Chapter Text
Dick woke up to the smell of antiseptics and a dull throbbing in his head. He groaned, rolling onto his side. He was met with a dark oak bedside table, adorned with a framed picture of Donna, Dick, Garth, Roy and Wally when they were kids. He sighed happily as he realized where he was, the scent of Donna's sweet shampoo on the pillow flooding his nose.
Then, he remembers— being in Donna's lap, her hand in his hair. He'd tried to kiss her but she hadn't let him— had she?
No, please. Not Donna. Not her and Roy both.
The door opens and Dick realizes he's now sitting up, and he tries to get his breathing under control as Donna walks in.
She sits on the bed gingerly, a hand on his forehead. It's warm, Dick can tell. He can feel the way his face and the back of his neck burn with rushing blood. She tuts, and grabs his hands.
"You're all clammy." She says disapprovingly.
"S-sorry." He says. He's sweating, but he can't stop the chattering of his teeth, the cold that runs up his spine.
Suddenly a wet towel is on his forehead, and he's being pushed back into bed, the covers pulled up to his chin. Donna prods at the bandages on his head, muttering to herself.
"I hope you haven't got an infection." She opens a jar of cream and applies some to the scratches on Dick's face using her fingers. Dick looks up at her through his lashes.
"Where do you sleep?" Is the only thing he can think of asking.
She purses her lips. "The couch."
"Sorry." He murmurs, even as he feels a rush of relief.
She just shrugs. "How do you feel?"
Dick stares at her. "Like I'm in trouble." He says suspiciously.
She chuckles, but doesn't deny it, and Dick knows it's true. His heart sinks.
"What for?" He asks.
"I don't think you want to talk about it right now." She says quietly. "How about some food, first?"
Dick nods, and is then left alone to flip through gossip magazines while she makes lunch— soup and grilled cheese.
They eat lunch side-by-side on the bed, Donna on top of the covers, Dick under, pillows stacked precariously to prop him up, making him look much weaker and sicker than he really was.
"How long was I out?" He asks, as more memories return— Roy, yelling, Slade, in the corner of the room, watching with perverted glee as he bashed his head into the ground. He wants to ask if Slade was really there, but he knows the answer. He's heard it time and time before.
No one's there, Robin. Stop fighting.
"Just a day and a half. I think most of it was exhaustion, more than the injury."
The injury. So they were going to just dance around it, then?
Good. Dick didn't want to talk about it.
"Roy's in rehab. Locked up tight, Ollie made sure of it."
Dick hums. He's not sure if this information is meant to comfort him. Really, it makes him feel guilty. No, Roy going to rehab wasn't Dick's fault, but for some reason he felt that it wouldn't be referred to as being 'locked up' if Dick and Roy hadn't— if they hadn't—
Through the corner of his eye, two heads of short red hair are pressed against each other. Wally his mind thinks uselessly, asking Roy about me. About us.
Dick bolts upright, whirling around on Donna. "Do you know?" Some soup spills on his lap, but he can't bring himself to care.
"Know what?"
"That I— that we— what do you know?"
She sighs. "I know you and Roy were sleeping together, and I know that something he said the other night upset you." She pauses, choosing her words carefully. "And I know that you are a very good liar, Richard Grayson."
The use of his full name breaks through the wall he was carefully building. It reminds him of Barbara in middle school, drawing the syllables out long and slow, like a word from a foreign language, a smile on her lips. Reminds him of Bruce yelling at him when he was in trouble, of trashy tabloids making rumors so outrageous he didn't have it in him to be angry. It reminded him of his mother saying his name the way a ringmaster might when announcing their star act, her silky accent covering the words in love and home and warmth, his father's beard tickling his forehead as he kisses the two of them proudly.
It calmed him, made him— docile. People called him many things, but no one that ever meant him harm called him Richard.
Tara once told him Slade had instructed her to call him Dick, or Renegade, or Birdie, or anything other than Robin or Richard.
Robin, because it might make him miss home, Richard because it would remove feelings of familiarity, because he must hate that name with how no one ever uses it.
