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Dick is tired. The exhaustion had been weighing on him for months at this point, getting stronger by the day, but it's only now that he's really allowed to feel the exhaustion. Slade hadn't been pushing him as hard these past few months, but that doesn't mean he wasn't still pushing him. The exhaustion feels too heavy for Dick to carry. He doesn't want to think of himself as young but his youth is something he feels like he's being reminded of every day.
The weight of the exhaustion isn't the worst weight that Dick's carrying. Exhaustion isn't a new feeling for him. Being Robin was never very conductive to getting good rest. It just makes the weight of everything else so much harder to bear.
If Dick had the choice, nobody would know about what Slade did to him. If the situation was slightly different, his friends might've accepted that. Probably not easily but there would've been a higher chance of acceptance once they could tell it wasn't something he wanted to talk about. He doesn't think Bruce would've ever accepted not knowing though, so at least that's not unexpected.
Dick was never closed off about being trans, he'd never had any reason to think to keep it hidden. He doesn't know if that's a sentiment he'll change now. He still doesn't think it needs to be kept secret, but after what happened, after this. It's not something that Dick wants to think about. Dick doesn't want to keep replaying how Slade reacted when he realised Dick was trans.
That's the weight that really weighs heavy on Dick, in all senses. It would've been easier to handle the trauma if it had all been physical, he's Robin after all! Emotional and mental abuse are always harder to heal from than the marks that fade, but he's sure that's something he could've handled too. This burrows deeper than all of that.
Even saying all that, this trauma lingers in a lasting way. One that everyone can see. One that could've been avoided. One that Dick can't fix.
Other people have options in a situation like this. Dick knows those options from when he's had to say them as Robin to reassure victims he's seen on patrol. Dick doesn't have any options. He's trying to be okay with that.
By the time Dick was away from Slade, it was too late to remove it. There's no way he could consider giving it up for adoption. The moment Slade finds out that the child isn't with Dick, it's as good as giving the child straight to him. As much as Dick doesn't want it, he can't let it be hurt by Slade. That wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be fair. He's Robin, he can't just let Slade take the child.
How is Dick supposed to move past what happened when it is inside of him constantly? The fact that the Manor doesn't feel as much like home anymore doesn't help either.
It was obvious what had happened to him from the moment anyone saw him. It was his friends that saw him first and he can't decide if that's preferable to any other option or not. He doesn't know what he would've done if Bruce found him in the direct aftermath. He doesn't know what Bruce would've done either.
Honestly, the day that Dick got out is a blur, or well, that's what he's told everyone. It wasn't even hard to convince anyone that he couldn't remember how he got out because all his friends thought he was in shock when he found them. He doesn't think he was in shock but they're all pretty adamant he was.
The truth is that he doesn't want to think about that day. He doesn't want to remember what finally pushed him to his breaking point. He doesn't want to remember deciding that he needs to get out or die trying. He doesn't want to remember the actual act of getting out then trying to find anyone.
Despite that, most of all, he doesn't want to remember his friends faces when they saw him. It was so obvious what had happened to him but he hadn't realised that until he saw the way his friends faces slowly fell and twisted, the way they stopped looking at him like a fellow teammate, like a friend and instead started looking at him like some sort of victim.
And, yes! Dick knows that if what happened to him had happened to anyone else then they would be a victim but Dick's not a victim. He's a hero. He knows that he could've done more to prevent what happened so that means he's not a victim.
It's his own fault it happened to him.
When his friends saw him, they didn't all connect the dots straight away. After all, they might be superheroes but Dick is much more aware now of all of their youths. Not to mention, most of them don't tend to deal with that sort of crime and even if they did, they wouldn't be expecting to find Dick in that sort of situation. Like he already said, he's not a victim, so why would they be prepared to see him in the position of a victim?
Roy connected the dots first. Dick saw the change in his expression only seconds after they found him. He should've remembered that Roy does help deal with those sorts of crimes. So does Dick, or well, so did Dick. The others don't really, they've all got more mystical crimes they handle most of the time. Dick does did handle those crimes too but Gotham also has a lot more darkness to it than just its outlandish rouges gallery.
Dick's losing track of things again. That's new since he came back from Slade. It's mostly losing track of his thoughts (but that's just because he isn't talking much) so nobody can say it's "a symptom of trauma". It's not because Dick isn't traumatised. His only real problem he's got is the one weighing down inside him.
That. That's something his friends could see when they found him. Roy understood first and Donna understood next. It would've surprised him that she understood so quickly despite that not being a thing on Themyscira but he didn't care at that time. Even now, Dick doesn't know why Donna understood so quickly. Maybe the reality of being a girl in America meant that she had to learn about those sorts of things and how to quickly recognise it. Or maybe... maybe Donna was just easily able to tell when something was wrong with Dick.
He doesn't know who out of Wally and Garth figured it out next, or how long it took either of them to figure it out because when Roy had stepped forward, slowly and carefully, that had taken all of Dick's focus. Like he was a victim, and admittedly it was quite nice at the time even if he didn't need to be treated like that.
Dick doesn't like thinking about what happened and what was said in between that and Wally calling his uncle. They'd all been taken to the watchtower and when Dick saw Bruce he broke. Dick doesn't like thinking about that either, or how he was gently asked questions about what happened. He can't decide which he hated more, being asked questions or the fact that everyone was doing it so carefully.
