Work Text:
Even five stories down, separated by layers of concrete and steel, he could hear their raised voices and the clang of skillets. The elevator was filled with them. It reminded him of those busy mornings with his parents, surrounded by the low murmur of the Congo waking. It was a stark contrast to the silent halls of Chief’s mansion.
Prison, he amended in his mind. Gar hitched his backup higher onto one shoulder and shivered. It was a prison.
For three years he had fooled himself into thinking it was a well-meaning prison. After all, he had a room full of the best games and his own fridge. Larry made gourmet meals every night, even specializing in vegan meals just for Gar.
He had the run of a house twice the size of any he’d ever lived in with his family. He got to help patients that every other doctor had claimed was unsalvageable. People like him.
And he was alive. It was a miracle. Life was a gift and even at a young age, staring down at the roadside carcasses and dying beetles on his father’s examination table, he had understood that life was a finite resource. It could be created. It would eventually be destroyed.
“It wasn’t fair to expect you to stay confined to that house,” Rita had told him, her gooey hand warm in his own. “You have an entire life to live. You’re so young and talented. You make us proud, Gar.”
Proud.
It was a bittersweet thing that sapped the energy from his bones. In another life, one where his parents had lived and he’d never been ravaged by an untreatable disease, he wouldn’t have ever met Rita. He never would have ad the opportunity to make her proud. He loved doing so now, but the intangible still beckoned to him.
Damn he was getting morose.
“I’m telling you Rachel,” Tim’s voice was becoming clearer the higher the elevator rose. No wonder Dick had the tower under, like, eight layers of security. If anyone ever snuck in, they would have no trouble finding any of them. “You always put nutmeg in chocolate chip cookies. It’s a must.”
“Maybe if they were snickerdoodle chocolate chip,” Rachel scoffed. He recognized that tone. She was digging her heels in on this one. “But these are regular chocolate chip, Tim. Why add all these extra spices?”
Tim made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. The elevator dinged to a stop and the doors opened, slow and silent. Gar smiled down at his welcoming committee: a single white dog with a rapidly wagging tail. “Hey Krypto,” he murmured, kneeling to accept the soft whines and slobbery kisses. “Did you miss me?”
He had only been gone a week, but to Krypto it had probably seemed like ten years. It certainly had for Gar, even though he cherished time with his second family. But New York was so much louder and brighter than San Francisco, and the newly Christened Doom Patrol were an altogether different… Everything from the Titans.
“I can’t believe you’ve lived your entire life without putting nutmeg in chocolate chip cookies,” Tim’s voice continued to echo down the halls.
Gar straightened, grunting with appreciation when his knees and back popped. So maybe transforming and racing Cliff on the roofs of New York’s skyscrapers hadn’t been such a bad idea. Dick would have a conniption if he knew. “I mean, how have you even made it this far?”
“Can we please just make a decision?” That was Kory, sounding as if she would rather be anywhere but there. Gar followed the familiar bickering, Krypto prancing on his heels happily.
“Kory, no, I have to save Rachel from herself. Look! Even Google says we should add nutmeg!”
“First of all, I am offended that you trust Google over the words of your own teammate-”
“Oh, yeah, because trusting the largest database of human knowledge ever compiled is so ludicrous!”
“And second, we don’t need nutmeg! We already put cinnamon and sugar in there! Its excessive.”
“Excessive?!”
Gar rounded the corner into the kitchen. Kory was sitting at the bar, banging a cookbook against her forehead repeatedly. Tim and Rachel stood over a bowl of brownish paste, alternating between glaring at each other, their phones and the batter. Krypto barked.
"Did I walk into a war?” Gar teased. He couldn’t help it. His week had been a pile of bittersweet shit, but seeing his family again made a cold and fragile thing in his chest perk up, like a flower straining toward fresh sunlight.
Tim jumped, nearly overturning the bowl. Rachel caught it with a gasp and Kory swiveled in her chair. Her dark lips lifted into a beaming smile when she saw him. “Gar! You’re back early!”
“Don’t look!” Rachel commanded in a shriek, spreading her arms out as if to block him from seeing the mess they’d made of the kitchen. Tim slid the bowl behind him and tried to look casual.
“I think the gig is up, you two,” Kory drawled.
