

"So I've gathered. You know Kory can take care of herself."

"It's not her physical well-being I'm worried about." Dick briefly pauses to grab an overhanging tree branch and swing from it, dropping back down into place beside Donna without breaking pace. "She's depressed. Every time she comes back from visiting her sister, she's so obviously upset. It takes her a week to get back to normal, and then she goes and visits her again!"

Dick is the last person who should be lecturing anyone on visiting toxic family members, but that’s not a fight Donna’s going to pick in the middle of a five-mile run. Funny that just yesterday, Donna was privately agreeing with Dick, and now she finds herself silently taking Kory’s side.

Although Dick’s right about one thing: Kory has been depressed since she started seeing Komand’r.

“Have you tried, oh, talking to her about it?” Donna says.

“What’s the point? She’ll only say that it’s her decision, and she’s right.”

“Wild idea, but instead of trying to talk her into doing what you want to do, you could talk to her about her feelings.”

For a few moments, Donna hears only the sound of their breathing and their pounding footsteps as Dick considers.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “You’re right.”

Donna should be getting paid for this.

Dick knows that Donna’s right about talking to Kory. He dated Kory for years, and he’s very aware of the value that she places on emotion and communication.

However.

He can’t shake the feeling that he’s going to fuck this conversation up. There’s no reason that he should—Dick can admit that he has some issues, but he does, in fact, know how to say, “Hey, you seem sad, want to talk about it?” But he can’t help feeling he’s going to say it wrong, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, and make everything worse.

It's a stupid hang-up, and he gives himself until Monday to get over it. Kory won't be seeing her sister until Saturday anyway, and in the meantime there's Thanksgiving at the Manor, which is a terrible time for an emotional talk.

This is Kory’s first Thanksgiving in Gotham. By the time she and Dick got together, he and Bruce were already on thin ice emotionally, and they didn’t fully reconcile, in the “spending holidays together” sense, until after the breakup.

They borrow Donna's car for the trip, since neither motorcycle nor open-air flying is a pleasant way to get two people to New Jersey in November. It's actually a fun drive down, despite the holiday traffic—Kory hasn't traveled by car much, so Dick gets to teach her all the road trip games. They spot license plates from nine different states, and after Dick nearly crashes into the car in the next lane, he asks Kory to please warn him before punch-buggying when he's driving.

It’s early afternoon when they pull into the drive. Alfred greets them warmly at the door (“It’s been too long, Miss Anders.”) and immediately hurries off to the kitchen to finish preparing the meal. He physically bars the door against Dick’s attempts to help, so Dick and Kory spend the next few hours watching old Christmas movies with Tim and Cass. The movies are mostly pretty bad—and judging by the faces she makes, Cass agrees—but apparently this was a childhood tradition for Tim and his mother, so Dick keeps his nitpicking good-natured.

In the final half hour of White Christmas, Bruce finally ascends from the Cave. He lurks silently over the sofa for ten seconds before saying anything.

“I do not understand this movie,” he says.

Everyone else in the room breaks into laughter. Dick stands up to give Bruce a manly side-hug, as is their tradition. “Happy Thanksgiving, Bruce.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Dick.” Bruce turns toward Kory, who’s just stood up and is hanging back as awkwardly as Kory is capable of doing anything. “Koriand’r.”

“Thank you for having me,” she says.

Dick hadn’t exactly forgotten that Bruce and Kory aren’t each other’s biggest fans, but he’d sort of let himself not think about it. Bruce had never liked any of the Titans much, and the Titans had returned the sentiments, but they all get along reasonably well now.

The steel wall of tension in the room is making Dick think that maybe he’s overestimated how much forgiving and forgetting everyone’s done.

“Hey,” he says, putting on his most exuberant voice and slinging an arm around Kory’s shoulders. “Who’s ready for turkey?”

Tim, bless his overly-helpful heart, cheerfully says, “I think Alfred made that sweet potato casserole with marshmallows!”

“Are you serious?” Dick says. “He never did that when I was a kid.”

Cass, catching onto the game, smiles smugly and says, “I asked him to.”

“Unbelievably unfair,” Dick says.

Tim and Cass keep chattering about the food while Dick shepherds everyone into the dining room, making sure Kory sits at the far side of the table from Bruce. By that time, though, the anticipation has stopped being a ploy and become real, and Tim is giving an impassioned ranking of traditional Thanksgiving foods. Everyone seems to have mostly forgotten the initial tension.

Soon enough, Alfred announces dinner cooked. Dick wrestles him into sitting down and letting Dick carve the turkey, and Thanksgiving is under way for real.

It goes really well at first. Kory compliments Alfred’s roasted Brussels sprouts and compares them favorably to a dish that featured heavily in the most important of Tamaran’s six harvest festivals. Tim begs Dick and Kory for details about life in New York City. Cass and Kory compare their reactions to all of the classic Thanksgiving foods that neither of them have had before. (Cranberry sauce gets a surprisingly favorable grade from both.) Bruce mostly concentrates on eating, and Dick worries a little bit about what his silence is hiding, but everyone’s having a good time.

Then they hit the lull between dinner and dessert. Everyone agrees they need a few minutes to digest before pie, which leaves them sitting around the table with no food to distract them.

“So, Koriand’r,” Bruce says. “You and Dick reconnected in Amsterdam, I hear?”

Dick is pretty sure that Bruce is just trying his best to make polite conversation, but he’s missing the mark wildly. He sounds somewhere between disinterested and disapproving. Dick can practically see Kory’s hackles rising.

“That’s right,” Dick says quickly. “While you were in Jordan.”

“And things are going well?”

Now Dick is a little offended. Bruce could at least try not to sound skeptical.

“They’re going very well,” Kory says, which is maybe overstating things at this exact second, but Dick appreciates the support.

“How are you finding the balance with your night work?” Bruce says. “I notice you’re not working together.”

“I think we can do without the interrogation, Bruce,” Dick says.

Tactical error. It's always a tactical error to rise to Bruce's bait. Dick is aware on some level that Bruce probably wasn't actually trying to interrogate him before—but he sure is now.

"Your night work is suffering, then," Bruce says.

“No more than yours does when Talia is in town,” Dick says, which is a low blow, but also, come on, Bruce.

“You have a history of this,” Bruce says, with no indication that the blow landed. “Getting wrapped up in someone and letting things slip by.”

Dick’s breath catches, because for a second he thinks Bruce is talking about Catalina, or even Liu, and the sheer inconsiderateness is a little mind-blowing even after years of fights with Bruce. Then his sense catches back up with him, and he realizes Bruce is probably talking about his and Kory’s first time dating.

Which is still incredibly rude, but more typical. And easier for Dick to defend against.

He doesn’t get the chance, though; Kory takes over. She slams her hand against the table, sending dishes and silverware clattering.

"Stop," she says. "This is a holiday. Be kind to each other."

"Holiday or not, I need to know whether Dick is being distracted by—"

"By what?" Kory says. "Someone he loves?"

"By an undisciplined fighter."

"Bruce—" Dick starts, but Kory cuts him off.

"I am not undisciplined. I was trained by the warriors of Okaara. I know a dozen forms of fighting, and I can aim my blows only at the deserving."

"Okaaran training also produced your sister," Bruce says.

Kory shoots a starbolt. It grazes past Bruce's left cheek and incinerates the ugly Classical portrait on the wall behind him.

Then she storms from the room.

Behind Bruce’s head, the remains of the portrait belatedly crash to the ground, leaving behind them a square of singed, peeling wallpaper. The room smells faintly like burning chemicals. Dick wonders faintly if burnt wallpaper glue is toxic.

"Absolutely undisciplined," Bruce says.

"I don't know," Tim says. "I think she hit what she was aiming for."

When Kory was young, any time her parents fought, Luand'r would step out onto the balcony. "To feel the air," she told Kory once. "To remember that I'm part of something greater, and my anger is only significant if it contributes."

The air on the Manor's front balcony is chilly and still. It smells like snow, and all Kory can see around her is the long front drive and the imposing iron gates. Maybe that's why she's having trouble remembering that she's part of something greater.

