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“You’re going to be fine,” Babs said, in that calm but stern voice she used when everyone else was panicking. Dick loved that voice. “So don’t even start.”
The throb of pain in his right side was mild and manageable and much, much less severe than so many other wounds he’d sustained over the years. The panic fluttering through his arteries had nothing to do with the injury, really.
“Bet you say that to all the girls,” he whined, though he wasn’t certain it came out as funny as he was intending.
Babs snapped her eyes over to him. “Stop trying to be brave, Richard Grayson, I’ll vomit. I’m being serious. This stuff wasn’t all that potent, or powerful. And it’s fast-acting. You should just pop back on your own in less than an hour. Worst case scenario I call the League heavy-hitters and they drag your ass back.”
That…actually went a long way towards making him feel better. Classic Babs.
It didn’t change the fact that he was sweating buckets and feverish and slumped on Babs’s couch with a microchip inserted somewhere beneath his ribcage, but maybe it would all be over soon.
“Should have deflected,” Cass said suddenly, with a grunt. “If your…escrima aim. Was better.”
She was hovering a few feet from the couch, still suited up with flecks of Dick’s blood on her gloves. He knew she felt useless and wired, but he lacked the brain capacity or fine motor control to do anything about it right then. At least she looked better off than Damian, who was stood stock-still in the corner of the room with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Dick forced out a laugh at Cass’s comment, which came out sounding more like a wheeze. “You’re just mad I jumped in front of it first.”
She aimed a kick at his shin. This was her way of saying You’re right, shut up.
It hadn’t been a decision at all, really. Barely a coherent thought. He’d known that the men delivering the Penguin’s package- the men they were dealing with tonight- had been equipped with experimental time travel technology tucked away in their dartguns. He’d known they planned to stick themselves if they encountered any Bats, which would jump them back a few hours in the past and let them carry on their business without being ambushed. He’d known, when the particularly young and particularly clumsy-looking courier had pulled the dartgun, that he would make the mistake. That faced with Cassandra Cain bearing down on him and Dick and Damian close behind, he’d reach for the wrong gun. Dick had seen the dart coming, aimed straight for Damian, and had done exactly what he always did.
“Dick,” Cass was saying, then, staring at his face with something like concern. “Are you-“
And then the world was spinning, and shrieking, and groaning. It took him a minute to realize that he was the one making a labored groaning sound, and Babs’s panicked voice was shouting from far away, something like We need to move him now, get him to the street, something like I don’t know how far back, something like A few hours at most, Dick, okay, and then couldn’t hear anything at all.
The next thing Dick was aware of was the rough feeling of concrete against his back and neck. He groaned, unmoving, trying to remember who he was and where he was and why his limbs weren’t cooperating. Then- a hand, on his shoulder, gripping it, moving to check his pulse. He flinched, reflexively, with his whole body.
“Whoa,” came a voice, from right above him. “It’s really you?”
And it was familiar, the most familiar sound in the world. Dick’s heart fell somewhere around his toes.
Be brave, Grayson, he told himself, and blinked his eyes open. A teenage Tim Drake blinked back at him.
“We couldn’t tell from the cameras,” he was saying, almost in awe, and Dick tried very hard to follow his words instead of focusing solely on Tim, Tim, with his stupid haircut and his bright eyes, god, he’s a baby. “But it really is you.”
“Don’t look too close,” Dick croaked out, without even really knowing why. He lifted his head, attempted to push himself up, and blackness rushed through his head like he was in free fall.
**
Time travel. Babs had said malfunction, Babs had said not sure how far, Babs had said significantly longer. Dick really hadn’t been mentally present when she’d been explaining the details, but he certainly hadn’t been expecting ‘significantly longer’ to mean years. And yet, there was the evidence, in Tim’s face, in the very familiar couch he was now resting on that decidedly wasn’t the couch in Babs’s apartment.
She blinked at him from her computer, owlishly. Dick could feel her eyes on him, could feel her looking and looking and studying and unable to tear her eyes away. If the microchip hadn’t been in his bloodstream making him feverish and generally useless, he’d be whining about being a bug pinned to a board right now.
