Chapter Text
Dick Grayson. Thirty-three years old. Current Mayor of Blüdhaven.
If you asked Dick Grayson to describe that night six months ago.
That night where Gotham was in utter chaos, Bane had infiltrated every nook and corner of the city, and every Bat and Bird was out there trying to stop the flames, or at least ease them.
All Dick would say was that the city was on fire.
Literally.
In the way cities burn when something they believed in has been broken right in front of them. Dick, still in his blue tailored suit from a city council meeting, had come up from the subway at Park and Finger and walked into a street that had stopped moving. People stood in clusters with their phones out, all looking up at the massive billboard broadcasting live news from Gotham City. Some people were filming, some just standing with the particular stillness of witnesses who didn't know what to do with what they'd seen. None of them were running.
Dick knew now why they weren't running.
Because the action had already passed before he'd even stepped out of the subway. Because Bane was already in custody, and the city had been saved, once again, from the catastrophe that always seemed to follow him. That should've been enough. That should've cleared everything. Dick shouldn't have had to worry anymore. Except for what the news anchor was saying.
"Breaking news from Gotham City. Batman has successfully subdued Bane, but emergency responders have confirmed that the vigilante sustained what appears to be a devastating spinal injury during the confrontation. Witnesses report Bane broke Batman's back before the Dark Knight somehow continued fighting. Batman is currently unconscious and has been transported to Gotham General in critical condition. His condition remains unknown."
The footage replayed. Again. And again.
They showed the moment Bane had lifted Batman over his knee. They showed the crack.
A loud gasp rippled through the crowd around Dick. Someone covered their mouth.
Someone whispered, "Oh my God..."
Someone's kid started crying.
Bruce.
Bruce, who'd gotten his back cracked like fucking spaghetti and had, despite everything, still gotten back up because Bane was still standing, and people were counting on Batman. Dick had stopped breathing right there on the sidewalk as he watched the live broadcast from Blüdhaven. He'd watched Bruce Wayne, because in that moment Dick couldn't think of him as Batman. Couldn't maintain the professional distance that came with the cowl. He'd watched Bruce—his supposed father figure, his fucking dad—stand up on a spine that should not have allowed it, with a body that was running on something that had nothing to do with adrenaline anymore, nothing to do with what was left in the tank, and finish it. Finish Bane. Finish the chaos. Save Gotham. The way Bruce's amazing, brilliant, stubborn, absolutely fucking idiotic brain always did.
And then Dick had watched him fall afterward like a puppet without strings. This time, Batman hadn't gotten back up. Because the second fall had been quieter than the first. There was no drama in it. No last stand. No triumphant pose. Just a man whose body had finally collected every debt it had been owed.
Dick had closed his phone and run. He'd run toward Gotham in his tailored, very awkward blue suit, his Nightwing uniform forgotten back at City Hall, his keys forgotten, his bike forgotten.
None of it had mattered.
— — — —
By the time he crossed the main premises of the city, Bruce had already been taken to the hospital.
He knew because he hadn't forgotten his phone.
Tim had called.
"He isn't waking up, N," Red Robin had said.
Not Tim.
Because that's who Tim had been in that moment. Red Robin. Someone who'd been fighting beside Batman only minutes earlier against Bane. Someone who'd watched Bruce fall with his own eyes. Dick could hear it in his voice, the ragged breathing, the frantic movement in the background, the way words kept catching in his throat, like saying them out loud would somehow make them more real.
"He isn't waking up," Tim repeated, quieter this time, almost like he was trying to convince himself otherwise. "They've stabilized his breathing, but... N..." His voice cracked. "His back... they said..." He stopped altogether.
Dick didn't let him finish.
Because he already knew.
The hospital was its own kind of chaos.
Not the medical kind. That kind was organized behind closed doors, swift and precise, full of protocols and the practiced choreography of people who knew exactly what they were doing. The chaos was outside.
It had taken Dick seven minutes, three security guards, and the reputation of being Blüdhaven's mayor just to make it through the goddamn front doors. The place was swarmed. People were cursing. Crying. Mourning. The street outside Gotham General had filled the way streets fill when something happens to a symbol. Not orderly grief. Not the managed public mourning of planned ceremonies. This was the raw, improvised kind. People who'd been there. People who'd watched their hero get broken in half. People who hadn't been there at all, but had watched it happen live. People who needed to be somewhere that felt connected to him, even if it was only the building he'd been taken into.