When Kory was young, her father had also left her mother alone until she was ready to come back in. But she's not surprised that Dick doesn't.

"Well, that was exciting." He leans against the railing beside her, and Kory remembers doing the same thing when she found him on the balcony that first night in Amsterdam. The air was better there. “I’ve never been to a Thanksgiving with property damage before.”

“He deserved it,” Kory says.

“He was being an asshole. If you threw a starbolt every time Bruce did that, there’d be no house left. Besides, I was an asshole too.”

“He insulted Tamaran!”

“He insulted your sister! There’s a difference.”

Kory has to stop herself from throwing another starbolt right now. "Is that why you don't want me visiting Komand'r, then? Bruce doesn't like her?"

"No, it's because I don't like her, because she tried to kill you. I do have some opinions of my own."

"I don't like Bruce, and I still came here to see him with you."

"She tried to kill you, Kory! It's a little bit different!"

"And you wouldn't visit Jason? If he were the one in Belle Reve?"

Dick hesitates. "It's different," he repeats.

"It’s not different!” Kory says. “You just hold your family and mine to different standards.”

“I do not!” Dick says.

“You’re so afraid of anything Tamaranean, anything emotional! Well, you don’t need to worry about me leaving you for Tamaran, Dick. There’s no Tamaran to leave for anymore.”

When they were young, Kory found Dick difficult to read. Most people on Earth were less emotionally expressive than Tamaraneans, but Dick sometimes seemed to show no emotion at all. Everything was always so shut-down, so no-nonsense—and it wasn’t like he made up for it by talking about his feelings. Instead, he let it build and build, until he couldn’t contain it anymore.

But after knowing and loving him for six years, Kory has learned to see him the way that Donna and Wally see him: as someone whose emotions are not nearly as well buried as he would probably like them to be.

So she sees her words hit him. Sees the shock, the anger, and the grief that they cause. And then she sees it all soften into love.

“Can I start this conversation over?” he says.

Kory was so angry just a second ago, but it’s hard to keep it up when Dick is looking at her like that. “Okay.”

Dick raises his hand in a sheepish little wave. “Hey,” he says. “I’m glad I found you out here. You seem really sad. Do you want to talk about it?”

Kory’s heart cannot contain her love, and she wouldn’t want it to. She pulls Dick into the hardest hug she can manage. “I love you,” she whispers in his ear.

“I love you too,” he says.

“I am sad,” she says. “I’m so… Tamaran…”

Kory isn’t used to struggling to speak her feelings, but this is too big of a loss to name. Instead, she calls up her grief, lets it fill her, lets it spill out as tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Dick says, running his hands up and down her back. “I’m so incredibly sorry.”

“She’s all that’s left, Dick. She’s all I have left of it.”

She expects him to argue, but he doesn’t. He squeezes her harder and rocks her back and forth, and lets her cry.

In a moment, Kory will stop crying. She’ll dry her eyes and apologize to Alfred for singeing his dining room wall, and she’ll say her goodbyes to Tim and Cass, and she and Dick will drive home to New York.

For now, she stands outside with Dick, in the air that smells like the approaching winter, and remembers that she’s part of something greater.

Chapter Text

"I ran into someone I know, today," Dick says. He lays back on Donna's sofa, letting his feet dangle over the arm rest.

Donna, with most of her attention on the photograph she's touching up on her computer, says, "Mm. Who?"

"Liu."

That gets her attention. Her eyes snap to Dick's face like he’s pulled a cord.

"I thought she was in jail," Donna says.

"Not for life."

"Where was she?"

"She was in town. She came by the gym." Dick pauses, acknowledging to himself ahead of time that there's only one possible reaction Donna could have to the next part. "She wants me to have dinner with her and Eddie."

"Dick, no."

"I'm not gonna let her manipulate me. I'm not a stupid 16-year-old anymore." He takes in Donna's silent concern. "That's your cue to say I'm a stupid 25-year-old now."

Donna frowns—she's nearly as good as Alfred at expressing loving but severe disapproval. "You're not stupid now, and you weren't then. But please don't go to dinner with her."

"I just want to know if she's really reformed. I just want to see for myself."

"Why does it matter?"

"Because…" He lifts a hand and lets it drift downwards again. "There was a time when I thought she was my first love, I guess."

"But she wasn't. Kory was."

“You think Kory will be upset? About me meeting with an ex?”

“No, I think Kory would be upset about you meeting with someone who hurt you.”

And yeah, that’s probably right. With a couple of exceptions for extraordinary circumstances, Kory doesn’t really do jealousy. But she does do protectiveness, like no one else Dick’s ever met.

“She doesn’t know about Liu,” Dick says. “Not like running into her today, I mean—I never told her.”

That seems to stop Donna short. She sits back in her chair, tapping a finger restlessly along the arm. “She thought you were a virgin?”

Dick shrugs. “I told her I had a girlfriend in high school.”

“Dick, you know there’s nothing to be ashamed of—”

“Isn’t there?” Dick sits up, letting his anger bolster him. He’s not angry at Donna, but still. Anger is easier than the rest of it. “I ran off, fell in with a gang of thieves, and let a woman twice my age con me into thinking she was in love with me, all so she could rob Bruce.”

“You were manipulated by two adults, who—”

“I was stupid and selfish and naive—”

“—who used the fact that you were vulnerable against you. You get that, right? That they were actively looking for kids who were in trouble, kids who needed support?”

“I was Robin, I wasn’t—”

“You were a traumatized teenage runaway with an emotionally abusive guardian.”

Now, now he’s angry at Donna. “Could we,” he says, staring her dead in the face, “for once, just leave Batman out of it.”

Donna puffs herself up with a deep breath, and visibly swallows down her anger. “Fine,” she says. “Forget him. They hurt you, Dick, and now they want to use the groundwork that they laid when you were a kid to hurt you again. Please stay away from them.”

She’s wide-eyed and sincere, and Dick knows that if anyone has his best interests at heart, it’s Donna. She believes what she’s saying, and she’s almost certainly right, at least about Liu’s intentions. But…

But he is ashamed. And he needs to know.

“If they’re up to something, I need to know what it is,” he says, getting up to leave.

“This is exactly what you were arguing with Kory about before,” Donna says.

“Well, maybe she was right.”

Not that he’ll be asking her.

It’s nearly midnight when Kory lands on Donna’s fire escape, but she doesn’t care. She bangs on the door, too anxious to worry about what the neighbors might think.

Donna opens the door in her pajamas, her hair pulled back messily. “Kory? What’s wrong?”

Kory pushes past into the apartment. “Have you heard from Dick?”

“He was over a couple of days ago, but not since then.” Donna grabs Kory’s wrist and pulls her around so that she can look into her eyes. “Is he in trouble?”

“We were supposed to meet for a late dinner before he went out tonight,” Kory says. “But he’s not at his apartment, and he’s not picking up his phone. And when I went in, things were knocked over.”

Donna grabs her own phone off the coffee table and checks the texts. “I don’t have anything from him since last night. When did you last talk?”

“This morning, when we made our plans.”

“Before he went to work?”

Kory nods. “I have his boss’s number, but I don’t know if it’s too late to call.”

“And we don’t want to tip them off to anything Nightwing-related.” Donna taps a finger anxiously against the edge of her phone. “Why don’t you text his boss, and say Dick thinks he left his phone at the gym today.”

“And maybe she’ll let me know if she saw him there. Okay.”

“I’m calling Tim,” Donna says. “If it’s Bat-related, he’ll know.”

Kory half-listens to Donna’s conversation while she’s texting. Hi! Dick thinks he might have left his phone at the gym today. Did you see him with it?

“No… This morning… We’re checking,” Donna says.

Three little dots appear at the bottom of Kory’s screen. They hang there for what seems like forever.

Thought I saw him on it when he left

But I’ll check tomorrow!

“Okay, thanks,” Donna says, hanging up. “Tim doesn’t know anything, but he’s going to ask Oracle if she does.”

“Dick’s boss saw him at work today,” Kory says. “I know his class ended at two.”

“And you saw his apartment, what, just now?”