“Time travel,” she’d said, when he had finally surfaced back into consciousness into the jarring scenery of the Clocktower. How long had it been, he’d thought, and couldn’t quite come up with an exact count of years, but a long time, surely. A long time.
He had smiled. Stupidly. Of course her past self would be more caught up than he was, of course she’d already have figured it out. Not least because the other him, the past him, was still in Bludhaven. “Got it in one, beautiful,” was all he said, tongue tasting acidic and bloody. And then: “Don’t tell Bruce.”
Her green eyes were pinpointed at him, intense, little lasers. She ignored his last comment, but it was Babs, who really wouldn’t, not if he asked. “How long?” she demanded. “Years?”
“Mm. A few.”
“I need answers, Dick,” Babs snapped, and Dick realized she was scared. Really scared, like Babs never got. “Do I quarantine you? Find a way to send you back? We don’t have protocols for this- well, we do, but none that have ever been tested enough to-”
“‘S fine, O,” Dick interrupted, wincing at his attempt to sit further up on the couch. “Don’t worry, I’m serious. Other you’s got it all figured out. Stupid accident. I’ll snap back in a bit on my own, no harm done.”
She narrowed her green eyes at him. Deciding whether or not to believe.
“Babs,” he whined. “‘S just me. Relax.”
She swallowed. Sighed. And finally, finally dropped her eyes.
“Should have known you’d be just as stupid and accident-prone in the future,” she mumbled, and Dick laughed a bit deliriously.
“He looks sick,” said Tim, because Tim was here, now, leaning restlessly over the back of the couch. Dick suppressed another flinch, and managed, instead, to reach a weak arm up to bat uselessly at Tim’s forearm. A gesture of you’re real, of you’re right here, in front of me, of I miss when you were this size, I miss when I was someone you could trust implicitly, I miss every version of you.
“Hey,” Tim said, giggling, very gently swatting Dick’s hand away. “Hey, hey, you should be thanking me. I’m the one who had to drag your unconscious self all the way up here.”
“Ooh, he’s Mister Muscles,” Dick teased, because it was natural, it was familiar. He hadn’t done this in so long.
“I’m trying to be concerned about your well-being here,” Tim sniffed. “Since you’re utterly useless right now. What should we do? Take you to Leslie’s? The Cave? Should we find our-Dick and give him custody of you?”
“None of those,” Dick sighed. “All bad options. I’m fine, promise. Device is just making me sick.”
Tim looked skeptical. “If you’re really sure,” he said. “But, hey, I think it would be funny to get you and the other Dick in the same room. Maybe it would make the world end, though, or something like that.”
Dick thought, the other me is in Bludhaven, thought, I’d hate him, I think, and he’d hate me, thought, his world hasn’t ended yet but it’s going to. Soon. It’s going to.
“Would definitely end the world,” he said. “Which is why I just need to stay right here, lounging on this couch, until my Barbara does her good work and I peacefully get snatched back to where I-”
The door blew open, with a magnificent crash. All three of them flinched. Dick twisted his head around, painfully, and there was Cass, entering the Clocktower with the force of a small tornado.
He winced. Time seemed to slow down, just slightly. She was in civvies, which was unusual for her, but then it was early morning by now. Dick realized, then, that he hadn’t factored her in at all. Was that wrong of him? He adjusted the timeline in his mind. After the Quake. Before the Clocktower- well, before Stephanie. Cass was here, but relatively new, relatively wary.
His first thought: Oh, my god, she was a baby, how did I ever-
Second thought, interrupting the first in its urgency: She will be able to read anything on your face, Richard Grayson.
A million warnings blared through his head. What would she be able to see, what would she be able to glean, what secrets from the future would she be able to pick up on just from the way his eyes twitched? And he was- he was sick, from the microchip, he couldn’t guard himself like he normally did, it was- she’ll see it, won’t she, he babbled internally, that’s the very first thing, it was always right there on his mind anyway, the only thing on his mind, because how could there be anything else, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s-
She locked eyes with him. Just briefly. But it was enough, to clock her shocked expression, to see the distrust on her face.
