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Dick ran his fingers through his hair, sighing softly at the half-empty cup of coffee sitting on the table between his elbows. When did things get this complicated?
The Hall was deserted save for Dick who just couldn’t muster the motivation to go home. Nothing was waiting for him there except another sleepless night and endless time on his hands. Here, in the Hall, he could at least research and monitor alarms in an attempt to keep his mind from wandering.
Dick let out a deep breath through his nose and leaned back in his chair, trying to sort everything out in his head. Wally was never going to talk to him after this, he knew it. In reality it had only been a matter of time before Dick fucked up so severely that Wally would start to hate him. It was always going to be related to Artemis, Dick knew that, but this seemed to be the deciding factor. Dick’s use of Artemis in his plans to infiltrate the Light was, in Wally’s eyes, completely uncalled for and what he dubbed as a “Dick-move”. Dick didn’t blame him, but the way Wally accused him of basically not caring for Artemis’ safety, accused him of not knowing what he was getting everyone into, that was what Dick had a problem with.
Wally saw this as Dick taking risks that weren’t worth it, that were way too high, too busy caught in the grips of anger to see what this was really doing to his best friend. Dick spent countless hours agonizing over everything. Every detail, everywhere he’d failed to do something, but he kept trying to reassure himself that this was all for a purpose. Wally couldn’t see it, he had never been good at seeing past his brash emotions, but Dick understood that this operation was a lot like chess: a lot of calculating, a lot of patience, and necessary risks.
Yes. That’s what he kept telling himself. Necessary. It was necessary to ‘kill’ Artemis, necessary to allow Kaldur to blow up the Cave, necessary to allow his team to get captured. It was all necessary.
Their possible deaths, necessary.
But that didn’t make it any less painful. The last thing he had wanted to do was to stick Artemis in all of this.
Even in his anguish, he remembered seeing her in orange and thinking to himself that orange wasn’t really her color, green looked so much better on her, then he felt guilty because he remembered the many times he’d imagined her in nothing at all before realizing that she was Wally’s girlfriend and he could never do that to Wally.
But god, he wanted to. He wanted to confess and take her from Wally and to hell with everything but…
That wasn’t right.
Nothing was ever right.
Dick slowly raised the mug of still-warm coffee to his lips and drank deeply. He resisted the urge to cringe because he hated his coffee black but he was too lazy to put anything else in it.
In a moment of bad judgment, he looked at his hand, sighing deeply and knowing he would regret this. He pressed the computer on his wrist and the holograph sprung to life. Dick’s hand moved automatically to it, pressing the file and the picture of him and Artemis flickered onto the holographic screen.
He couldn’t help the upturn of his lips. She was so young. Five years can really change a person. She looked so confused, her dark coal eyes practically screaming questions about who this strange kid next to her was and why he was taking a picture of them.
“We’ll laugh about this someday…” Dick muttered to himself, feeling his smile fall, that tired look replacing itself on his face. They might never get a chance to laugh about this now.
Dick honestly didn’t know what else could go wrong.
Beyond having to put all of his friends, the love of his life in danger, he had to do that knowing there were too many variables unaccounted for to be certain the answer came out with them stopping the invasion.
The only solace he had was that Kaldur was watching over Artemis and even that was shaky at best. Wally had merely voiced his fears when he had suggested that Kaldur was a triple-agent. If that was true, Artemis was never going to know if Kaldur didn’t want her to know. If Kaldur was actually a traitor instead of pretending, Artemis was the first thing in his way.
And it killed Dick to know that it was him who put her there.
Dick nearly knocked over his coffee as the Computer suddenly came to life and announced someone’s arrival via zeta-tube and Dick was so focused on clicking off the holo-computer in his glove and catching his mug to notice who came into the lounge.
Dick turned in his chair to see-
“Batman? What’re you doing here, it’s like…three in the morning. Shouldn’t you be in Gotham?”
“Exactly. It’s three in the morning and the logs showed you haven’t left the hall since yesterday,” Bruce replied disapprovingly. Dick could only sigh and set his coffee a few feet from him.
“I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
“That’s classified-“
“Dick, we’re alone,” Bruce reminded him. Dick sighed and slumped lightly in his chair.
“It’s still classified, Bruce,” He mumbled, crossing his arms and giving Bruce his best ‘stop asking me’ glare, but it was half-hearted and Bruce could tell.
“Dick… You’ve been secretive lately and I can understand you being upset about the Cave, but you just look…horrible. If this is about the Cave, I know I’ve taught you better than to get attached to places-“
“It’s not about the Cave, Bruce. The Cave is…was just a place.”
Bruce seemed to want to say something else but he stopped himself and changed his mind instead. “Dick, go home. Get some rest,” He ordered, his stern, fatherly voice tempting Dick to actually listen. Of course, though, Dick being, well, Dick, had to argue.
As he turned to do so, he noticed something etched into Bruce’s features. The way his shoulders were squared and even under his cowl, Dick swore he saw a hint of concern. Possibly even worry. Dick bit down his argument. There was no reasoning with Bruce when he was like this.
“Fine, just let me finish what I was doing.”
In other words, ‘let me erase any evidence of what I was researching before I leave’. Bruce simply nodded and turned with a whooshing of his cape and left the way he had come.
Dick would spend the next half hour erasing the tracks of his research and when he finally did get home he stayed awake and thought.
About the invasion.
About the lives of his team members that were currently at risk.
But mostly about Artemis and what she was doing now and maybe, just maybe, when this was all over, he’d be able to see her again and they might be able to laugh and talk like old times and if Wally was still talking to him then Wally could come too.
Dick knew he shouldn’t ask for much, he’d asked way to much already, but if whatever divine forces out there felt like granting him the kindness of seeing her smiling face just one last time, felt like letting him know she was okay and nothing was going to happen to her, he’d give up anything.
Hell, if this all played out right and she came home, he might even give up being Nightwing. Just if it meant being closer to her.
That was all he ever really wanted.
To be closer to her.