Kory nods. “So that’s a nine hour window.”

“And…” Donna sinks onto the sofa, looking a little bit sick. “He wouldn’t have been in costume yet.”

“They weren’t after Nightwing,” Kory says. “They were after Dick.”

Donna buries her face in her hands. When she looks up, her face looks heavy. Something is dragging down her thoughts.

“Did Dick tell you about the case he’s working?” she says.

“He just finished up with Raptor,” Kory says.

“No.” Donna shakes her head. “I mean, did he tell you about Liu?”

Kory sits down next to Donna. “Who’s Liu?”

“She’s Dick’s… ex, I guess. From before we met you.”

“His high school girlfriend? Is she in trouble?” And if she was, why would Dick have told Donna but not her?

“She is trouble,” Donna says. “Dick ran away for a while when he was 16. Another ugly fight with Bruce—you know how that goes.”

It takes all of Kory’s restraint not to rush Donna through her story. It’s clearly important, but Dick is missing, and she wants to skip right to the part that’s relevant to right now.

“Anyway,” Donna says, “he ended up in New York, and he fell in with this man, Eddie, and this woman Liu. He and Liu started sleeping together, but eventually he realized they were just manipulating him—trying to get his access to Bruce’s business, so they could steal from him. So Dick put his Robin suit back on and caught them in the act.”

Donna catches Kory’s gaze and holds it. “That is who Liu is. And three days ago, Dick told me that she was out of jail, in town, and wanted to get dinner.”

Kory tries to fit this in with what she’s always known about Dick. Fighting with Bruce and running away, that makes sense. But the idea that the “high school girlfriend” he’d casually mentioned when they first started dating was actually a story this emotionally loaded…

Well, maybe that makes sense too. Even Dick had admitted when they first started dating that he had trouble opening himself up emotionally.

“And of course Dick agreed,” Kory says. Because even if it turns out there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Dick, she knows that much.

“I think so,” Donna says. “But he stopped talking to me about it after I told him it was a bad idea.”

“You think she would hurt him?” A silly question. She already had. “Physically?”

“I don’t know. But I think she was definitely planning on using him again, and I know that Eddie is dangerous.”

“Okay, then.” Kory stands up. “We’ll find them, and we’ll stop them from hurting Dick again.”

It’s not that Dick didn’t expect Kory and Donna to have missed him while he was gone—he just didn’t expect them to be in his living room when he stumbled back into his apartment two days later. He’d thought he’d get a moment to collect himself before he had to explain.

Instead, he finds himself engulfed in Donna’s arms the moment he opens his door. “Dick!” Her voice is muffled by his chest. “Where have you been?”

Over Donna’s head, Dick sees Kory, clasping her hands together and looking impatient to get her turn. He pushes Donna gently away and lets Kory throw herself at him.

“I got ambushed by the Vigilante,” he says, when she finally lets go. “Not Adrian Chase—this guy’s new. He saw me with…”

Except Kory doesn’t know about Liu and Eddie. How to explain without explaining that?

“With Liu?” Kory says.

He glares at Donna, who crosses her arms. “You went missing after announcing your plans to meet up with two known criminals. I had to tell her.”

“I was fine,” Dick says, although he knows that Donna’s being perfectly reasonable. He just hates the idea of Kory knowing about yet another one of his fuck-ups.

“We didn’t know that!” Kory says. “Where were you?”

She sounds more worried than she does angry, but Dick can’t stop thinking about the fact that she knows, now. It’s making him lightheaded.

Or maybe that’s the hunger. He hasn’t eaten in two days. If he has a sandwich, maybe his brain will start functioning again.

He pushes past Kory and into the kitchen and starts throwing open doors, trying to remember where he left the bread.

“Dick?” Donna says. She and Kory have followed him into the kitchen. “Where were you?”

Dick finds the bread on top of the microwave and tosses it on the counter. “The new Vigilante, whoever he is, saw me meeting with Liu and Eddie.” He starts rummaging through the fridge—he’s pretty sure he’s got some sliced turkey in there somewhere. “I guess I’m not the only one who was suspicious of them, because he ambushed me and took me to his place to question me about what they’re up to.”

“What are they up to?” Kory says.

“Don’t know yet.” There’s the turkey—and some sliced muenster, for good measure.

“Are you okay?”

Dick takes out two slices of bread and starts layering turkey. “Just hungry. It’s not like the Vigilante’s got some high-tech torture lair, it’s just his apartment.”

He adds a slice of cheese to his sandwich. When he looks up, Donna is eyeing him with an unfortunately familiar look—the one she always gives him when she thinks he’s hiding something.

“And it took you two days to escape?” Donna says.

Busted. “I may not have been trying particularly hard at the beginning. I wanted to see what information I could get out of him.”

He turns around to get the mayo out of the fridge (and avoid Donna’s deepening glare) but Kory is blocking his way. Her eyes are glowing, literally. God, he really has fucked this one up.

“Do you,” she says, “have any idea how worried we’ve been? We’ve been looking all over the city for you! We were about to call in Batman!”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not like I planned it. It just happened, and once I was there, it seemed like the best option.”

“Going missing for two days was a better option than asking us for help?”

“I didn’t want you to know!” Dick really wishes he could just eat his sandwich. He's pretty sure he'd be handling this better if he did. "You weren't supposed to know about Liu!"

"Why? Why was not telling me so important?"

"Kory, back down for a second." Donna moves past Dick to lay a hand on her arm. Kory shakes it off.

"Why wasn't I supposed to know?"

"Because I don't think you need to know any more of my stupid mistakes with women," Dick says.

"What are you talking about?" Kory says, but she's got an odd tone in her voice, and Dick thinks she probably has some idea what he means.

"You know what I'm talking about, so can we just drop it?"

"Did you think I would judge you for being taken advantage of?"

"I thought you might judge me for being stupid enough to let her."

"You weren't—"

"Kory, you know what I'm talking about, so stop!"

For a second, she does stop. The whole room holds its breath; the only sound is the suddenly very loud humming of the refrigerator.

"Mirage?" Kory says. "Dick, she has nothing—"

"I don't want to talk about it!"

He grabs his half-assembled sandwich and bolts from the room. Behind him, he can hear Donna talking to Kory. "Give him a minute," she says.

Dick drops into a chair at his dining table and stuffs half his sandwich in his mouth. It's dry, and takes him forever to chew, but when he finally does swallow, he feels slightly less keyed up.

Unfortunately, that's when Kory breaks past Donna and storms out of the kitchen. She plants her hands on the table across from Dick.

"When Mirage took me, I spent three days alone in captivity because no one was looking for me. We have been looking all over the city for you for two days!"

"Yeah, I get it, I screwed up. That's what I do, screw things up. You should be used to it by now."

“Talk to me, Dick!”

Dick shoves the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and crosses his arms across his chest. In his history of petty reactions to arguments, this one is close to the top of the list.

“Kory,” Donna says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Take a break.”

“Fine!” Kory throws Donna’s hand off. “Come find me when you’re ready to talk.”

She leaves, slamming the apartment door behind her.

Donna slides into the seat across from Dick. "That's why you didn't want to tell Kory about Liu?” she says, her eyes soft. “You thought it would remind her of Mirage?"

"Well, she's another woman I was stupid enough to sleep with."

"Dick, you weren't stupid—"

"Yeah, you know, we've been over this, but it actually was stupid to sleep with Mirage, and I think you know that," Dick snaps.

Oh god, he needs to stop talking. He needs to shut up and make himself another sandwich before every ugly, unfair feeling about this spills out.

He stays where he is.

"What are you talking about?" Donna says.

"Whenever I talk about Liu, you get this look in your eye. Like you want to strangle her with your lariat."

"That's because I do."

"But not Miriam. She's your friend."

Donna’s eyes widen. “Dick…”

Dick stands up abruptly. He can’t stay here any longer, can’t hear whatever Donna’s explanation is going to be, can’t listen to her finally agree with him. Or not agree with him.

“I’m going out,” he says. “Patrol. Lock up after you leave.”

“Dick!”

But he slips into his room and shuts the door behind him. He doesn’t check to see if Donna’s still there when he leaps out his bedroom window and into the night.