Dick turned away, instinctually, raising a hand to shield his face. No. He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this to her, to any of them.
“Cass,” Babs started to say, but she was already stalking towards the couch, rushing towards him. His mind raced through scenarios. Only one seemed like an effective solution.
Gathering all his strength, Dick raised himself from the couch. He gritted his teeth.
Cass stopped inches from him, searching his face with abandon. “What?” was what she asked, eyes flinging towards Babs. “Not him, it’s not him-”
“Batgirl,” Dick growled, look back at me, focus on me, and waited for her dark eyes to flick back to him.
Dick surged forward. He was barely standing, but if his bet was right, that wouldn’t matter to Cass. She’d perceive him as a threat. She already knew he wasn’t her Dick. All he had to do was make one threatening motion.
He was right.
It was instinct. Cass met his motion with her own, whipping her fist across his face, knocking him out instantly.
**
Dick had taken a lot of hits, since he’d put on the cowl. Part of it was that he had a Damian to look out for, now, part of it was he was in his own head enough to make him sloppy, part of it was that Batman was just more of a brawler than Nightwing was, no matter how much he resisted adapting his fighting style under the new mantle. So he’d taken a lot of hits, recently. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been unconscious so many times in the span of an hour.
At first, he thought, maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s sent me back already. Maybe he’d open his eyes and be right back on Babs’s couch, safe, ready to be ridiculed by Cass and sniffed at by Damian and fussed over by Alfred.
Dick really should have known better than to indulge wishful thinking. He really should have.
When he breathed in, the air was damp and cool and earthy. It didn’t smell like that anywhere else on earth. Dick knew where he was and he knew the fabric beneath him wasn’t Babs’s couch but the medbay cot and he thought maybe, maybe, if his head kept spinning like it was doing right now and his stomach kept writhing with unfathomable nausea then maybe the blackness would take him right back under and whisk him away to safety, far, far, far away from here.
Instead, a voice said, “You’re awake.”
His blood froze. Dick didn’t answer. He didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t move, didn’t think, didn’t breathe.
There were a few moments of perfect, incandescent silence, other than the industrial lights mounted above them emitting a low hum. Dick felt his heart pound sloppily against his chest, again, again, again.
“Dick.” Closer this time. His stomach twisted, violently, and Dick thought for a minute that he’d have to duck to the side and vomit right then and there.
This isn’t what I wanted, he thought. This is the one thing I didn’t want.
He waited, for a moment, and then another. The microchip didn’t thrum and yank him into the future. Babs-of-the-present didn’t press a magic button and make everything disappear.
Dick blinked his eyes open, slowly, winced against the lights installed in the Cave ceiling.
“You moved me,” Dick said, voice low and quiet. It was all he could manage.
An exhale of breath. Close, beside him even, but not close enough to be in his eyeline. That was a small mercy.
“You attacked Cassandra,” said Bruce, and Dick, who had not heard his voice in five months, made an involuntary hissing noise, somewhere between a wheeze and a whimper.
“Dick,” Bruce said, more concerned than he ever let leak into his voice usually, and then shuffling and a firm hand on Dick’s shoulder and he couldn't do it, he couldn’t, he couldn't. Dick rolled his head away and squeezed his eyes shut.
“Attacked,” he said, like the word had been punched out of him, “Sure, yes, that’s what I did, we’ll- we’ll call it that. Tell her sorry for me. I didn’t mean it.”
And Dick could hear the frown, the eyebrows drawing together, the eyes narrowing with confusion. He started laughing, horribly, a wet, awful sound that was probably this side of deranged.
More quiet. A time-travelling former Robin going crazy was evidently the one situation Batman didn’t have a contingency for. It took nearly a full minute, but eventually Bruce cleared his throat.
“Barbara says-”
“Barbara,” Dick hissed, “was supposed to keep you out of this.”
The hand withdrew. Dick wanted to sob.
“She was…beleagured,” Bruce grunted. “But you were hurt. Unconscious. Cassandra had already called me.”