Gar laid his backpack on the couch. “My flight actually took off on time. Can you believe it?” He opened his arms in time to catch Rachel in a tight embrace. She hugged him as if he’d been away for years instead of days.
His frazzled mind settled a bit. She pulled away, grinning so hard the ruby on her forehead was caught between her forehead wrinkles. “Tim is trying to ruin your surprise cookies,” she informed him, matter of fact.
“I am the only one who can save them,” Tim argued. Rachel stepped back so they could wrench each other into a loose hug. “Glad you’re back, man. Dick keeps trying to make dinner and we all have to nod and pretend it’s great when really, we just want to hurl.”
Sounded about right. Gar smiled when Kory tugged him into her arms. The tension in his shoulders loosened. Kory gave the best hugs ever, and smelled, as usual, of mango and vanilla. “Where are Dick and Conner?” he asked once they separated, Kory stroking a finger across his temple worriedly.
At his question, her hand dropped, and she rolled her eyes. “Dick took Conner out into the city to ‘test how high he could jump,’” she explained with sarcastic finger quotes.
“So… They’re jumping off skyscrapers with limited safety gear?”
“Definitely.”
“Hm,” he would have to remember that if Dick ever found out about his roof-hopping session with Cliff.
“So, as you can see, we were trying to make you welcome home cookies, but there’s been a… disagreement about the use of nutmeg. You’re the final vote,” Kory waved a hand at the kitchen. “Please end my misery.”
He pretended to study the cookie batter diligently. Tim stared at him with pleading eyes. Rachel sighed through her nose. “Well, though I agree with Tim that Rachel’s skills in the kitchen are pretty much limited to pancakes and toast…”
“Hey!” She cried, slapping his arm. He chuckled.
“I actually don’t like nutmeg, so. Sorry Tim,” he shrugged as Tim’s jaw dropped in astonishment.
“Ha!” Rachel cried, scooping up a spatula. She started scraping the cookie dough onto the baking sheet with a special kind of vindictiveness. “Told you!”
Tim threw up his hands. “You didn’t say he didn’t like nutmeg!”
“I was getting to it!”
Gar smiled and wrapped an arm around Tim’s shoulders. “Don’t worry pal. I appreciate the passion.”
Tim’s skinny shoulders rose and fell in a great tidal wave of disappointment. “One of these days, I’m making you guys’ real cookies and it’ll change your whole life.”
Gar clapped him on the back, touched. “Can’t wait.”
“So,” Kory folded her hands beneath her chin, regarding him with a knowing gaze. “How are our fellow heroes, the Doom Patrol?”
He scratched the back of his head. How to describe the people he’d once known as scared, self-hating freaks confined to a madman’s secluded home?
“They’re good,” he stated, slowly. “They’ve all come a long way in figuring out their powers. I think being in New York is good for them. Big city and all that. Easier to blend in, even for them.”
“I went to New York once,” Tim offered. “Everyone there is kinda… Different.”
Gar leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. He, too, had noticed the number of people who would have fallen into the category of freak or outcast, blitzing around the New York subways and streets without so much as turning one head.
“You could even get along here, kid,” Larry had told him. “I’ve seen some weird-ass animals walking these streets. A llama. A lion cub. Hell, last week we met a guy from Bolivia who had a pet jaguar.”
It had been one of many subtle invitations to stay with them.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. He turned away from Kory’s probing stare to rifle through his backpack. “Speaking of which, they say hi. And I brought gifts,” he pulled Kory’s out from its special socket. “For you, madame.”
“Gar,” Kory breathed, accepting the gold chain. At the end, there was a metal tree, the trunk a twisted and folded mass of purple metal and its leaves were each a sparkling crystal. “It’s beautiful! Where did you get it?”
He shrugged self-consciously. “Um. We made it. Cliff and me. He got into metalworking in New York and showed me a few things.”
“You made this for me?” Kory looked astonished, if she weren’t someone who hadn’t grown up a princess, surrounded by luxuries and privileges unimaginable, and Gar hadn’t just given her a small trinket that had taken him six hours to make. He nodded, suddenly shy. “Here. Put it on for me?”
She turned, dangling the chain for him to take. He obeyed, lightly brushing her hair aside so he could fasten it behind her neck. “Kory! Stop! Your beauty is too much!” Rachel laughed, applauding.