Dick had made it inside the lobby, but he couldn't get past security, the police barricades, or the reception desk. He stood there in the middle of it all, in civilian clothes, and couldn't go any farther.
He'd tried.
The woman behind the desk had been apologetic. And completely immovable.
"It's classified, sir. His identity cannot be compromised. Only his partners are allowed inside." She'd meant costume. She'd meant Nightwing could walk through those doors. Richard Grayson could not. Because Richard John Grayson was Bruce Wayne's son, and had no connection to Batman. And the fact that they were the same person was the cruelest fucking joke at the center of everything. The structural irony he'd built his entire life around and had never hated as much as he hated it in that moment.
"I'm—"
He'd stopped.
I'm his son.
The words sat right there.True, and useless, and impossible.
"I'm sorry, sir."
He'd walked back outside the emergency department and collapsed onto a nearby bench to wait. His brothers,Tim, Damian, along with Stephanie, were inside. They wouldn't let Batman be left alone with only the GCPD. It was too risky. They were there to make sure Bruce's mask stayed intact. To make sure no one learned who lay beneath the cowl. Maybe they were also there because none of them could bear the thought of Bruce waking up alone.
Or worse.
Not waking up at all.
Dick was left outside.
Which was funny.
He was Bruce Wayne's eldest son. His first partner. His friend. His brother.
He was Nightwing.
He was the mayor of a goddamn city. And he couldn't even get within fifty feet of his father's hospital room because of protocols, secret identities, and pure fucking bullshit.
Needless to say, he was frustrated. Beyond frustrated. He was worried. Scared shitless. And Fucking furious.
The wall hadn't done anything to deserve it. It was a perfectly ordinary hospital wall. Beige and institutional, and bearing absolutely no responsibility for the situation.
Dick put his fist through the plaster beside the fire door. He felt nothing in his hand. He felt everything about the three inches of concrete separating him from the room where they were trying to save his father.
He punched it again.
Because a week ago they'd been talking about retirement. They'd been talking about Bruce finally passing on the mantle. About resting. About watching his legacy continue in capable hands and, for once, allowing himself to simply be live.
It had been a good conversation.
Bruce had actually listened. He'd even hummed and agreed with parts of it. He'd shown genuine interest.
He punched it again. His knuckles bleeding open.
Because Dick was a fucking idiot.
Because retirement had never been in Bruce's vocabulary. Bruce was a fucking idiot who was never going to give up the cowl unless someone physically ripped it off him. Unless his heart stopped beating. Until then, he'd convince himself he was immortal.
Because Dick was going to watch another parent die. Or maybe something even crueler. A coma. Where there would be no more conversations. No more arguments. No more lectures. No more Bruce rolling his eyes at Dick's jokes before smiling anyway. No more chances.
He punched the wall again.
Someone touched his arm. He turned.
A woman, maybe in her fifties. Civilian clothes. Red eyes. She'd been crying in the street with her husband when Dick had pushed through the crowd. She looked at him now with the expression of someone recognizing another kind of disaster.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly.
Dick laughed and it didn't sound like a joyful one.
"No," he said, with a clarity and honesty he had no defenses left to hide behind. "No, I'm not okay." His voice broke. "I love that man. He's my..." He swallowed. "He's my hero."
Since I was eight years old.
He'd saved me, and has given me a family. I never thought I'd love a man so stoic and serious, but here I am. Fucked up and I love him.
The words stayed trapped behind his teeth.
Instead he let out a shaky breath and dragged a hand over his face.
And because he wasn’t in his right mind and didn't had the energy to smile for be kind, or remember he was a mayor and a billionaire's son. "Go fuck yourself for asking,” he adds.
She didn’t go anywhere. She put her hand over his bleeding knuckles and held it there, this stranger in the street, and Dick looked at the hospital wall and breathed.
---------------- ---------------- ------------------ ----------------- ---------------- -------------------
The surgery goes on for hours. Dick stays outside with that woman for all those hours. Tim steps out after five had passed. The woman had fallen asleep.