After two hours of searching, Donna finds Dick on top of an Italian grocery in Brooklyn. He’s set up like he’s on a stakeout, settled at the edge of the roof in a seated position he can hold for a long time. He even has binoculars out. But he’s not looking through them.

“Hi Donna,” he says, without turning around. He sounds tired, but calmer than when he left.

She sits down beside him. “How’d you know it was me?”

“You landed too light to have jumped up here, so it had to be someone who can fly. No glow, so not Kory. No attack, so probably not an enemy. So unless Power Girl relocated… I took a guess.”

“Smart,” Donna says.

“Plus. I figured you’d be looking for me.”

“You do know me well.”

“I do.”

They sit for a while, watching customers hurry in and out of the 99¢ store across the street. It is not, as far as Donna can tell, a hub of any crime.

“I like to think I know you pretty well too,” Donna says. “Sometimes I think I know you better than anyone else.”

“That sounds right.”

“But I’m not actually inside your head. I can be wrong about you. I think I forget that, sometimes.”

Dick doesn’t say anything. To all appearances, he’s entirely focused on the grocery store.

Donna sighs. Time for the hard part. “When Miriam… did what she did, I was worried about you. And Kory, but especially you. You were already struggling so much, doubting yourself, and I worried that this would just make things worse. And when Kory broke things off, and you proposed… You were so erratic, so angry, and I was really frightened for you.”

She’s crying, suddenly. Not even because of Dick. Her memories of that time are shot through with worry for him—but they’re even more strongly suffused with the glow and exhaustion and joy of the first months of her son’s life. She hasn’t let herself think about those months in a long time. But it’s important now.

“When I invited Miriam and her team to stay with me, I thought I was removing a stressor. I thought if she had a place to stay other than the mansion, it would give you and Kory space to settle down and work things out. Because I thought that was the problem.”

Dick’s face is frozen. Only the barest motion of his chest shows that he’s breathing at all.

“But I was wrong, wasn’t I? The problem, the real problem, was what Miriam did to you.”

Dick’s face cracks. His breath hitches. Donna hopes so desperately that she does know him well enough that this is helping.

"Dick, you weren't stupid to sleep with Liu, and you weren't stupid to sleep with Miriam. They're the ones who did something wrong, not you. I am so sorry that I didn’t see that at the time. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to understand, and I’m… Dick, I’m unbelievably sorry that it happened to you at all.”

Dick shakes his head. "Liu… it's like she set me up to fail. I keep letting these things happen. I keep finding myself in the same place."

It kills her to see him like this. All Donna wants is to protect Dick, and she knows he feels the same way about her. But she thinks she might have missed her shot at protecting him from this.

"I'm the only one you ever told about Liu, aren't I?" she says.

“You and Bruce,” he says.

She can imagine how helpful Bruce’s reaction must have been. "And Miriam… you've never talked to anyone about how you feel about that."

Dick sighs. "Kory, a little. Back… You know, when I proposed."

So no, not in any way that counts. Donna bites her lip, wondering whether to say the next part—wondering if she's reading him right, and if she is, whether it's something she should be saying.

Well, not mentioning things doesn't seem to have been working so far.

"And there's something else, right?” she says. “Something more recent?"

Dick shrugs one shoulder.

"And you haven't told anyone at all."

Dick works his jaw. "No," he says, so quiet it's almost buried under the sound of a car passing below.

"Is there anyone you trust to talk to about this? Maybe someone who's not so close to it?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"But maybe you need to."

It’s cold outside, and Donna’s costume is not as insulated as Dick’s. But she doesn’t move, and she doesn’t shiver, as she waits for him to think it over.

“I might know someone,” he says. “Kind of a friend, kind of a therapist. You remember Clancy?”

“Your old super? Didn’t you guys date?”

“Not really.” Dick waves his hand noncommittally in the air. “Never got past the first kiss. Probably it’s technically a breach of professional ethics, but she’s studying to be a therapist. And I trust her.”

“Then I think you should try it.”

Dick sighs, and finally, finally, his posture loosens. He slumps to the side, letting his shoulder rest against Donna’s. It feels good there, warm and solid and right.

“You know,” he says, “people always ask if we ever dated. Tim, Barbara…”

“Terry,” Donna adds, with a brief pang.

“Do you ever wonder why we didn’t? Not now, I mean. When we were kids.”

When Donna first met Dick, he’d been a plucky little firebrand in a green mask. She’d thought he was cute—though of course, those were the days when she’d thought all boys were cute. And she had thought about kissing him a few times, but something had always stopped her. The idea had been just a little too scary. Legitimately intimidating, where the thought of kissing other people had felt like a fun dare.

“I think maybe we needed each other too much,” she says.

“I had a nightmare once that we were married,” Dick says. “An actual fear-gas induced hallucination.”

She shoves him a little, but not enough to make him move. “Okay, well, I don’t think it would be that horrible.”

“It wasn’t the marriage itself. It was the idea that I could ruin this.”

Donna picks up Dick’s arm and arranges it around her shoulders. As soon as he sees what she’s going for, he helps out, squeezing her a little and letting her settle up closer to him.

“You won’t ruin it,” she says. “You never could.”

Donna gives herself the rest of the night to decompress before she seeks out Kory. She’s less sure of what this conversation will be about, so she’s dreading it both less and more than the one she had with Dick last night.

Kory is, at least, easier to find than Dick was. She answers the door when Donna knocks at her apartment, and lets Donna in without any fuss. They settle on her couch.

“How are you doing?” Donna says.

Kory looks as tired as Donna feels. She’s still in pajamas, and as she talks, she curls up with her feet tucked under her.

“I don’t understand,” Kory says. “He’d rather get taken hostage for two days than talk to me. He’s never been great at talking about his feelings, but I just don’t understand this.”

It occurs to Donna that it might’ve been easier to have this conversation if she hadn’t talked to Dick first. Counseling Kory without giving away any of Dick’s confidences is going to be delicate.

“Well, he told you last night,” she says.

“Because of Mirage? But I got over that years ago.”

“Maybe he isn’t over it. It was kind of a major event in his life too.”

Kory seems to shrink inward as she thinks, looking, for once, almost small. “He never seemed as upset about it as I was. Not until I…”

“Broke things off?”

Kory turns to look out the window. It’s a nice morning, but Donna doubts she’s really seeing it. “I wish I hadn’t done that. Sometimes I think maybe we would still be together.”

Donna doesn’t mention that they are still together, technically. “I never understood why you did,” she says. “That sort of thing doesn’t usually bother you. Dick was having sex dreams about Raven, and you just shrugged it off.”

“It wasn’t the sex,” Kory says, shaking her head. “If he’d told me he wanted to have sex with Mirage because he cared about her, that would’ve been fine. But she took my place for three days, and he never noticed. That upset me.”

“I don’t want to undersell how difficult that was, but you know… it was a pretty hectic three days.”

“Not for me,” Kory says. For the first time in the conversation, she sounds bitter—like she’s discussing a raw wound, not a healed one.

“Is that what upset you?” Donna says. “That no one came to help you?”

“No one even knew I was gone, Donna. No one worried about me at all.”

“Kory, if he’d known, he would’ve been frantic. We all would’ve been.”

“But you weren’t. And then when I got back, and I was upset, everyone tried to brush it off. Even Dick just wanted me to set things aside so we could focus on the mission. And he was supposed to be the person who would never set me aside.”

When it comes to problems in Dick and Kory’s relationship, Donna generally tries to be neutral, but in light of her conversation with Dick last night, she’s been having a hard time not being angry at Kory, the same way she’s angry at herself. This, though—this makes her heart swell with sympathy. Because with Kory’s history, of course that would have been upsetting. Traumatizing, even.

“Did you ever tell Dick that?”

Kory sighs. “Do you think I should?”

“Probably.” Although if she told him this exact second, Donna could imagine things going south pretty easily. “But also… It sounds like this is something you aren’t over.”

“It was so much like the Citadel. It reminded me of the Citadel.”