“Don’t I know it!” She grinned. “Thank you, Gar. This is so sweet.”
“You’re welcome,” he shuffled his feet. He’d suspected that Kory would like it, but not quite this much. He wasn’t used to so much positive attention. It was weird. “Tim. This is for you.”
He removed the navy-blue hat. “Dude! Shut up!” Tim fairly squealed as he snatched the gift from Gar’s hands. “Is this a demon-slayer hat?” It was indeed. Japanese characters danced along the hat’s brim while a pale-faced man with a sword thrust himself from its front.
“Yeah. I remembered you said Inosuke was your favorite. Well, there was a booth and….”
“My cousin is going to be so jealous. It’s impossible to get good merch like this in Gotham. Thank you!” Tim looked up, and the pure joy on his expression shouldn’t have made Gar’s gut roil like it did. He was happy that he’d made Tim happy. He was.
But intangible other lives tickled at him.
He’d had cousins once. Cousins and aunts and uncles. People who were his blood but had shied away from his green hair and fangs, who had accused him of being a monster when he was just an orphaned boy.
He realized that he was just standing there like an idiot not saying anything; and shook off those memories with a nod. “Uh yeah. No problem. Rach, the others say hi,” he smiled. “Actually, Cliff said you’re his favorite person and Rita asked if you were doing ok and Larry wants to be the cook at your birthday party, but same thing.”
Rachel laughed. “They still like me more than you?”
“Without a doubt,” he agreed dryly, because Cliff had made this point clear. “This is yours,” he held up the midnight black cloak. The cuffs had purple frills on it, and the hood had a thick lining of fake fur. “Met a Peruvian artist in Times Square. Apparently, this is made from alpaca fur so its…”
“So warm!” Rachel groaned, rubbing her cheek against it. She stopped, squinting at the tiny inscription Rita had helped him sew along the inner collar. Please don’t read it aloud, he prayed.
To her eternal gratitude, she did not. But her eyes did well with tears once she had finished, which automatically made his eyes sting and damn it. If she cried, he was a goner.
“Oh, Gar, I love it. You’re the best,” she wrapped him in another hug, and he considered his work for the day done. Or maybe the year. He could now go to his room a happy man and sleep until next millennium.
“What’d you get Conner and Dick?” Tim asked curiously.
Gar stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I got Conner his own Superman headphones," he smirked. It was a gift which he fully expected Conner to covet like one would a holy book.
Kory threw her head back to laugh. “Oh, he’s gonna love that.”
“And I made Dick a pocket watch.”
“A pocket watch?” Tim wrinkled his nose. “Don’t, like, eighty-year-olds carry those?”
Gar patted his backpack. “I think he’ll like this one.”
After all, Gar had managed, with the help of squid-like fingers and Gorilla strength- to stick a tiny photo in the background of the ticking pieces. A photo of the Flying Grayson’s midair, arms outstretched and free.
It was the present he was most nervous to give away, and the one he’d fought himself over for hours. He’d debated whether to make a Robin symbol, a Batman symbol or the Flying Grayson’s.
“I’m sure he will,” Kory patted his shoulder. “Why don’t you come sit down? I want to hear more about New York.”
“And your cookies will be done soon,” Rachel added.
Gar hesitated. “Actually, if its cool with you guys, I’m exhausted after that long flight. I’m gonna go lay down, but I’ll catch up with you during dinner, ok?”
Kory blinked. Rachel screwed her mouth into a worrisome line. Tim cocked his head. He fidgeted with the seam of his pants, expecting some resistance, but to his surprise Kory just nodded. “Ok. Yeah, of course. Go get some rest. We’ll save the cookies and let you know when Dick makes us to try to eat cauliflower pizza again.”
“We can’t submit Gar to that. He just came back from a food utopia,” Tim argued weakly. “Let’s order take-out. Or, you know, cardboard. Anything but the cauliflower pizza.”
“Italian,” Rachel suggested.
Tim pursed his lips. “I was thinking Ethiopian.”
“Italian.”
“What do you want noodles for? We just had spaghetti!”
“Spaghetti isn’t the only thing Italians make!”