Of course she had. Of course. Dick laughed again, weakly, one side of his face pressed into the stiff medbay pillow.
“How much do you know?” he asked.
“Barbara and Tim say they found you on the sidewalk outside the Clocktower. That you are…from the future. Several years, possibly.”
“Mm,” Dick said, noncommittally. “Never thought I’d be the subject of a field report. Guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Don’t be naive, he thought. You were when Bludhaven burned. When you went completely off reservation.
Quiet, quiet, more quiet. Dick inhaled the sterile scent of the medbay section of the Cave. He considered making a run for the weapons locker and braining himself on one of the maces.
There was another shuffling sound, like Bruce was settling into a chair beside the cot. Dick could hear his breathing, could hear how hard he was working to keep it even.
“You won’t look at me,” Bruce said. And the words were- he said it wonderingly, almost, in shock, or awe, and Dick, who knew Bruce’s voice better than he knew any sound in the world, was probably the only person alive who could sense the timidity in it.
It crushed him. His chest was squeezing itself, constricting, cracking ribs one by one.
“Bruce,” was the only word he managed to choke out.
“Explain to me,” Bruce said, and it was his Batman voice, his field voice, his Robin, report, Robin, listen to me, Robin, ROBIN. There was nothing that could stop Dick from responding to those words, nothing but the knowledge that if he did obey, he’d fuck everything up so irrevocably that the whole universe might explode.
“Don’t make me do this,” Dick said instead. It was haunting, how pathetic he sounded, how like a child. “Just- don’t. I should be swapping back soon. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it, so, just don’t- just don’t- don’t look at me. Just leave me over here, it’s alright. It’s all fine. I promise.”
“Dick,” Bruce cut in, voice full of authority, no room for argument. “Calm down. Let me help.”
No, no, no, no, no, no, Dick thought, frenzied, desperate. Because Bruce Wayne was dead, and he was here, and it was killing Dick. It was killing him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn’t be here, not now, not ever again. It was over.
You’re fucking useless, he screamed at himself. The point is for him NOT to let on! What the hell is he supposed to think, with you having a meltdown?
Dick pulled in several quick, shallow breaths in a row. He thought about Bruce. He thought about how many people loved Bruce, about Damian, who had barely gotten a chance to meet him at all. He thought about Bruce, inches away from him, alive and breathing and here for the last time.
Dick opened his eyes. He pushed himself shakily up on the cot, swallowed, inhaled, and turned his head back to the other side.
And, well, there he was. It was funny, that seeing him didn’t feel strange at all. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, Bruce in the chair beside the cot, in civvies, elbows resting on his knees, face pinched and pensive. It was just…how things were supposed to be. It was just Bruce.
“Ha,” Dick said, and he didn’t have to force a smile nearly as much as he’d expected to. “You’re such a baby. Remind me to make fun of you for all the gray hair when I get back.”
He felt sick. He was sick. He was going to be sick, right now.
Bruce’s face went through several iterations of shock, and relief, and puzzlement. He finally settled on unimpressed. “Barbara said you were only from a few years in the future. From the looks of you, I’d say five, at most.”
“A man can get a lot of gray hairs in five years, B.”
Bruce sat forward, leaning closer. “So it is five years, then.”
Dick did an elaborate shrug. It ended in him wincing and slumping back down on the pillow. “The details really aren’t important.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow.
“In this case,” Dick whined. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no bullshit, etcetera. The timeline’s at stake here, Bruce.”
“Of course,” Bruce said, but still looked unconvinced.
It was normal, was the thing that was tearing Dick’s chest open. It was so normal, and he had settled into it like it was nothing, and this was what they’d always done, for half of Dick’s life. I’ve lost this, he thought, teeth worrying his bottom lip, I’ve lost this, forever.
“I haven't been here in months,” Dick said, barely a whisper. “Funny.”
He hadn’t meant to say anything at all. It was just that he hadn’t, because the Cave was all Bruce, and being there as Batman was intolerable. This place that he’d spent half his childhood in, he’d just…abandoned it.
“Really?”
