Work Text:
He's hallucinating now. They're not even near Gotham. They've skirted past Gotham so many times, even entered it once or twice, but this time, they're on the other side of the country. It's been over a year, he tries not to think of Bruce anymore, he knows he's been replaced and has no more use to the Bat.
Still, for whatever reason might possess him, Dick's hallucinating now. They're on their way back to a safehouse after a successful mission; scouting, nothing too traumatic, they're just casing a place to rob it later. They slip quietly over rooftops, and in the shadows, a hallucinated Bat tails them.
It unsettles Dick more than comforts him. A guilt bites into his skin, and he sticks closer to Slade, and tries to will the figment away. It stays, stubborn, stuck like a mark of tar on his soul, as if it's here only to remind him how comfortably he is molding into his new position, how wicked he is for it. That old familiar pattern, sensing more than seeing his quiet guardian hover watchfully behind him, juxtaposed against this new setting, him committing rather than stopping a crime.
He wants to turn and beg forgiveness, to shout excuses, to demand it go away. But it's nothing more than imagination, and he can't give an inch more to the insanity apparently leeching at his mind, so he treats it how he does every concerning problem these days. He ignores it, or at least, tells himself he does.
The Bat follows them, always just barely out of sight, never quite fully out of mind, dragging minutes into miserable ages. At last Dick can't help himself, and jerks his head back to stare it full-on, but of course—it's not there.
Because it's not real.
And yet of course he gets no true relief, as there it appears again: in front of them, no longer in the shadows but standing solid in their path, a lone, ghostly figure casting a long shadow over a wide stretch of flat roof, as if rebuking Dick for trying to challenge it; perhaps, as if accepting the challenge.
Dick falters, even if it will earn a scolding, maybe worse.
But Slade stops. His eyes lock in front of them, directly where the figure stands, and he throws out a hand to make Dick halt as well. The creep up Dick's spine claws frozen fingers into it.
Slade has stopped for the Bat. It's—he's—real.
That's Bruce in the flesh. The real Batman, at last, just yards away and watching them as intently as they stare back.
"Apprentice," Slade snaps, voice an icy steel it hasn't been in months as he unsheathes a knife, "get back to the car."
The Bat's eyes narrow into thin slits. They pierce Dick, even as they're locked on Slade, and he can't move. He can barely even take in a breath. It's Bruce, his mind cries, jubilant or terrified, he can't tell. Bruce. B. He came.
He wants to run forwards. One side of his mind urges him on, spurred by words carved into the back of his skull by hopeful repetition: Bruce is safety. Bruce is a rescue. He needs to get to Bruce.
But the larger side—emotion, logic, self-preservation—urges him to shrink back. His throat shrivels closed, his heart pounds. Bruce isn't safety. Not anymore. Dick is a criminal now. Bruce hasn't come to save him.
"Apprentice," Slade barks, and Dick flinches more than steps back, and the Bat's eyes narrow further still. Dick doesn't need years of familiarity to read the lines: every one of them, from the dip of his head to the sharp set of his shoulders, bleeds hostility.
For the first time in over a year, Dick hears his once-guardian speak, and it is a hiss that promises pain: "Enough. Surrender, or I will make you."
Slade scoffs and shifts the knife in his hands. "This is my game, Bats. You want to stop me, try."
They go at each other like dogs—vicious, brutal, cutthroat. They're silent, but their faces, the lines of their forms, are all snarls, open and violent aggression. Dick has seen the cunning assassin Slade, striking like a reaper, a deadly grace to his swords and knives that is almost an art; he has seen the avenging shadow Batman, slipping through the darkness, untouchable, every blow precisely measured. These two are neither. Blades slash Kevlar in wild, violent throws that go hardly blocked; fists smash against flesh. It's not a dance but a dogfight.
Dick digs his fingers into his legs. A plea swells on his lips—stop, please stop—but catches, and it would be useless to rip it free. He takes a halting step forward, a halting step back, muscles trembling with adrenaline he can't channel. He tries to push himself to help—who?—but his limbs lock. He tips back, shrinking against the low wall around the roof and sinking to his knees.
Slade and Bruce tear at each other. Blood bursts in red, red spurts that stain the concrete, and Dick drops his eyes to it, but they keep dragging up again and again. Too soon he loses who is who; there's only violence, twin figures stabbing, slicing, punching, drawing blood.
Then one gains the upper hand; gets the other on the ground, slams a fist into a face held steady by a hand tearing into its hair. That's Bruce, striking Slade, again and again and again.
Surreality: no one lands a blow on Slade. Not like that. Not enough to bruise the skin purple, splash it with red. It's not happening. It's not—
It is—
Dick needs to push himself to stand, to help, and he can't. He can't. Slade looks at him, one grey eye ringed in blood, crinkled in pain, omnipotence crumbling in humanity while Dick sits and does nothing. "Apprenctice," he wheezes, a reedy crack of voice, "leave."
Bruce strikes down again, Slade's head hits the ground with a crack, and the mercenary falls limp.
What have you done, Dick's mind shrieks. A buzz rings in his ears. What have you done, what have you done, what have you done. You let him lose. What have you done!?
A single word breaks out, a useless syllable more gasp than anything else: "Dad—!"
And the Bat's attention, fixed on Slade (the body, unconscious, bleeding, needing help), snaps up. Fixes on Dick.
