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Crack.
Dick laid on the cement. It was cold beneath him, and the rain pouring down on top of him definitely didn’t help. His face was pressed up against the concrete, and Dick was ninety percent sure that his face had been scraped against the concrete causing blood to mix with the rain. The rest of his body felt bruised, and Dick had no clue how he was meant to get up off of the ground. His suit and skin felt like they were melting into the cement.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see his arm flat against the pavement. He groaned into the pavement, blinking as he watched the guys disappear out of sight. His arm throbbed where they had stomped on it, and between the noise at the time and the pain right now, he knew for a fact that it was broken. Dick tried to move his arm, but the wave of pain that shot through his entire being convinced him otherwise. Maybe he was content to spend a couple minutes just lying on the pavement.
At the very least the rain running through his hair was washing the blood out so that it wouldn’t matt later. He may get a cold from the extended period in the rain though. Well that actually may be a myth. Dick was pretty sure that Tim had gone on a rant about how that was a myth at one point. Though that could have been a total lie so that he wasn’t sent home from patrol sooner.
Eventually Dick pushed himself off the ground using his uninjured arm. Sure enough there were several small pools of blood where he had gotten scraped against the concrete or stabbed throughout the fight. He had no idea how four common crooks had been able to best him, but maybe assuming that they were common with no fighting experience was his first mistake.
Thunder echoed throughout Gotham, reverberating across the surrounding buildings. The shadows seemed to move as bright lightning ran across the sky before disappearing. That thunder must be really close if there had been so little of a gap between the boom of thunder and the flash of lightning.
Carefully he held his arm up against his side. Leslie wasn’t too far away, and although normally he would prefer to go back to the manor he wasn’t sure he could drive in his current state. He had at least one broken bone in his arm, and the other injuries littering his body made any movement ache. Once he was at Leslie’s hopefully he would be able to call someone to pick him up. It was just his luck that in their attack both his earpiece and his phone would be smashed to bits.
As Nightwing, Dick always hated moving across the ground. At least on the rooftops he was free, but when he was down here it was in his best interest to adhere to the shadows. If anyone spotted him with his cradled arm and limp they might find him an easy target to pick off. When taking into account all of his current situation, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to fight off anyone else tonight.
Dick had to resist the urge to let out a sigh of relief when the sign for Leslie’s clinic finally came into view. At this point he was just so tired. His vision blurred slightly as he stumbled through the open doors, squinting against the bright lights that assaulted his vision.
It took a couple minutes for his vision to clear up, but eventually he was able to look around the lobby without his head swimming. No one else was in tonight, which he definitely considered a relief. “Leslie?” He called out. Dick barely suppressed a groan as another wave of pain shot through his arm. He could deal with pain normally, but right now everything was just turning to mush.
A couple seconds after his call Leslie came walking into the room, her shoes clicking against the floor. “Nightwing?” She paused, looking him up and down, assessing his injuries. Clearly she didn’t like what she saw. “Come with me. What do you already know?”
“Various scrapes that I don’t know the state of, possible stab wounds, and my arm is probably maybe definitely broken in at least one spot. That and I’m freezing and soaked from the weather tonight. I don’t feel so good.”
Leslie led them into one of the private rooms in the back before turning to stare at him. “Sit down.” Dick complied. “I think the fact that you weren’t feeling well was evident from the moment you stumbled into my clinic. I’m going to start by cleaning up your flesh wounds. Then I’ll deal with anything else. Now tell me what happened.”
He watched as Leslie walked over to the counter and grabbed sanitizing wipes as well as a sewing kit. Dick hissed as Leslie ran one of the wipes over the gash on his face. “Thought I would stop something simple. It turned out that it was not that simple, so I got a little more injured than originally intended.”
“Does Batman know?” The better question was whether or not he actually wanted to tell Bruce, because now that he’d told Leslie what happened it sounded really pathetic on his end. “I’m going to take your silence as a no.”
“To be fair, my comms and phone both got broken in the fight. There’s not really a way for me to actually talk to them right now.” Leslie stared into him, and for a moment it felt like she was judging his soul. Dick really didn’t appreciate that. Then she took out her phone, moved over to the contact and clicked on the one labeled Bruce. Of course she had his phone number. “Thanks.”
Dick clicked on the call icon and used his non-broken arm to hold his phone up to his ear. After a couple seconds Bruce picked up. “Hello, Bruce Wayne speaking?”
He sucked in a breath through his mouth. “Hey, Bruce. It’s me.”
“Dick? What happened?” Bruce’s voice dropped and took on the Batman gruff that Dick was more than used to being scolded with.
“I may be injured,” he began.
“He is more than a little injured, and will need to be picked up once I am done fixing him up.” Leslie deadpanned. Dick’s jaw dropped in surprise. Leslie betraying him was fully on the list of things that could have happened, and yet he still managed to get surprised by it. “Currently I’m cleaning off his injuries, but I’m going to need to take an x-ray.”
He sighed, and Bruce’s silence on the other end of the phone spoke volumes. Leslie pressed a wipe up against a cut on his broken arm. Dick bit back a yelp as he instinctively jerked back, jostling his broken arm. “Would I be able to have an ice pack for my arm, because wow that does not feel good.”
“Sure thing.” Leslie stood up, leaving Dick alone in the room.
“Dick, I’ll be there to pick you up in the batmobile shortly.” Bruce started, and he briefly heard some talking in the background. “Robin and I are finishing up right now. Well, Robin just got back, but he plans to take one more pass-through. Give us 15 minutes.”
“Thanks. I don’t think I’d be allowed to leave if I wanted to right now.”