“Oh, for the love of shit,” Kory groaned, laying her head back down on the bar. Gar was tempted to laugh. To stay and help decide on dinner, but the turmoil of the past few days was starting to creep back into his chest, so he just collected his backpack, stroked Krypto once behind the ears, and slumped to his room.
He didn’t know how much time passed before there was a faint knock on his door.
Gar jumped. The tiger inside him stirred, snarling, but he shoved it back down. He was safe. He was back at the tower in his own room and… His cheeks were wet. Great. He swiped a hand across his nose. His fingers came away damp with tears he hadn’t realized he’d been crying. Quickly, he scrubbed the remaining wetness just as his door opened.
He half expected Conner. He’d left his and Dick’s gifts on their beds for them to find, and knowing Conner, he would come to pepper Gar with questions about New York and whether the city was as enamored with Superman as the rest of the country.
However, it was Dick standing in his doorway. Surprisingly, he also held a plate of food in his hands.
“Hey buddy,” the team leader greeted quietly. “You missed dinner.”
Gar looked down at his hands, flabbergasted and feeling not a little stupid. To him, a few minutes had gone by in which he’d been sitting in this chair thinking about his parents and the Congo, not hours. “Oh. Sorry,” he mumbled, recalling that Rachel and Tim had made him cookies.
Dick strolled into his room, and what a sight Gar must have been. Sitting in a half-deflated beanbag chair in front of his windows, staring out at the city with dried tear stains on his face. He fervently hoped Dick wouldn’t say anything.
“It’s ok. We saved you a plate. Rachel and Tim finally compromised with Japanese. We got your usual.”
Gar took in the tofu yakisoba with trepidation. Usually, this was his favorite, but right now it just reminded him of the meals his mom used to make… A wave of nausea rolled over him. He shook his head quickly. “Uh. No thanks. I’m not hungry.”
Dick took this news in stride. “Right. I, uh, I got your gift.”
Gar couldn’t make out the emotion in that tone. He ducked his head. “Oh. Yeah. I didn’t know if it would be overstepping, but I just thought…”
“No,” Dick interrupted, sounding surprised. “Gar. This is the best gift I’ve received in years. I love it. Thank you. Kory said you made it yourself?”
His cheeks flamed. “Yeah. Cliff taught me some metalworking.”
“He taught you well,” Dick squeezed his shoulder. “It’s awesome. I’ve already sent pics to Bruce and told him he needs to up his game.”
“He’ll probably buy you a whole pocket watch factory,” he pointed out.
Maybe to a different man, that would have sounded impressive. Dick just snorted. “Lame. Kory refuses to take off the necklace you made her. She said, and I quote ‘if only my boyfriend could get me such a thoughtful gift’ so, uh, thanks for that.”
Gar couldn’t help his smug grin. “She’s way out of your league man.”
“You and Donna should start a coalition,” Dick replied, dryly. “The remind Dick that he’s dating a ten when he’s only a two squad.”
“I think you’re at least a three,” Gar quipped.
“Gee thanks.”
Gar chuckled softly, realizing that he actually felt a bit lighter. The others had that effect on him. Dick returned his smile, then glanced pointedly at his second beanbag chair. “Mind if I join you?”
Before Gar could admit that he did mind, actually, and would actually prefer to be alone, Dick had dragged the chair beside him and sunk down into it. He set the plate of food on the floor at their feet. Gar did his best not to stare.
“So. Kory mentioned that you seemed… Distracted when you came back,” Dick ventured.
Damn it. He’d forgotten that they talked to each other.
Gar sighed and crossed his legs. His ankles were a solid weight against his palms as he grabbed them, trying to ease the gnawing uncertainty in his gut. “Don’t you have anyone else to dad tonight?”
Dick continued, undaunted by his sarcasm. Annoying asshole. “Her theory is that you’re feeling conflicted because the Doom Patrol offered you a place on their team.”
Gar was so surprised that he nearly toppled over. He barked a short laugh, relieved. “What? I mean, yeah, they invited me to stay with them at least a half dozen times, but I said no. The person I was when I lived with them…” He screwed his lips into a thoughtful line. “He doesn’t exist anymore. I’m a Titan now, and I’m happy with that.”