Tim hadn’t looked at her. He had looked at Dick, and said.
“He’s stable, but unconscious. They’re shifting him to the ICU”.
And that was that.
---------------- ---------------- ------------------ ----------------- ---------------- -------------------
Bruce Wayne stayed in the Intensive Care Unit for thirty-two days.
Thirty-two days.
Which was seven hundred and sixty-eight hours.
Forty-six thousand and eighty minutes.
Dick knew, not because he'd counted them. His brain wasn't calm or blank enough to do that. No, instead he had calculated them. Every single time he was free. Like someone calculated rent after getting a new job. Like someone calculated the cost of something important. Something necessary.
Except Bruce wasn't a bill. He wasn't a deadline. He wasn't something Dick should have been measuring time against.
But he did anyway.
Because the first week had been survival.
Doctors of every specialty had been rushing in and out of Bruce's room at all hours of the day and night. There were machines everywhere, each one beeping with terrifying regularity. Ventilators. Cardiac monitors. Intracranial pressure monitors. Multiple IV lines. Blood transfusions. Machines that monitored every fragile, stubborn function of Bruce Wayne's body because apparently even unconscious, even broken, even barely holding together, Bruce still refused to make anything easy.
Specialists from Gotham General. Gotham Presbyterian. Physicians flown in from Metropolis. Neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, trauma specialists, and neurologists all consulting over scans Dick couldn't understand but stared at anyway, as though looking long enough would somehow let him translate them.
As though if he stared hard enough, he could find the answer hidden somewhere in the black and white images.
As though Bruce's body would tell him how to fix it.
Dick had made calls.
Hundreds of them.
He had demanded specialists from around the world. He had pulled every connection he had, every favor owed, every resource available. He had gone as far as implying he would do whatever it took to get what Bruce needed, no matter how impossible or complicated, or unethical.
It had taken a firm, very disappointed, "Master Dick, you cannot go around making such implications, especially at such a crucial point in your career," from Alfred for him to finally relent.
Barely.
Because the pressure remained.
The fear remained.
The helplessness remained.
There were multiple spinal fractures. Severe trauma to the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spine. Internal bleeding. A collapsed lung from the impact. Three broken ribs. A fractured pelvis. Extensive muscle and ligament damage. Nerve trauma that left even the best specialists uncertain about the extent of recovery.
Bruce never hesitated to outdo himself, after all.
To top it all off with the world's cruelest cherry was a concussion severe enough that every neurologist refused to promise anything. Every morning, someone in a white coat would walk into the waiting room carrying another clipboard. Every morning, Dick would stand before they even spoke. Every morning, the answer was the same.
"He's stable."
Stable.
Dick grew to hate that fucking word.
Stable didn't mean awake. It didn't mean better or that Bruce was coming back.
It only meant he wasn't dying.
Not today.
By the second week, Gotham had adjusted.
When Dick walked into the hospital the next morning after a virtual meeting, carrying a fresh cup of coffee for himself and one for Clark, who had been coming every day with Diana, he noticed how different the city felt. He would've gotten Diana one too. He really would have. But she had been too upset to think about food. They were Bruce's best friends. The people who knew him before almost anyone else alive. They had a bond with him that even Dick sometimes resented. Bruce shared pieces of himself with them in ways he never shared with anyone else. In his own strange, Bruce Wayne way, they were family. Dick called them Uncle and Aunt. And despite everything, despite the tiny, irrational part of him that wished Bruce had needed him the most, their support meant everything.
And Gotham had done something Dick had never seen before.
There were flowers. Flowers that had started appearing outside Gotham General by the hundreds. Then thousands. Children left drawings of Batman fighting dragons. Elderly couples lit candles every evening. Someone spray-painted a mural across the street that read:
COME BACK, BATMAN.
At first, Dick hated it. Because it felt like people were already mourning. Already preparing for a funeral. Already accepting a world without Bruce Wayne in it. But later, he realized something. It wasn't mourning. Not exactly.
It was Gotham.
Gotham's own stubborn, impossible way of fighting back.
Gotham loved its Dark Knight as much as Bruce loved her.
A bond that wasn't logical and wasn't natural.
A bond that simply existed.