Donna imagines herself as Kory, nearly four years ago now. Captured and forgotten. Expected to push aside her pain for the greater good. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s familiar.

“Kory, are you still visiting Komand’r?”

“Not every week,” Kory says. “Why?”

“Because… Look, Dick sometimes snaps at me for no reason. And I do it with him, too. When we’re angry at someone else, or ourselves, sometimes it’s just safer to let it out on each other.”

“I have no trouble being angry at Komand’r,” Kory says.

“Not her...” Donna trails off, hoping that Kory will take her point.

“I have no trouble being angry at the Gordanians, either.”

“Your parents, Kory.”

“I’m not angry at my parents.”

It’s times like this Donna wishes that Kory responded well to sarcasm. “Can you at least think about it?” she says.

For a second, she thinks she’s maybe gotten through. Kory closes her eyes, and seems to turn inward—like maybe she’s really thinking about it. But then her eyes open, glaring green, and she stands up.

“Where are you going?” Donna says.

Kory’s hands tighten into fists. “I’m going to talk to the person responsible for all this.”

It’s not Saturday, and Waller doesn’t want to let Kory in to see Komand’r. But Kory is adamant, and just a little bit threatening, and she’s built up good will from months of visitations that cause no problems. Eventually, Waller rolls her eyes and takes her to her sister.

Komand’r is sitting up today. She’s gotten livelier with every passing week. Kory thinks she’s considering joining Waller’s squad, just to get out of the cell. She’s past sympathizing with that, though.

“You look more judgmental than usual,” Komand’r says. “And this isn’t your usual day. What have I done now?”

“How do you live with yourself?” Kory says.

“Remarkably easily.”

“How did you see me in chains for years, and enjoy it? How are you capable of that?”

Komand’r has the nerve to look bored. “Koriand’r, must we have this conversation again? You stole my birthright.”

“I didn’t steal anything! It was our father who chose me!”

“And it was our father who sold you to the Citadel, yet somehow you never ranted at him.”

“He made a sacrifice for the good of Tamaran.”

“Yes. Funny that we were always the ones to pay for his sacrifices.”

“How dare you,” Kory says. “He’s dead, like the rest of Tamaran, how dare you tarnish his memory like that.”

“Telling the truth doesn’t tarnish his memory. You do that, when you lie for him.”

When Kory was young, just before she went to Okaara, her father’s closest advisor died. He was the first person Kory ever met who died, and so his was the first funeral she ever attended. While musicians played the funeral song, she scattered flower seeds around his grave with her mother and Ryand’r, and then returned to the crowd to watch her father kiss the soil under which he was buried.

After he was done, a woman emerged from the crowd carrying a jug. She flung its contents onto the grave, where they smoked and smoldered. Acid.

“She’s killing the flowers!” Kory said, rushing forward to stop her.

Myand’r pulled his daughter back. “It’s okay,” he said. “He broke her heart, when they were young. This is how we honor the dead, Koriand’r. We remember them.”

Now, in this lifeless room, Kory screams wordlessly, a scream summoned from the very fire inside her. She lets the fire flow through her hands, streaming out against the force field, obscuring her view of Komand’r and then dissipating harmlessly. It goes on forever, or it feels like it, until Waller storms in flanked by guards, and they drag Kory from the room.

Dick hasn’t felt this anxious standing outside Kory’s door since he was working up the nerve to propose. An unfortunate comparison, given the circumstances, but well. The circumstances are the reason for the comparison.

At least he called ahead this time. Kory’s expecting him. They’re going to talk. Like the adults they’d thought they were.

Okay, enough worrying. Time to knock.

The door swings open immediately. Like Kory’s been waiting just behind it.

“Hey,” Kory says.

“Hey.”

They stand there silently for a moment. It’s better than when he proposed, at least.

“I’ll make us coffee,” Kory says eventually.

Dick trails her into her kitchen. It’s smaller than the one in his apartment, but better organized. Kory even has a pegboard on one of the walls where all her utensils hang. He loves that pegboard—the way it makes her cramped apartment feel like a home. Kory has a window open, letting in a breeze from the first warm day they’ve had in months.

They don’t talk while the coffee brews. Kory stirs two teaspoons of sugar into his mug without bothering to ask. He’s taken it that way since he was 17. She always takes hers with creamer.

Kory hands him his mug, and he follows her out to her living room. They sit at opposite ends of her round kitchen table. Neither of them drinks.

“Are we still together?” Dick says.

“I want to be,” Kory says. “Do you?”

“God, yes, Kory. Of course I do.”

“Good.” Kory cups her hands around her mug, squeezing it like it’ll give her strength. “But we need to talk.”

His stomach drops. “I don’t think I can.”

“Dick…”

“No, I know we need to. I know it’s important. But the things we need to talk about… I barely know how I feel about them. I don’t know how to talk about them with you. Not yet.”

Kory looks up. “Not yet?”

“I’m going to talk to someone—a therapist. I’m going to talk to a therapist, and I’m going to figure this out. And when I do, I’ll have this conversation with you. I promise.”

After a moment of consideration, Kory nods. “There are some things I need to figure out, too.”

“And until then…” Dick swallows. “Until we can talk, what do we do?” Because if one thing is clear, it’s that they can’t keep doing what they’ve been doing.

“Maybe we take a step back,” Kory says.

Dick’s heart picks up. “I don’t want it to be like last time. I don’t want to suddenly realize it’s over after we’ve gone a month without seeing each other.”

“It’s not over unless we say it’s over,” Kory agrees. “And I still want to see you.”

“I want to see you too.” Dick breathes in deeply, letting the scent of the coffee and the fresh air settle in his lungs. It’s comforting. “Let’s make sure we see each other once a week. Nothing too intense, but—let’s see each other.”

“Okay,” Kory says. She nods once, firm, setting the plans in stone. God, he loves her so much.

Dick finally takes a sip of his coffee. It’s slightly cool, but prepared exactly right.

Chapter Text

The weather is starting to turn. It's still cold, still grey, the pedestrians on the street still hunch over with their hands shoved in their coat pockets. But Kory can feel the hint of real sunlight pushing through the clouds.

It makes her think of Tamaran. It makes her want to plant flowers.

Her apartment doesn't have a balcony, and the fire escape gets no sunlight even on the brightest days. But there's space on the roof, and Kory can fly up there any time she wants.

It's too early to plant, but there's still work to do. Kory buys long plastic planters and sets them up in a neat square in the center of the roof. She buys bags of soil, and stacks them by the pots. She picks out seeds: marigolds, impatiens, alyssum, snapdragons. There's no method or harmony to her choices—just the flowers that spoke to her when she saw their pictures.

The seeds start in tiny pots on her windowsill. With every one she plants, she says a prayer to X'Hal: let this flower grow. Let it flourish.

Dick and Donna didn’t make plans to meet after his first session with Clancy, but Donna’s not surprised when her front door swings open twenty minutes after the hour. Dick has a key, and well. This is what they do.

She pauses the episode of Great British Bake Off she’d been half-watching while she went over Justice League files. “How’d it go?”

Dick drops dramatically onto the couch next to her. “I’m exhausted. Is this season four?”

Donna takes that to mean that he doesn’t want to talk about it, which seems fair—he has been talking for the last hour, presumably. She hits play, and they watch in silence, while Dick sinks further into the couch. Eventually, he stretches out his feet into Donna’s space. She lifts up her computer to give him access to her lap, then sets it back down on top of his shins.

Paul and Mary are judging the technical when Dick says, “When we talked about Liu, you never said it outright, but you were trying to say that she abused me, right?”

Donna would really like to pause the TV for this conversation, but Dick has his eyes glued to the screen.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I was getting at.”

“And Mirage…” Dick’s mouth twists. Donna wants badly to finish his sentence for him, to make this whole process even the tiniest bit easier. But she thinks maybe Dick wants to say it himself—otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up at all.

Ten seconds pass. Twenty. He doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” he finally says.

“For now,” Donna says, “maybe just watch TV.”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “I could do that.”

"I didn't know you were into gardening," Donna says, when she sees Kory's starter pots. Half of them have little green shoots pushing out of the soil, now.