Dick’s shoulders relaxed. Had they actually been worried that Gar was going to leave the team? The mere idea was ludicrous. “Oh, Thank God,” Dick breathed. “Kory was going to battle the Doom Patrol to the death to see who deserved custody of you.”
“I would pay good money to see that.” Like good, good money. Cliff and Kory going head-to-head? He would sell tickets. Rent out a stadium.
“So, if you’re not feeling conflicted… What’s wrong? You haven’t missed dinner once since I met you.”
For a long moment, Gar remained silent. A large piece of him yearned to remain silent. Speaking it aloud would make his grief too real, too final. Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d ever spoken much about his past to anyone but Rachel and Rita. Even trusting them like he did, those conversations left him feeling wrung out and vulnerable afterwards.
He had a thousand excuses pre-made, side-effects from years of hiding his past. His stomach ached. He’d met a homeless person and it had affected him more than usual. Dick would probably accept any of these justifications. It wasn’t as if the older boy was particularly eager to delve into Gar’s traumas. He had too many of his own.
Yet at the end of the day, Gar was just… So tired of lying.
“Tuesday was the fifth anniversary of my parents’ death,” the words came easier than he had thought they would. So simple. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Dick recoil as he did the mental math. Today was Saturday, so that meant four days had passed already.
“Gar, I’m so sorry,” Dick gasped. “It’s only been five years? Man, five years after my parents’ death, I was a wreck.”
Gar hugged his knees to his chest. “Yeah. Well. I’m not being co-parented by an emotionally constipated man who dresses like a bat and his butler, so. I’ve got that going for me,” he tried to joke.
“Maybe, but you’re also strong and smart,” he tensed as Dick carefully wrapped an arm around his back, feeling suddenly caged. “That why the Doom Patrol was so insistent that you come see them? I mean, they called every day to make sure you got your ticket.”
Gar was frankly surprised Dick had noticed that. He was so busy most of the time, and the limited interactions they had were in training or during the carefully curated family times that Kory and Rachel planned.
“They know it’s a hard day for me,” he ceded. “I haven’t told anyone else. Not even Rachel.”
“I won’t say anything if that’s not what you want,” Dick replied, correctly reading his statement as the plea for privacy that it was.
Perhaps that was why Gar tugged out his phone. There was no other reasonable explanation for why he pulled the picture up when he had been avoiding it all week. “Rita sent this to me. Apparently, Dr. Caulder had it hidden away somewhere,” just another reason he resented the older man, savior or no.
Dick leaned over. He was the first person besides Rita to lay eyes on the grainy photo.
In it, his parents both stood in the sun on a hill, sweaty and with lines of exhaustion scripted into their faces; but smiling. Happy. Full of life. The vast expanse of the Congo surrounded them like a green halo. Then there was him. He stood in front of them, a strung-out beanpole of a kid, gripping the edge of his wide-brimmed hat and a soccer ball held under his arm.
It had, as he recalled, taken them seven hours to hike to the top of that hill to set up camp. He had spent all night listening to the low hoot of monkeys and soft snores of gorillas. “That’s the last picture someone took of us before,” he swallowed past the lump in his throat. “They got sick.”
Dick gently prided the phone from his numb fingers, then made a soft sound in the back of his throat. “That’s you?”
He smiled. He didn’t recognize the boy in that picture either. It was like staring at a stranger. Or another lifetime. “When I was human, yeah.”
“You look just like your mom,” Dick observed quietly.
He’d been told as much before. He had his mother’s warm brown eyes. Her beaming smile. Her positive attitude. She’d had the softest heart he had ever known. It was, he suspected, why he liked Rachel so much. His mother had often cried when she saw a dead animal too.
“Why were they in the Congo, if I can ask?”
“We traveled all over the world,” he answered with a heavy shrug. “Japan, Brazil, The Galapagos, Thailand, Cuba… They were biologists. They studied how animals spread diseases to humans, or how some animals aren’t susceptible to the same diseases we are. You ever hear about the medicine that was developed for early HIV patients?”
A nod. “Yeah. I remember that.”
“They were on the team that discovered that medicine in the Amazon. It was a fungus, I think. Someone noticed the monkeys eating it.”
Dick stared at him as if he had just grown two heads, which wasn’t entirely impossible, but he didn’t feel like trying it. “Gar… That team won a Nobel prize.”