So nobody cleaned off the graffiti or removed the drawings. Nobody touched the flowers. Even the GCPD left it alone. Dick wondered if Gordon had ordered that. He wouldn't be surprised.
The third week settled into a routine for everyone.
Morning briefing. Then hospital.
Mayoral meetings. Then hospital.
City council. Then hospital.
Sleep, if his body forced it. Then hospital again.
Alfred had started bringing him clean clothes without asking. Sometimes it was food. Usually tea. Neither of them spoke much. Because there wasn't anything left to say. Damian practically lived in Bruce's room whenever visiting hours ended, daring anyone to try and make him leave. If they did, he listened only to sneak back in later. Tim, freshly taking over duties for both Wayne Enterprises and Drake Industries, was stressed beyond belief. Completely, utterly, stereotically Tim. And he ranted to an unconscious Bruce constantly, fully believing the man could hear every word. Dick was worried he was losing his mind. But sometimes. Sometimes Tim knew Bruce better than Bruce knew himself. Stephanie bullied everyone into eating. Cass never said a word. She simply held Bruce's hand. Dick had never realized silence could hurt so much.
The fourth week was somehow worse.
Because hope had started becoming dangerous. Every twitch made nurses rush over. Every change in heart rate sent everyone standing. Every tiny movement became a possibility. Maybe he'd heard them. Maybe he was waking up. Maybe—
Nothing.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Dick had started talking to him. Because maybe Tim was right. Maybe Bruce really was listening. Dick didn't really have another choice. There were things trapped inside him that he needed to say. Things that talking to his friends and family hadn't helped with. Thing he wanted to fuckign scream, and shout.
So he talked.
He told Bruce about Blüdhaven. About city council members who couldn't stop arguing. About Damian accidentally threatening three senators. About Alfred finally throwing out Bruce's emergency coffee stash because it had technically expired in 2019.
"...you would've hated that," Dick muttered one afternoon, watching the ventilator rise and fall with mechanical precision.
"Actually, no. You would've hidden another stash somewhere Alfred couldn't find."
Nothing. No eye movement. No squeeze of his hand. Just the steady rhythm of machines breathing for a man who had spent his entire life refusing to let anyone carry him.
Dick swallowed.
"You know..."
His voice sounded strange in the room. Small.
"I never actually thanked you."
"For... everything."
He laughed once. It came out weak.
"You know. For saving my life. Adopting me. Teaching me how to throw a punch."
Another laugh.
"I mean, the emotional constipation I could've done without. For real"
Still nothing. Dick leaned forward in his chair.
"I'm serious, Bruce."
His fingers tightened around Bruce's hand.
"I know I don't say it enough."
A long pause.
"But...I love you."
The words came easier than he expected. And because Bruce wa subconscious, and couldn't hear him, he rambles on. Couldn't stop himself, because who knew when he was getting the chance again.
"I've loved you since I was eight years old. And I don't know how it happened. I don't know when it happened. All I know is that somewhere between you missing half our dinners in the beginning, to you actually showing up for them, to you reading books to me at night, holding me through nightmares, to the first time you introduced me as your son..."
His voice shook.
"Like actually used that title."
A breath.
"At a charity gala."
Another pause.
"But I loved you since then."
Dick looked down.
"So..."
His thumb brushed against Bruce's hand.
"Come back."
People said it in movies. In books and fairy tales. That during moments like this, during a confession at someone's bedside, the person would wake up. Dick didn't believe in those kinds of miracles.
He called them stupid.
But he was fucking hoping for one anyway.
The monitor continued its steady rhythm. The ventilator hissed. Nothing changed. Not for a month. It wasn't going to change now.
Until two days later.
Dick had been asleep. His head rested awkwardly against the side of Bruce's bed, his tie loosened, paperwork from City Hall scattered across his lap. When something brushed against his fingers. A weak pressure. So faint he almost thought he imagined it.
His eyes snapped open.
Bruce's hand had moved. Just once. Just enough for Dick to freeze.
"...Bruce?"
Nothing happened. Then—
The slightest twitch beneath his fingertips.
So small no one else would've noticed.
Dick hit the emergency call button before he was even fully standing.
"Doctor!"
His voice echoed down the ICU hallway.
"I think he's waking up!"