"I'm not," Kory says. "This is new."

Donna runs one careful fingertip over a baby alyssum. "What's brought it on?"

"Plants grew everywhere on Tamaran." Kory squeezes the spray bottle she bought on her last trip to the hardware store. A fine mist wafts down over the nearest sprouts. "We covered our buildings with them. There were millions of species, and I can only remember the name of a few dozen. The rest of them are lost now. Not just the plants, but even the memory of them. Completely gone."

"I'm so sorry," Donna says. "That's an unimaginable loss."

There are many things that Kory treasures about Donna, but her open and sincere heart is at the top of the list. She's never thought about it this way before, but Donna would have made a wonderful Tamaranean.

"I need a piece of Tamaran," Kory says. "One that isn't my sister."

She sprays the next row of flowers.

For their date this week, Dick meets Kory at the MoMA. It was Kory’s idea—“since we had so much fun at the Van Gogh museum.”

They wander through clean white rooms full of black-and-white photographs, and stop to study strange sculptures from every angle. Nothing pulls Dick in the way Van Gogh’s almond blossoms did, but then, he’s sober this time.

It’s fun. Watching Kory’s face scrunch up as she examines a Magritte painting of a gigantic eye. Debating whether Jackson Pollock’s works are fascinating (Kory) or confusing (Dick). Getting lost in the maze of exhibits and running to catch up.

They haven’t been out together since they left Europe. When they were on vacation, they went to museums and parks and coffee shops. (And “coffee shops.”) They had fun. And then they came home and Dick dove straight into work. No wonder things have gotten so heavy—they’ve forgotten how to give themselves a break.

In the Matisse room, Dick finally sees something that fully catches his attention. It’s a painting of a boy at a piano. The canvas is mostly slate grey, disrupted by planes of green and pink. A slice of grey, like a knife or a mask, encroaches on the boy’s face, obscuring his right eye. An unpainted sketch of a figure, just barely recognizable as a human being, looms in the background.

It’s unsettling. Quiet but ominous. Chaotic and unfinished, but whole. Dick can’t look away.

After a couple minutes, he realizes Kory has also stopped. She’s staring at a painting that Dick is actually familiar with: Dance (I), a massive painting in crude, bright, solid colors, of five naked women dancing in a ring on a hilltop.

“You like that one?” Dick says.

“It feels Tamaranean,” Kory says. She glances at Dick’s painting. “You like that one?”

“I don’t know.” Dick tilts his head until he’s staring eye-to-eye with the boy at the piano. “I think I get it, though.”

Clancy took the Nightwing reveal so well that Dick suspects she’d already guessed, and only acted surprised to be polite. It was a little awkward, but in the end he’s glad he chose her; she has Donna’s knack for cutting to the point.

They usually meet outside, so he can avoid the documentation that would be required if he saw her at the hospital. Today, they're in Central Park. The weather is starting to thaw; Dick is in only a light jacket, and the paths are noticeably more crowded than they were even last week.

Crowds are good. No one will pay attention to an ordinary-looking couple in the middle of all this.

"I sort of left something out in our first session," Dick says, as they round the Pond. "About my… baggage."

Baggage is the word he's taken to using instead of the scarier ones, like trauma, or. Well. The other one. He thinks Clancy would prefer he ditch the euphemism, but she doesn't push him on it.

"Something you want to talk about now?" she says.

Not really. But he thinks it's probably time.

"I told you about Liu and Mirage, but there was another incident. More recently. Last year."

"Another sexual assault?" Clancy doesn't push, but she also doesn't mince her own words.

Dick's shoulders rise up defensively. "I guess you'd probably call it that."

"What happened?"

There's a reason Dick waited so long to tell her about this. It's recent, and it's raw, and it's close to home for Clancy, literally. And he'd had practice telling people about Liu and Mirage, even if he did it rarely—but he's never told anyone what happened between him and Catalina after Blockbuster died.

But he's made up his mind. He takes a deep breath and explains.

They're well past the Pond when he finishes. Clancy waits a beat to make sure he's done, then says, "I would call that sexual assault, yeah."

Dick rolls his shoulders, trying to relieve some tension. "You know the saying? Twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern?"

"You think there's a pattern of assault in your life?"

"If something happens that often, there has to be a reason, right?"

Clancy clicks her teeth together. He wonders if she knows she does that when she’s thinking. "I bet Batman had you read all kinds of research about criminology,” she says.

"Sure?"

"Did you ever read about revictimization?"

"Of course. People who have been victims of a crime are more likely to be victims of the same kind of crime in the future."

"Across the board. Everything from wallet theft to rape."

"I get your point," Dick says. "But Clancy, no one knows why revictimization happens. That's just another way of saying that it is something about me."

"Okay, take our guy who got his wallet stolen. Why do you think he's more likely to have his wallet stolen again?"

"Our hypothetical guy? How should I know?"

"Just spitball with me."

Dick rolls his eyes. "Because he's bad at keeping his wallet protected?"

"What do you think he's doing, leaving it out for the robbers? No, he's got his wallet in his pocket, like every other man on earth. Come on, Dick, this is your profession. Think about it for real. Why does his keep getting stolen?"

Targeting Dick’s professional pride is the kind of slick therapeutic move that makes him glad he chose to talk to Clancy, damn the sketchy ethics. He shoves his hands in his pockets and thinks about her question.

As Nightwing, Dick has actually encountered several people who just keep getting robbed. A guy in downtown Blüdhaven who he'd saved from three separate muggers. A woman in Gotham's Bowery whose car kept being broken into. The little old lady in Crime Alley whose snatched purse he'd retrieved twice, two weeks apart.

"Probably he lives somewhere that theft is common," Dick says. "And maybe he looks like an easy target—someone who won't make a fuss."

"So it's not anything about him, who he is or what he's doing. He just happens to be vulnerable to this kind of crime.

"Okay," Dick says, throwing his hands up in defeat. "Okay, I get it. But I'm not vulnerable to this. Like, Liu—okay, fine, I was a teenager and a runaway, so sure. Fine. I can see that. But with Mirage? Catalina? I was a grown man. A trained hero."

"How many broken bones have you had?"

Dick scowls. "Are you sticking another metaphor inside your first metaphor?"

"Yes. How many?"

He does a quick count in his head. There was his big toe, when he was at Haly's; three ribs, when Two Face attacked him; his nose, four or five times; his ankle, on that one Titans mission. Probably a few more that have slipped his mind.

"Maybe twenty?" he says.

"You know how many bones the average person breaks in their whole life?” Clancy holds up the count on her fingers. “Two."

"I have a dangerous job."

"You do," Clancy says, nodding. "You've got a job that puts you close to a lot of people who don't care about broken bones. Or consent. And you've got a job that traumatizes you, and trauma is a vulnerability."

Dick tries to figure out how he feels about that. "So it's my fault for being a vigilante?"

"Is it wallet guy's fault for living somewhere with a lot of theft? If a girl's drink gets spiked, is it her fault for going to a party?"

"No," Dick says uncertainly.

"No. It's not."

They walk for a while in silence, past college students with take-out coffees and harried nannies running after their charges and tourists with shopping bags from Times Square. Dick thinks about Clancy's argument, examining the logic for flaws like it's a battle plan.

It's solid. Well-reasoned. It makes sense. And yet.

"I still feel like I failed, though," Dick says.

"Give it time," Clancy says.

When it's time to transfer the flowers to their beds on the roof, Donna volunteers to help. They fly the starter pots up carefully, one tray at a time.

"Sorry I couldn't come earlier," Donna says, as Kory hands her a trowel. "It's Mother's Day, so I went to see Fay Evans for brunch."

Kory digs a little hole in the nearest planter and carefully eases an impatien out of its pot. “How was she?”

“She’s good! Her kids are nearly grown up now.”

There was no holiday called Mother’s Day on Tamaran. If there had been, Kory doesn’t think they would have celebrated with brunch. She imagines, though, that they might have done something like this: planting flowers in a garden in Luand’r’s honor.

“Are you thinking about your mother?” Donna says.