The amazement had long worn off for him. Besides, those Nobel prize winning geniuses had been so much more to him. “My dad used the medal as a paper weight.”
His mother had often claimed that his dad was an idiot masquerading around as a smart man. To which dad had just laughed and Gar had enjoyed repeating to his friends before they all died slow and terrible deaths.
“So they were heroes, just like you.”
Despite Rita’s best attempts to convince him otherwise, comparing himself to his parents felt like placing a diamond next to a crab shell. “They wanted me to become a scientist too. Continue the family tradition, I guess. Really must have broken their hearts when all I wanted to do was play soccer and mess around with bugs.”
Dick snickered. “You want to know a secret? Bruce wanted me to be a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?” He repeated, blankly.
“His dad, Thomas Wayne, was one. You remember the portrait over the fireplace in Wayne Manor?” His head felt stuffed full of cotton, but it was hard to forget the semi-creepy expressions of the people above the fireplace. He nodded. “That was them. His parents. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when I told him I wasn’t going to college.”
“Because you wanted to dress like a bluebird and hit people instead?”
“Bingo,” Dick handed him the phone. Gar glanced at the screen. His heart twisted. “I always wondered how geniuses meet each other.”
“Says the three who’s dating a ten.”
“I know you meant that as a joke, but I’m still just grateful you think I’m better than a two.”
“It’s your ass,” he informed him with utmost surety because at this point, the number of women who had commented on Dick Grayson’s ass was getting into the double digits. Besides, Gar had eyes.
“Knew those squats would get me far in life.”
They chuckled together. Had it ended there, he would have been happy.
But Dick was in full dad mode. He squeezed the back of Gar’s neck, and he had a phantom memory of his father’s tough, large hands cupping the back of his head.
“That’s good, son. Really good.”
Gar choked on his next breath. The floor blurred in front of him. “I gotta say, Gar, you may not be a world-renowned scientist,” Dick murmured. “But I can count on one hand the number of people who could survive what you’ve gone through, and still want to help people. That’s real integrity.”
Gar scoffed. “I-it took a week for them to die. By the time the disease was done with them, t-they were in too much pain to speak,” Dick inhaled a sharp breath. Gar didn’t meet his alarmed gaze. He had never told anyone this. He wasn’t sure why he was speaking now, except that the words were spilling out of him like blood from a torn artery and it hurt.
“The doctors told me to stay away, but I just… I couldn’t leave them.”
“It’s a new strand, sweetheart. It’s safer if you stay away.”
“Then I caught whatever they had, and… I wasn’t there when it finally happened. I didn’t even get to bury them. They were just dumped in a mass grave and burned.”
He could feel the thick, dark burn of the smoke curling under his chin. Humans took hours to burn. The scent of molten flesh was all-consuming and devastating and the number of familiar faces around him had waned day after day.
Hell, he thought. It was Hell.
The lump in his throat expanded, enlarged, until it was strangling him. He blinked, and a river of despair flooded down his face. “Do… Do you think they felt it? I mean, that happened sometimes. There weren’t enough beds for all the sick so if someone was really far gone, sometimes the nurses would bury or burn them while they were still alive. What if they were still alive? I should have been there. I should…”
He didn’t realize he was hyperventilating until Dick grabbed him by the shoulders. “Hey. Hey, Gar look at me. Breathe, ok? Take a breath.” He obediently sucked in a trembling gulp. “It was not your fault, you understand me? You were just a kid.”
“You don’t k-know that!” He cried. Why was he crying? It had been five years. Five years and here he was having a mental breakdown in front the last person who deserved to deal with his shit.
“No,” Dick agreed. “But I know how you feel, ok? I spent years – decades- trying to figure out how I could have saved my parents that night. You can go over it a million times. It always ends the same. Don’t do that to yourself.”
Gar surged to his feet. The pain was so intense it almost felt like energy. Like it could send him careening into outer space. “What if they were alive, Dick? What if they were burned alive!?”
Dick slowly stood, as if expecting to be attacked. “Gar. Please don’t do this to yourself. They’d be proud of you. Focus on that.”
“They wouldn’t recognize me!” he yelled. “They would look at me and see a monster!”