He says if I use your full name you won't like us as much.
A small swell of pride reaches him as he realizes that Slade never fully understood him.
Then, guilt, because Tara never did, either.
"What have I lied about?" He asks. He's lied about a lot of things, though he knows exactly what Donna is talking about.
This has been a long time coming.
"Dick, when you were— when Slade took you away—"
Dick wrinkles his face. The Titans use words like that all the time— took, stole, kidnapped— to ignore the fact that Dick went willingly.
Sometimes, in a mix of hope and horror, he thinks they've forgotten altogether. Forgotten that he ran away to be with Slade so that he could be— he doesn't even remember any more— better? respected? Fucked?
But then he'll catch a glimpse of doubt, of scrutiny, of suspicion, in the face of one of his teammates, and he knows they still remember.
"What happened?" She continued.
Dick shrugs. "I've told you, already. He— manipulated us. Threatened us, blackmailed us."
"Tara thought she was in love." Donna said quietly, delicately.
Dick sighs; they've never understood fully, either. "For a bit."
"Whenever you talk about what happened, you say 'we'."
"It happened to both of us." He says sharply.
"Did the rape, too?" She's staring ahead at the wall, carefully avoiding eye contact with Dick.
Dick feels his heart flip in his chest. They don't talk much about what happened— to him, or to Tara— and when they do, they avoid words like 'rape' as much as possible.
There's no avoidance here. No balking, no cowardice.
Donna, of course, raised by Themyscirans, knows about rape, isn't scared of it.
At least, not of the word.
"No," Dick says after a moment.
She takes a deep breath. "I told you, you're a very good liar."
Donna doesn't press further, just collects both of their bowls and leaves.
Dick rolls over and falls asleep.
She doesn't come back until dinner time, though she doesn't stay to eat with him. She just places his plate on his lap, balancing it precariously on his knees, and leaves.
After three days, Dick's injuries heal enough that Donna stops doting over him. They co-inhabit her apartment for about a week, and Donna is very careful to never touch him unless she asks or telegraphs her movements. Dick gets frustrated quickly. Donna notices, and seems to call in reinforcements.
Wally comes over for dinner, awkwardly knocking on the door, six sheet pizzas piled in his arms.
Dick is the one to open the door, and takes a step back, surprised.
"You hungry?" He laughs as Wally pushes past him.
"Just helped Barry put like, 8 teams of bad guys away. Turn on the TV, you might see it."
Donna rolls her eyes and flicks through channels until she finds one covering the mess in Central City. There were several craters, smoking, and collapsed buildings.
"Ooh. That looks bad. Should you… help?" Dick asks and he opens each box of pizza to find a plain cheese. He can't really stomach Wally's menagerie of toppings right now.
"Nah, it's okay. I wouldn't miss a dinner date with my best bud." He claps Dick on the back, causing him to choke a little on the pizza. Despite this, Dick revels in the casual— even rough— touch, instead of being treated like fragile porcelain. However, Wally soon retracts his arm, backing away stiffly, and Dick mourns the loss of contact. "Sorry."
Dick pretends he's apologizing for making him choke, and not for failing to treat him like a—
A victim.
"No, no, it's okay. It was okay." He says quickly, wiping a bit of sauce off of his chin.
Wally nods seriously, before turning away and folding six slices of meatlovers pizza onto each other.
"Bet I can eat this all in five bites." He says.
"Wally, you absolutely cannot." Donna says with disgust.
"He definitely can." Dick says with glee.
"Okay, well that doesn't mean he should— no, stop it!" She groans as Wally begins shoving the Scooby-Doo-esque stack of food into his mouth.
"One." He mumbles around the pizza. He swallows quickly and takes another bite. "'wo."
"Holy shit, he's gonna do it."
"No, Wally, stop it, this is gross."
"'ree."
Donna wrinkles her nose and turns away in disgust. "I'm gonna throw up."