“And my father.” Kory sets the little impatien into its place, patting the soil down around it. “Does it ever bother you that Fay gave you up?”

“I think that Fay and my birth mother both tried to do what was best for me,” Donna says, frowning down at the planter. “Maybe it wasn’t the best decision, but she made it for me, and not for herself. And that matters.”

She brushes dirt off her hands and clasps Kory’s shoulder gently. It warms Kory even more than the sun. “It’s not wrong to be upset with them, you know.”

“Every decision they made was for the good of Tamaran,” Kory says. “They were the king and queen. They had to honor that responsibility.”

“They had a responsibility to you, too.”

Kory pushes too hard on her trowel and upends half a foot of dirt. “You and Dick and the rest of the Titans—I know you don’t understand.”

“We understand, we just disagree.”

“How could you?” Kory shakes Donna’s hand off her shoulder. “None of you were raised to lead a planet.”

“No, but I think Raven knows a little bit about harmful parental expectations.”

“The ideals my parents sacrificed for were good.”

“That’s true,” Donna says, turning away and picking her trowel back up. “And you could say the same of Bruce and Dick.”

Kory remembers the satisfaction of sending a starbolt past Bruce’s face at Thanksgiving. She stabs the dirt with her trowel again.

“Remember how worried we used to get, every time Dick went home to Gotham?” Donna says. “Remember how much we hated what Batman did to him? And how Dick would always look up to him anyway? Well, that’s how Dick and I feel about your parents.”

Donna settles her alyssum into its spot, and looks up. “I understand why you can’t let yourself be angry with them. But I’m never going to agree that what they did was okay.”

Kory wants to argue. She wants to insist that Donna has it wrong, that it's not her place to judge, that her parents are dead and her grief over that matters more than any mistakes they might have made in life.

But more than any of that, she wants to hug Donna. So she does.

"Thank you for caring so much," she says.

Donna squeezes her back with all her might. "It's the easiest thing in the world."

Dick hasn't been in Kory's apartment since he visited after the Vigilante debacle. But scheduling is difficult this week—Kory’s got photoshoots, Dick’s picking up some classes to cover for a coworker, it’s Bruce’s birthday on Saturday—so instead of going to a museum or a movie, they’re just grabbing coffee down the street. Kory invited him up to wait while she puts her laundry in the dryer.

The decorations have changed since the winter. A framed print of Dance (I) hangs over the sofa. Another painting, this one in vivid, acidic pinks and yellows and greens, hangs over the dining table. Dick isn’t familiar with it, but he thinks it must also be Matisse—like Dance, the subject is naked people frolicking outdoors, and in the background, the same arrangement of women dancing in a circle repeats.

“That one is Le Bonheur de Vivre,” Kory says, when she returns to find him staring.

“It does kind of look like Tamaran,” Dick says.

“I’ve been trying to make my home more like home.” Kory grins. “If you don’t mind waiting a little for coffee, I can show you something else.”

“Please, do.”

Kory leads him out to the fire escape, then flies him up to the roof.

Flowers have taken over the whole place. Rows and rows of long plastic planters, overflowing with multicolored blossoms. There have to be at least half a dozen kinds: marigolds and pansies, and more that Dick doesn’t know the name of. It looks nothing like Tamaran, as he remembers it—the flowers are different, the architecture is much too flat and grey, and nothing on Tamaran was made of plastic. But the spirit is there, unquestionably.

“It’s beautiful, Kory,” he says. “This must have taken so much work.”

She smiles, clearly pleased and proud. “Donna helped.”

Suddenly, Dick is unspeakably sad. Kory had come up with this amazing idea, bought the supplies, poured in hours of effort, enlisted Donna as a volunteer—and he hadn’t known any of it was happening. He wishes he could have gone with her to pick out the plants. He wishes he could have helped her fill the pots.

He wants to be part of her life again, for real. But he can’t do that until they talk.

“Kory.” He clears his throat. “Let’s not get coffee.”

Kory frowns. “You want to cancel our date?”

“No, I want to talk. If that’s what you want.”

“I want to,” Kory says. “But don’t you have class in an hour?”

Dick could not care less about his class. “I’ll tell them I can’t make it.”

He sends his boss an apologetic text (“family emergency”—it’s not entirely a lie) and they settle down on the roof, backs against the cement wall, looking out over Kory’s garden. Inside would be more comfortable, but Dick can’t bring himself to suggest it. It’s so peaceful here, so warm. He hopes it’ll help them.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” Dick says, feeling like it’s probably best to get the most immediate stuff out of the way. “When I disappeared for two days. That was beyond inconsiderate.”

“It was important to you to find out what Liu was doing,” Kory says. “And it was important to you that I not find out.”

“Yeah,” Dick says. And that’s the end of the easy part.

He needs to explain to Kory why. But the why is so big, so frightening, it sticks in his throat. He doesn’t even know where to start.

Kory, god bless her, sees his struggle. “Because of Mirage,” she says.

Dick nods.

“Because… you thought I’d react the way I did with her?”

She looks uncertain, confused, maybe a little hurt. The last thing Dick wants to do is hurt her, but—if they’re not being honest, what’s the point of this? He lets out a long breath.

“Not exactly,” he says. “Mirage was… personal, to you, and Liu happened before we ever met. But I think maybe I didn’t trust you not to judge me.”

“Because that’s what I did before.”

Dick shrugs. “And because I already judged myself.”

“I didn’t know this still bothered you so much. I’m… I wish I hadn’t broken things off.”

“The thing is…” Somewhere inside Dick, a little ember of anger is reigniting. One he’d tried to smother years ago, but had never managed to fully douse. He’d thought it was gone, but now here it is, burning him. “What Mirage did wasn’t my fault, Kory. I didn’t cheat on you.”

“I never thought you cheated.”

“But you broke up with me.”

“Because you didn’t notice I was gone! It was never about the sex.”

“It was about the sex for me!” Dick reels himself back in before he can blurt anything else out in anger. He takes a shaky breath, and then a second. Then he decides to say it anyway. “She raped me.”

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. He didn’t even know if he believed it until just this moment. But he does.

God, he hopes Kory believes it too.

“She...”

“She— I know it wasn’t violent, okay, nobody held me down, but she… she…”

“Didn’t give you a choice,” Kory says. Like a light has gone on in her brain and revealed something disgusting lurking in the corner. “You always said, even at the time, that you never wanted to sleep with her. That it repulsed you.”

“Yes. Yes, it did.”

Kory suddenly pushes up off the ground and paces to the other end of the roof. Dick’s heart stutters.

“Kory? Where are you going?”

She turns around and comes back to him. Instead of sitting down beside him, though, she kneels in front of him, looking him directly in the eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere. Dick, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I blamed you. I'm sorry I broke things off."

Just like that, the anger is gone. Extinguished for real, this time.

"It's okay," he says. He feels lightheaded. "It's okay."

"Dick, it's not. You were hurt, and I—"

"No," he says, desperate for her to understand but barely able to piece the words together. "It's okay because we're here, we're on the other side, and you understand. We… everything else… this is it, this is what matters, this is what I want."

He grabs her hand and squeezes as hard as he can, hoping the gesture will convey what words can't. Maybe it works, because Kory slowly moves to sit back down next to him. Dick keeps hold of her hand.

"I've never admitted that before," he says. "Not even to Donna."

“It's difficult, isn't it?" Kory says. "Talking about it."

"Kory, what happened to you and what happened to me… they're not even in the same galaxy. You were—"

Kory squeezes his hand, and he stops.

"I'm not comparing," she says. "I'm just saying—it's difficult to talk about, isn't it?"

The day Kory told the Titans about what the Citadel had done to her, she’d looked righteous and defiant. She’d met everyone’s eye. It had hurt, obviously, but she had reserved all her hatred and her anger for her sister and the Gordanians. She hadn’t directed any at herself.

“You’ve never been ashamed of it, have you?” Dick says.

“Why would I be ashamed? I did nothing wrong.”

“I was.” Dick looks down. “I am.”

“You said yourself that it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know. But it feels like I failed. Like I was weak and distracted.”