He's pretty sure all his friends were asked questions too but he wouldn't know. Dick hasn't seen any of them since that day, and Bruce had taken him straight back to the Manor after he'd been asked all the questions.
Bruce keeps asking if Dick wants to have any of his friends round. He's said no everytime. Now Bruce asks only once a day. It's not been that long that he's been back for yet so soon enough he's confident that the questions will be asked more sparingly until they stop altogether.
Not even Barbara's come round, Dick didn't want to see her at all. He wasn't prepared for her to also know exactly what happened to him. Which is why he begged Bruce to not say anything to her about why he's no longer patrolling. At least this way Dick still has one friend who might still look at him the same way.
Dick's ignoring the fact that actually having the baby won't fix the problem, he can't easily hide a whole other human being either.
He still doesn't know how he feels about the actual child. Some days, he hates it. He storms about and rages about its existence. On those days, Bruce takes him down to the cave and gives him a pair of boxing gloves before putting on the matching pads for it. Neither of them say anything but Bruce let's him get out his frustration, no matter how long it takes. Then afterwards, Bruce leads him back upstairs and somehow, Bruce seems to be good at telling how stressed Dick still is. So, Bruce either just let's him go back to doing whatever around the Manor alone, or he takes him somewhere to sit down and Alfred brings them tea and snacks. Sometimes they sit in silence, sometimes they'll play a board game. Once, Bruce read to him, switching books as soon as Dick told him and they jumped from all different genres and stories and types.
The Manor is safe, safe as its always been, and Dick knows that. Maybe that's why it hurts, because he doesn't feel safe despite that because he wasn't safe then.
They've not talked about the baby, not really. The only time it's been acknowledged is when the doctor comes round. Dick doesn't like having appointments about his condition especially not because Bruce is being paranoid enough that they're a weekly thing but he's begrudgingly accepted them.
The only other time the baby got brought up is when Alfred tried to get him to choose baby items for a nursery to be set up. Dick had screamed at him and stormed off. After that was the first time Bruce took him down to the cave to do their punching bag routine. Dick had found Alfred later that night and quietly apologised but he'd been told that an apology was unnecessary.
They never tried to bring up the baby after that.
So, admittedly, maybe Dick isn't fully prepared for the idea of having a child, and maybe he's not fully on board with it either. It's stupid though because he already knows he doesn't have any other options, so he has to accept it. He can raise the child and not love it, that's fine.
He's a terrible person for that, isn't he? Knowing there's a good chance he won't love his own child.
Then, weeks later, the baby is born. A little bit early but not early enough that it really does any harm to the baby. If anything, it just puts Dick in more danger because he ends up having an emergency c-section after being rushed to the hospital.
Dick doesn't feel anything when he sees her for the first time. He says that, to the nurse and she reassures him that it's normal to not feel anything straight away and it doesn't mean anything about him. She also tells him that since he's young, exhausted and in pain, he needs to focus more on himself at first than the baby.
Dick doesn't entirely believe her, but he is even more grateful that Bruce made sure that none of the hospital staff were going to let the news about the baby get out anywhere. It might be the most grateful Dick's ever been for Bruce's money. Although, on the other hand, without the money then there would be no need to make sure the news doesn't get out.
Dick knows he held the baby a few times that night, and there's pictures of it. There's also a picture of Bruce holding the baby.
Dick doesn't name the baby that night either but that's okay. He was told there was a period of time after a baby was born before the baby needed to be named.
There's wasn't time.
Dick didn't get time to name his daughter and he didn't even get a chance to love her. She died, whilst he was asleep, the same day she was born.
The doctors said it was probably a complication they'd missed, or even just SIDS, a complete accidental death. Dick didn't trust that, even if that lack of trust was Bruce levels of paranoid (and he'd find out later that Bruce had done his own minor investigation into the baby's death and that proved that the doctors were right) but Dick hadn't even cared at the time. He didn't have the energy to care about how the baby died.
All he could focus on was the fact he never got the chance to love her.
He pushed that down, then he started focusing on the fact that this means he can hide everything that happened. Obviously some people already know but now, nobody else ever has to know. This can all just be forgotten about.
And Dick is certain that's what he wants, he even tell Bruce that. After all, if it wasn't for the baby the whole situation wouldn't have been made into such a big deal because Dick could've hid it from the start.
So, if Dick goes into the nursery for the first time ever when he goes back to the Manor from the hospital and looks at each individual item carefully before crying, then it's just tears of relief or something. Doesn't matter that Bruce had to usher him out of there (not carry him like he used to, Bruce doesn't touch Dick at all anymore unless Dick initiates) or that Dick found out a few days later that the nursery was locked up. That's not important.
This way, Dick can go back to being Robin, like he was before.
He'll come up with an excuse to tell Barbara about why he was gone for so long, something that she won't question too much and won't make her treat him differently. He'll tell the other Teen Titans what happened when he sees them next and then tell them he doesn't want it to be brought up, they'll hide it for him. He'll ignore the fact that a handful of Justice League members know about what happened too and just, trust that they won't bring it up.
That way maybe he'll forget about what Slade did to him. Maybe he'll forget about the baby. Maybe he'll forget his guilt.