Wally struggles to swallow the mess of cheese and meat, his cheeks stuffed, his mouth smacking open with each move of his jaw. He swallows and stumbles back to lean on the kitchen counter, a small piece remaining in his hands.
"Four." He says as he eats it dutifully.
When Dick and Wally sit down at the table (the latter with another stack of pizza, which he vowed to eat separately) with Donna, she crossed her arms and sneered, appalled.
"See if I ever invite you over for dinner again."
Wally slouches a little. "You didn't mind it as much when we were kids."
"It wasn't as gross when we were kids." She flicks an olive at him.
Dick grins. "Yeah, the stacks were a lot smaller, then."
"Hmph." Wally says haughtily.
They ended up sitting on the couch together, Wally flicking through channels.
"Can we check out news from Bludhaven?" Dick asks.
"Sure, why not?" Wally says, before Donna can object. She's been trying to keep him away from Bludhaven news the entire time he stayed with her, and he was beginning to get anxious.
The camera was panning over a group of six men, all bound on the ground, very obvious evidence of a fight around them.
Dick's heart shatters. Had another vigilante picked up his slack while he was gone? Had he failed Bludhaven so much someone else had stepped into this death trap?
The feed switches to a different camera, this one pointing at a blonde news reporter and Batgirl.
Dick sighs with relief. Barbara was covering for him.
"Now, I want to know— the people want to know— where is Nightwing?"
Donna tenses next to him, and Wally shifts to change the channel. Dick places his hand over Wally's.
"I wanna see what excuse she made up." Is all he says.
"He's on vacation." She says simply, panting. "What, you've never wanted a little break from work? He's on some fancy retreat somewhere, I dunno. None of my business. I'm just covering for him."
Her words somehow make him feel stronger, more assured. He takes comfort in the idea that the people think he's getting hammered on some cruise in the Caribbean.
He leans back. "I should go home." He says absently.
Wally and Donna are both silent, looking at each other. Dick sits forward so he can see their faces. "What? Can I not go home?"
"We just thought…" Donna starts.
"Don't you think it's a bit soon?" Wally cuts her off.
"It's been two weeks."
"Yeah, but, I mean. You haven't even talked to anyone about it." He says.
"So? I'm not going to talk about it with you guys."
"Why not?"
He ignores Donna. "Besides, my therapist is in Gotham." He'd been seeing her since he was a teenager, and even after he moved cities, he couldn't bring himself to find someone else, and have to explain everything to them all over again.
"Yes, but are you going to see her?" Donna nags.
Dick pulls himself to his feet. "Well, I might if you let me go home."
Wally didn't even look at him as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and tugged him back down. Dick ripped away.
"Don't fucking touch me."
"Dick, please don't turn this into a fight. Not tonight." Wally pleads.
Dick takes a step back. "You're the one turning this into a fight! You don't want me going home! You want me—You want me locked up here forever!"
He can't stay here. He can't. He'll die. He'll die, and all of Bludhaven will die, and Barbara will die, and they won't even let him out to go to her funeral.
"Dick, that's not true, stop it." Donna says gently, standing and approaching him slowly, like he's a wounded animal.
You're not even human.
"No, fuck you." He says, taking another step back.
"Dick—"
"Dick, when was the last time you took your meds?" Wally says, still on the couch, face an expression between annoyed and concerned.
They all hate you, pretty.
Donna freezes as Dick tries to blink himself into a lie. The whole room hangs in tense silence.
"I don't know. I'm fine. I'm fine."
"You're not. You're having an episode."
"Don't call it that!" He's yelling, "I'm not crazy!"
"I didn't say you were. I said you haven't taken your meds because we couldn't find any at the Tower."
"I ran out. I can get a refill at home."
"You can get one here, too."
"I'm going home." He says, panicked, as he rushes back to Donna's room. Neither of them follow him, but he knows they're waiting for him to come back out. He leaves through the window.
"Dick! Dick!" Donna's voice calls after him as he runs down the street.
His phone buzzes. It's Wally. Wally could catch him, if he wanted. He probably enjoys the chase more.
Dick keeps running.