“Dick…” Kory pauses, and he sneaks a glance at her face. She’s gazing steadily at him, and Dick is reminded, all over again, of how much feeling she can fit into one expression. “Mirage fooled me too. I never should have blamed you for that. The reasons I was upset were about me, not you.”

“Why were you upset, then?”

“I was left alone, to break out of captivity. And when I returned, it felt like I was supposed to push my feelings aside to focus on the mission.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kory shakes her head, looking pained. “Please don’t apologize.”

The sun is hanging low in the sky—not quite golden hour, but getting close. The flowers, already beautiful, look almost gilded. Kory’s very skin seems to glow. Slowly, she brings his hand to her lips and kisses the knuckles, one at a time.

Dick doesn’t think the conversation is over. But they stop talking for a while, watching the day fade around them. Playing with each other’s hands. Letting the things they’ve said settle in.

When night finally falls, they go back inside. Kory makes herbal tea. They sit on the couch for a while, thighs and ribs pressed up against each other, still not talking

“Donna says the way I feel about Batman is the way you feel about my parents,” Kory says, eventually.

Dick would not have predicted those would be words to break the silence. “I guess… that seems about right.”

“I don’t want to be angry at them,” Kory says. “I don’t want to ruin my memories of Tamaran that way.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But if I’m not angry at them, I end up getting angry at other people. People who didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

Oh. So that’s the connection. Dick takes a moment to piece together his thoughts—to decide what he feels, and what’s true, and what he wants to say about it. Clancy would be so proud of him.

“Kory,” he says, “you know I am angry at Bruce. Not all the time, but… no, kind of all the time. Sometimes other things are more important than that, sometimes I’m not as angry, but it’s always there, a little bit.”

“The way I was taught on Okaara was so clean. Hate your enemy, love what you protect. But now everything is so muddled. I love you, and I want to hurt anyone who hurts you—but I hurt you. I love my family, I miss them, but I want to fight them.” Kory leans a little more of her weight against Dick. “I want to remember them honestly. But I don’t know how to love them at the same time.”

Despite the vastly different ways they were raised, that is a feeling that Dick understands intimately.

“I wish I could tell you how,” Dick says. “I wish I knew.”

Kory nods, and then the conversation floats, with a kind of free-flowing logic, onto something else. “Do you think if I’d never broken things off the first time, that we would have stayed together?”

Dick runs his thumb idly over the back of Kory’s hand while he thinks. The whole chain of events leading up to their break-up was so hectic and confused—one thing after another, with no space to breathe. “Maybe,” he finally settles on. “Without the first break-up, I wouldn’t have proposed, and without that disaster of a wedding, maybe we wouldn’t have been as… worked up. But it’s not like we didn’t have problems before that. I know I was kind of a terrible boyfriend sometimes.”

“That’s not true!”

Dick smiles a little. “That’s nice of you to say, but I remember things as well as you do. I know that I was incredibly closed off.”

“You were, but I understand why. It’s not why I left.” Kory sighs. “I felt like I was losing my connection to Tamaran. The things that happened after the wedding just made that more clear. I had to go recapture that.”

“We didn’t have to break up for you to do that.”

“You would have come to Tamaran with me? Indefinitely?”

At that point, Dick thinks he would have done or said anything to stay with Kory. He'd followed her to the Amazon; Tamaran wouldn't have seemed much farther.

But that doesn't mean it would've been a good idea.

"I would've liked the option," he says.

Kory turns their hands over so hers is on top. "You always seemed to want to change the things about me that were the most Tamaranean."

And yeah, Dick can see that. Kory's open emotionality, her freeness with her affection and her warrior's attitude toward combat—he'd never been fully comfortable with any of it. He knew he'd made her feel stupid, sometimes.

"I love your Tamaranean qualities," he says. Because that's true too, and had been from the start. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to choose."

"I'm sorry about all of it," Kory says. "I wish we'd talked."

"Maybe we just weren't ready yet." After all, five years ago Dick is sure he couldn't have articulated what Mirage had done. Maybe the same is true for Kory. Maybe if they'd tried to talk back then, they'd just have ended up angrier and more hurt.

They haven't gotten any less traumatized with time, but they have gotten older. Maybe not being 20 anymore counts for something.

“We need to be different this time,” Kory says. "If something else happens—"

"Something else will happen," Dick says. "That's our lives."

"Well then, let's agree now. The next time something terrible happens, we talk about it. We take it on together."

"What if…" Dick's voice fails. He wants to agree to this. He wants to be partners, really partners, with Kory. But anything that's happened three times can happen a fourth, and he doesn't know if he has it in him to tell her if it does.

"What?" Kory prompts, earnest and even.

"Can you just promise to trust me? Trust that I'm… I'm trying, and I love you?"

"I promise," Kory says immediately. If she were anyone else, Dick would say it was too quick of an answer, but Kory knows her own mind more than anyone he's ever met. If she says she promises, she means it. "Can you trust me?"

It's not an idle question, he can tell. It deserves a real answer. But he can't respond with the immediacy Kory did. He's not that sure of himself. Maybe he's not that sure of her.

"I understand if you don't," she says, when his silence has gone on long enough to constitute its own kind of answer. "I broke your trust before."

She did, and maybe that's why this is hard. Or maybe between Liu and Bruce, this was always going to be hard. But he doesn't want this to be the thing that ends them. He loves her too much for that. She's worth the wait. She's worth the work.

"I haven't… felt trust for anyone I've ever dated, I think," Dick says. "I mean, I'd trust you in battle any day, but the kind of trust you're talking about, it's pretty much just the original Titans and Alfred. And even then…" Even then, he'd left the Titans, and Alfred had left him. "But I want to trust you. So I'm going to. Even if I don't feel it, Kory, I'm just going to choose to have it. Because the alternative is living in a world where I never open up because I'm afraid of being hurt, and down that road lies Batman.

“Is that okay?” he says, afraid to look at her.

She kisses him gently on the mouth. “It’s a deal.”

Spring is swelling into summer. The blossoms have all fallen off the trees, replaced by deep green foliage. Heat wafts off of the New York asphalt. The tourists in Central Park carry overloaded cups of ice cream.

Dick and Kory have brought Donna to the park for a picnic. They packed a blanket and everything; it’s pretty sweet, not least because Donna’s pretty sure they both had to postpone work obligations to make it happen.

As always, they finish eating long before Donna does, and she watches them while she lingers over her fruit salad and lemonade. They’re tangled up on the other side of the blanket, fingers intertwined, legs overlapping.

She knows they talked—she heard about the conversation from both sides—and she’s so relieved that it helped. It’s not just that they look happy. Honestly, they’ve both been more open about being unhappy, ever since they hashed things out. But they do seem lighter, somehow. Obviously in love, in a quieter way.

For the first time all year, Donna’s letting herself believe that this is going to work.

“Thank you guys for doing this,” she says. “I know you had to cancel other things for it.”

Dick kicks her thigh—not particularly gently. “You deserve way more than a picnic, Donna.”

“Why?” she says. “Just for putting up with you all year?”

Annoyingly, Dick decides to ignore her sarcasm. “For exactly that, yes.”

“Your advice has helped us a lot,” Kory says. “We just want to give something back.”

“Guys,” Donna says, pushing down some embarrassing tears. “Come on, I love you both. I’ve loved having you in the city again. You don’t have to give me anything.”

“Wow, that’s too bad,” Dick says. “Kory, maybe we should just throw out her present.”

“Hm,” Kory says, putting a thoughtful finger to her chin. “Maybe.”

Donna laughs. “Well, if it would make you feel better to give me something…”

It looks like Dick is thinking about stringing her along for a little longer, but Kory can’t contain herself. She whips something out of her back pocket and presses it into Donna’s hands.

It’s a paper printout for a flight confirmation. To Paris.

“We made sure to get the insurance,” Dick said. “So it’s fully refundable if you don’t want to go. But…”

“We think you deserve a vacation,” Kory says.

Oh, no. There go the embarrassing tears. “Thank you guys so much.”

Dick pulls her across the blanket, and she collapses into their hug. It’s been a long time since Donna has been so full of love.

This summer is going to be beautiful.