“You wouldn’t be.” Leslie walked back into the room and set an ice pack down on the bench next to Dick. “Now hang up so you can ice your arm.”
“Yes, ma’am. See you soon, Bruce.” Dick hung up the phone and handed it back to Leslie. She put it back in her pocket before getting back to work on the gash in his arm. Dick grabbed the ice pack using his bloody arm and put it against his broken one. “Is that one going to need stitches?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I’m not sure how deep it is because the blood piled up pretty heavily. Once I figure that out I’ll be able to make the call.” Dick nodded, holding the cold compress harder against his arm. It wasn’t really doing much, considering that his arm was still broken and nothing had been done to help it yet.
Eventually Leslie finished cleaning up all the gashes he had. Thankfully most of them were small and only skin deep, but a few, like the one on his arm, were deeper than that. He watched as Leslie stitched up the deeper ones. “Alright, everything's been sorted out. Now we just need to see the state of your arm. Come with me.”
Dick heaved himself to his feet, using the ice pack to pin his arm against his chest. The less it moved the less pain he had to be in, and he was already bad enough as it is. When they were outside the room they paused, “Do you have any metal on you? We’ll need to take it off for the x-ray.”
“Uh, yeah.” He removed the equipment he stored in his fore-arm pockets as well as anything else tied to his upper body like his escrima sticks. “Do I need to get everything or should that be okay?”
“I’ll be putting a lead vest on you, so as long as you’ve removed everything in your arm’s vicinity you should be fine.” Dick nodded as Leslie led them into the room. She guided him to place his arm down on the table, before fastening a lead apron across his torso. “Stay still.”
Leslie disappeared into the adjacent room for a moment. The machine buzzed, and Dick resisted the way the noise made his skin crawl. Then the machine shut down, Leslie was back, and she was removing the apron.
“I need to give it a minute to process. Would you like anything in the meantime? Water? Painkillers?” Leslie pushed the machine back into its original position and handed Dick the ice pack he had been using previously.
Dick pushed himself to his feet. “Painkillers would be nice, thank you.”
“I’ll be right back with the painkillers, some water, and the pictures. Go back to the room you were in before, and you can grab your stuff along the way.” Dick nodded, and walked out of the room. Leslie shut the door behind him before walking off towards the back. Dick grabbed his things and slipped them back into their various spots before going back to the room they’d started in and sitting on the bench.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence Leslie walked back in, paper, painkillers, and water in hand. Following only a few steps behind her were Bruce and Damian, still in full costume. They both nodded their greeting before sitting on the seats on the opposite side of the room. It felt strangely like a doctor’s visit he had when he was younger. Leslie handed him the painkiller and water before putting her things down on the counter. “So, I have the papers here for you to look at, but I’m also pulling it up on the screen.” Leslie pulled the TV away from the wall and turned it on.
Moments later pictures of his x-rays showed up on the screen. “You broke both your radius and ulna.” She pointed to the bones. “It doesn’t look like you’ll need surgery to set them or anything, but I will need to put your arm in a cast.” Leslie paused, turning to stare at him. “And you can’t be Nightwing for at least the next six to eight weeks.”
Dick resisted the urge to let out a groan as the words hit him. He didn’t want to take a break, but since Bruce had just heard the explicit instructions he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get anywhere. “Alright.”
“Is he good to head home, Leslie?”
“Let me put him in a cast then he’ll be good to go. You two can go wait in the lobby.” Bruce nodded and Damian followed him out. Setting the cast didn’t take too long, and soon enough he had walked back in the lobby. Bruce wasn’t there, but Damian and Tim were standing, waiting for him. “You’re welcome.”
“Yes, thank you so much for all your help… and for letting me make my cast blue.”
Leslie cracked a small smile. “Of course. Now I need to clean up before anyone else shows up. Goodnight.” She disappeared into the back again, leaving Tim, Dick, and Damian in the lobby.
“Hey guys.”
“Will your arm be alright, Grayson?” Damian asked hesitantly, and Dick could tell the younger boy was struggling with trying not to be too caring.
He gave a soft smile to both of his younger brothers. “I’ll be alright, just no patrol for the next couple of weeks.” Then he turned to Tim. “What are you doing here?”
“Damian mentioned you on comms. I was in the area so I figured that I’d stop by.”
Damian scoffed. “He was not in the area. He was in a different section of the city, but showed up while you and Leslie were finishing up back there. I suspect that Drake cares for you.”
Tim sent a glare to Damian and tried to give him a punch on the shoulder. Damian caught the punch, and smirked back at Tim. “Either way, how about we head out to the batmobile. Bruce is probably waiting for us. I call the front since my arm is broken.”
The two younger ones groaned, but for once they didn’t fight him on his decision. There were some advantages to having a broken arm, he supposed.
Dick slipped into the front seat, greeting Bruce as he entered. Behind him he heard his two youngest brothers fighting over who got to sit on what side of the car, but before long they were both on their respective sides of the car. “Are you ready to go home?” Bruce asked.
He nodded. “I’m ready. I could use a really long nap right about now.”
He felt someone poke him through the back of the chair and turned to see Tim. “By the way, it wouldn’t be a nap since it's the middle of the night. It would just be sleeping.”
“I don’t think you’re one to talk since you only sleep in naps.”
“I second Grayson on this one.” Damian piped in.
“You agree with him on anything that involves going against me.” Tim grumbled, crossing his arms and slouching in his seat.
“I cannot deny that.”
Dick turned back to the road and smiled. The pain killers were starting to kick in, so, finally, the pain was going down. “You two can sign my cast when we get back to the manor.” He paused, “You can too, Bruce.”
Bruce smiled next to him. “I wouldn’t miss it, son.”