Dick blinked. Because Bruce looked reserved, but behind all the reserved-ness there was all this concern, and Dick wasn’t used to this, really, he wasn’t used to- to Bruce being the one off his guard.
Dick was nothing if he couldn’t gracefully backtrack. “Just been a wild few months.” He flashed his most annoying grin. “Guess you’ll see for yourself, one day.”
Bruce grunted, saying nothing. The nausea crested inside Dick again. This felt like the most cruel lie of all.
It was quiet for a minute. Dick watched Bruce’s face and watched and watched until he couldn’t anymore, and he dropped his gaze to the floor.
“You wanted Cassandra to incapacitate you,” Bruce said abruptly. “I have been trying to figure out why.”
Dick snorted. “World’s greatest detective couldn’t figure that out?”
“You didn’t want her to know something,” Bruce said, cautiously, like he was testing the waters.
“I didn’t want her to know anything,” Dick insisted. “This is the past, Bruce, it’s…was it not the responsible move?”
“Hm,” Bruce intoned. “No, it was. You did well.”
This, more than anything else, gutted him down the middle.
Dick tried to breathe in but couldn’t, and tried to say something but choked instead, and then a sob was wracking its way through his body before he could force it down. He couldn’t see, suddenly, eyes pooling and blurring, and he couldn’t even do this right, couldn’t even make use of his one final blessing-
And there was Bruce, moving to sit beside him on the cot, wrapping a steady arm around Dick, who crumpled against him like a doll.
“Don’t worry,” he was gasped out immediately, damage control, “don’t, don’t it’s just- it’s all been a lot and I can’t explain but-”
“Dick,” Bruce said, “don’t explain, it’s alright. It’s fine.”
You wouldn't be doing this to the me of this time, Dick thought, you wouldn't be saying that, wouldn’t be hugging him. He didn’t know if it was true or not.
There was a violent spasm in his abdomen, then, and it had nothing to do with the pathetic sobs. Dick groaned, heaving in a breath.
“Think it’s happening,” he said through gritted teeth. “Sorry. I think- I think the time’s up.”
“Will you be alright?” Bruce asked, and for some reason Dick laughed.
“Yes, Bruce, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry ever.”
He was shivering all over, now. His stomach was flipping in ways he didn’t think had been possible. The room felt far away, and the ringing in his ears started to overpower everything else.
Dick tightened his arms around Bruce, buried his face in his neck the way he used to do when he was eight. For the last time.
“I’m always your Robin,” Dick choked out, without even meaning to. “Always, always, okay? That’s who I am. I just- I- you have to know.”
The arms were gripping him, harder now. “Dick,” said Bruce, at a loss. “You’re much more than that.”
“But I- but I-” There was a selfish part of him, an ugly part, that just wanted him to say it. That wanted to hear it, before the ringing got too loud.
“You- are always my Robin,” said Bruce. Something deep in Dick exhaled. “Of course you are. My eldest.”
There was no time. This was the last moment, the last chance Dick Grayson would ever have to say something to Bruce Wayne.
Bludhaven. Damian. Steph. There was- there was so much.
“I should have come home more,” Dick gasped. “Things are about to get bad, and…I really should have. I wish I would have.”
Bruce said, “I wish you would too.”
And then there was nothing but the ringing, and a whirring sound, and everything spun so fast that his vision dissolved and Dick was gone.
**
The couch was soft under his back. Dick blinked slowly awake.
“There you are,” Babs said, reaching over to grasp his shoulder. “You feel okay? Still our same Dick?”
“Yeah,” he said faintly. “Yeah.”
“The chip dissolved once the timer was up. You should start healing right away, but we’ll get Leslie to give you a once over. I think you’ll be fine.”
“Good news,” Dick coughed, pushing himself upwards. “Worked like a charm, I guess?”
“Like a charm exactly. A bit longer than I’d anticipated, but not by much.”
“Mm.”
“Dick?”
“Yeah?”
Babs pursed her lips. “How…how far back was it? What did you see?”
People I never thought I’d see again.
“Too much,” Dick said faintly, and let a few stray tears run down his cheeks.