Dick’s mouth opened and closed, gawking. “Gar,” he whispered, aghast. “There is nothing monstrous about you.”
And those words almost perfectly echoed the sentiment he’d sewn into Rachel’s jacket, the reminder that there’s nothing evil about you, and when it was Rachel, he believed it because she was kind and empathetic and sweet, but with him…
All he could see was his aunt’s face when she saw him again, the horror there.
His knees buckled. He collapsed into strong arms and wept hard. Every muscle in his body dedicated itself to squeezing the tears out of him.
Dick lowered them to the floor. Gar slumped against the shoulder of a professional acrobat and broke into a million pieces. When he’d run out of tears, and his heart felt as if it had been gourd out from the root, he still couldn’t stand up on his own.
“I-it should have been me who died,” he sniffled into Dick’s shoulder, miserably. “They were the real heroes. They had so much to give the world.”
“Shh,” Dick tightened his grip, momentarily cutting off Gar’s air supply. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. Yeah, it may be that they had a lot to give, but so do you. As a Titan. We couldn’t do this without you.”
That wasn’t true. Kory, Rachel, Conner, Tim… The three of them under Nightwing’s leadership would have no shortage of victories. Nevertheless, Dick’s confident tone thawed some of the chill in his bones. Gar sighed and buried his face in his neck.
“Don’t ever die again,” he commanded. “I already lost everything once. I’m not doing it again.”
It would break him. He had no doubts that to lose this new family – the comfort and warmth and understanding they showed him – would be the last straw.
“Back at ya buddy. I know we can’t replace what you lost. I wouldn’t want too, but you are part of this family,” calloused hands massaged the back of his neck. “Whatever you need, whenever you need it, I’d move heaven and Earth for you Gar. You have to know that.”
He nodded. “I know. Thanks Dick.”
“My pleasure.”
“That had better not be a goodbye hug!” a stern voice shouted from the doorway. Gar jumped and Dick pivoted in place, shielding him with his own body. When they saw it was only Kory standing there with hands on her hips, Dick snorted.
Gar peeked over the acrobat’s shoulder. “I’m not joining the Doom Patrol Kory.”
Her shoulders unwound a bit. Nevertheless, her worried gaze did not leave his tear-stained face. “Oh. Good. Because I wasn’t going to let you.”
“I told him about the duel to the death,” Dick piped in.
Kory sniffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Grayson. Does this bro-hug have room for one more?”
Gar chuckled brokenly and opened his arms, inviting. “Of course.”
Kory didn’t waste any time in slotting herself into the embrace. “Mmmm,” her voice vibrated against Gar’s cheek. “If Dick said something to upset you, I’ll beat him up.”
“Hey!”
He hid his face in her shoulder and smiled. “No, he was helping. Thanks Kory.”
“Oh,” Kory sounded disappointed not to have a reason to attack Dick. Which was their particular brand of flirtation, he’d noticed. She poked him in the side. “Well, I can think of something to cheer you up. Rachel and Tim’s cookie efforts might not have panned out the way they meant them too…”
“They’re burnt, aren’t they?” Gar interrupted with a chuckle. He pulled away in time to see her smile sheepishly.
“Tim swears it’s because they didn’t have nutmeg. I sent Conner out to get some edible ones. Then, movie night?”
“If you’re up for it, that is,” Dick interjected quickly. His eyes were sharp and concerned where they burrowed into Gar's forehead.
Gar was silent a moment. The enormity of the request left him breathless. Leaving his room seemed like a herculean task, much less focusing on something other than the fresh grief expanding behind his ribs. But Kory's eyes were so kind and Dick's expression so fond.
He looked down at the phone in his hands, recalled the warmth of his father's hand on his shoulder, and the way his mom had brightened when they stumbled across a new birds nest.
"The world is so big," she had whispered to him around the chirps of new life. "But in the end, this is what it all boils down too, this is all that matters."
"Yeah," he breathed at last. "Yeah, I could do a movie."
And despite the way his gut coiled round itself, the brilliance of Kory's smile and pride in Dick's gaze gave him strength. He grunted a thanks as Kory pulled him to his feet and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. She wasn't his father or his mother. They were gone, but he still had a nest. A home. A family.
It wasn't the only thing that mattered, but it was enough.