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Dick Grayson is in love with a married man, and his wife has a temper. She always has, and a lot of people have been hurt because of it, but she loves Bruce with all that she is and he loves her back just as fiercely.
She’s loved him for a long time, since her heart broke with his all those years ago. So she held him close. Watched him through everything, until one day he left her.
It broke her. Her temper got worse. Clouds gathered heavier and closer to the ground as she cried and cried over losing him. But he came back a man proper. Having gone on out to seek his fortune and returning to his sweetheart on one knee. Always her prince. How could she say no?
She does everything she can to keep him. She encourages his new line of work by giving him playmates. Born from her own madness and desire to be close to him. If he wishes to be her knight then he needs dragons doesn’t he? He doesn’t slay them, but she doesn’t mind all that much, it means the fairytale can go on and on. Forever.
And one day she gives him a gift. A little boy so like he was. A squire of sorts.
Dick doesn’t know if she consciously killed his parents, but he knows he doesn’t trust her.
Bruce does though. Bruce believes in her so deeply it’s a part of himself. When his heart shattered the gaps were filled in with her. When Dick’s did the gaps were filled with Bruce. And he’s scared that faith will get Bruce worse than killed.
Because she won’t let him die, Dick knows that much. How there’s always something in the way when a bullet would have struck him. How there’s always some piece of architecture perfect for whatever he needs to do. She protects him as much as he protects her. It makes it hard for Dick to explain why Bruce should leave. Bruce shuts down that conversation immediately every time Dick tries to have it.
Dick should have known Bruce’s fondness wouldn’t spare him her wrath.
He’s getting hit more often in the field now. Ledges he’s known by heart are just an inch shorter than they were. Bruce is disappointed in him, and he dare not point the finger at Bruce’s wife. It would put more space between them, just like she wants. So he swallows the shame and works twice as hard. And she ups the ante.
A group of random thugs get the drop on him. He drags himself back to the manor with a broken arm, the road bumpier than it should be. Bruce is worried, but he’s also frustrated. He knows this shouldn’t have happened. It’s now or never.
The explanation goes as poorly as Dick expected and Bruce storms off. The bells in the distance ring like the triumphant laughter they are.
Dick leaves a few days later. Bruce asks him to stay, wants him to stay, and Dick has a hard time denying him anything. But Bruce’s wife is jealous and angry and he needs to find somewhere he isn’t surrounded by her.
It’s hard getting by outside of her sometimes. In others it feels as though he can finally breathe. She’s not here, not watching his every movement for good or for ill.
Sometimes when Dick thinks of her, her remembers Diana’s stories about the gods. Of Hera and her wrath. Less at the husband who all but spat on her domain as a goddess and more at the ones who caught his eye. Bruce, unlike the sky god, is a loyal husband to a fault, but even if he wasn’t, Dick knows she would never stop loving him. And she would stop at nothing to crush the one he was with. Dick had never lain with her husband. Had never even told Bruce what he meant to him. Yet she had still grown to despise Dick for the mere possibility it could happen.
Yet he still braves going back into her at times. She makes it harder for him to get back each time. Dead ends and sharp turns that aren’t supposed to be there. But he has to, if he wants to see Bruce. The man only ever gets more devoted each time Dick sees him. It makes him angry, makes him sick, makes him want to hold on to Bruce as tight as he can and drag him from the one he loves. He doesn’t. Barely touches Bruce anymore. She knows what he wants though, and she’s keeping a very close eye on him.
Bruce doesn’t like to leave her for anything, but sometimes it’s necessary. There’s a flower on the front porch and a promise lingering in the air that he’ll be back from his quest soon.
He doesn’t come back soon.
Dick wishes he could believe that he’d left her for good, but he knows better. If Bruce is late then something has gone wrong. He has to go after him. For the first time in a long time rather than spitting him out as fast as she can she keeps him there. No matter what road he takes out it always seems to curve back to where he set off. He doesn’t like to speak to her, but now he has no choice.
“Please!” He screams to the drainpipes and old brick and grotesqueries glaring down at him with suspicious eyes. “I promise I’ll bring him back to you just please let me go help him.”
The next road he takes goes straight out.
He does find Bruce, and they complete the mission, and he drags the battered man back to his wife as he promised. Bruce seems to get stronger as they get closer to her.
They say goodbye at the edge, where her shadows pull at Bruce’s boots and cape and the wind whispers how much she missed him. Dick doesn’t cross the threshold, but he holds to Bruce’s handshake as long as he can. He’s kept his promise, but he won’t push his luck.
Despite all that, he knows something Bruce’s wife refuses to learn. That Dick could sweep Bruce away, build them a new life somewhere less overbearing. Maybe he could even make Bruce happy. None of it would matter. Bruce would always go back. Would drag himself back by his fingernails if he had to.
Because Gotham’s prince fell for her long, long ago, and the snarling maw of a dragon is nothing compared to that.