"Robin."
Bruce's voice cuts through the air, sharp and flat, and training drilled to the marrow of his bones wrenches Dick. He shudders, and his lungs stutter, breath wheezing, but he can't bring himself to run. He should. He needs to. He tries to drag up Slade's growl—Apprentice, leave—to plunge himself forward, but it is Bruce's command ringing in his ear, Bruce's command leashing the fragile pulse of his heart so that he cannot run without ripping it out. He trembles, though he tries not to show it, and forces himself at least to his feet.
Bruce stands only a few yards away; a mere handful of the man's long strides. He's looming, cape whipped to the side in the wind, features sharp and hard and so, so clear, even in the dark, lit and shadowed by spattered streetlights. The white of his eyes seems almost to glow.
Dick swallows. He pulls himself together (for Slade, for Slade), crosses his arms as if disaffected—disgruntled, cocky, cold. A mercenary's stance. He digs his nails into his arms and locks his shaking legs. "That's not my name anymore," he spits, like the denial is nothing. It burns, and he tries to pull a vicious satisfaction from that. He should be furious. Bruce is the one who stole that name from him, pasted it on someone else like he was only ever a symbol, unworthy, inhuman, replaceable.
He hurts, more than anything, yet there's something grounding in that, so he twists the knife. "It never really was a name to you, was it? Just the title of a tool."
Nothing personal, nothing of weight to Bruce, nothing like—(Apprentice, my Apprentice, my boy...)
"Robin," Bruce says again, monotone with something unfamiliar underneath. "You need to breathe."
Renegade, his mind whispers. You need to fight. Fight, or run. Worthless coward. Save your partner. Move.
He listens to neither. A puddle spreads beneath Slade's head. He's going to watch the man die.
"Robin," Bruce says. The word seems to echo, hollow, but crushing. "Robin." Robin, Robin, Robin bloody red breast, bleeding heart, useless bird, stand and watch your parents die, why aren't you moving? Why don't you breathe? Robin, Robin, Robin.
"Dick." Bruce tries, and that—shocks him. No names in the field. That's sacred, that's don't kill level, but who cares with the dying body right there, right? Or maybe it's just not too much of a risk, saying that name. Any outsider might hear only an insult, a juvenile, petty insult, is that funny?
It's not a laugh seizing in Dick's chest. It's not a laugh. It hurts.
"Dick," Bruce says, "please, come home."
Dick shakes his head. The world spins, spotty, too bright and too dark and too large around him. The up and down slide together and pulse with stars and glaring lights, and somehow the Bat stands steady in the middle of them all, untouched by the whirling void. A promise of home against the chaos; a false promise.
Bruce holds out a hand—not grasping, not restraining, but an offer, palm up. A plea.
And Dick wants to launch at it, to launch into Bruce's arms and be wrapped in a hug and just go home.
And he wants to turn, and bolt, and drag Slade away and go home.
(And he wants to laugh, but that isn't a laugh bubbled up in his chest, and he doesn't think he's breathing.)
"Dick," Bruce repeats, "it's all right." He steps forward, arm outstretched, and Dick can't. He scrambles back, shaking his head, the world spinning, turns, and runs. Jumps.
Cold air hits his face as he leaps off the roof. Concrete slams into his feet, jarring his bones; he rolls, crosses the second roof, leaps again. Hits. Runs. Leaps. Footsteps thunder behind him—not loud, not actually, but booming in his ears because he knows they're following and it's only a matter of time before they catch up, a matter of restraint to let him run. It's Bruce toying with him. The man's faster when he wants to be. He'll let Dick run, let him tire himself out, and then—
And then—
Hard fists hard words an ice-cold glare (one lone, brutal eye morphing into two new ones, now, because the two are so alike, aren't they?)—
The wind whipping him doesn't hit his lungs. He runs. Bruce lets him.
They race over the rooftops, the world an ugly, polluted river rushing all around him, over him, wave after wave crashing down without letting him take a breath, and he fights the current and charges forward and just runs. Runs and runs and leaps and runs, like he can outpace anything, like it's all he can do, until he slips.
He hits nothing, his stomach jars, and the current drags him under.
An arm cinches around his waist, yanking him to a stop, tugging him up. The river disappears. There's only a roof, and him, and the Bat. He sucks in a breath as if it's his first, and screams.
"No!" Dick shrieks. It's desperate, it's high, it's a cry for help that won't come. Slade is bleeding out on the ground, unconscious, maybe dying. There's no one around so late, no one to run to help, and even if there were—they wouldn't challenge the Bat. Not like this. But Dick thrashes, fights, screams, the desperate fury of a cornered animal and terror of a grieving child. "No! No! No! Go away!"
Bruce holds him. Just holds him. Dick kicks, and struggles, and cries, and Bruce holds him, firm and unshakeable but not bruising. Not crushing.
He just holds on. Slowly, Dick tires himself out.
He's pushed through far worse exhaustion than this; Slade's training put Bruce's to shame in that regard, and Bruce's was vigorous. But his limbs drop anyway, his head dips, and in the crawling quiet his breaths wheeze too sharp and loud.
For a moment more, Bruce holds him still, and then slowly, slowly, lowers them both to the ground, until Dick is slumped on his knees and Bruce is kneeling beside him, half burying him in his cape with a wrapped restraint that feels like a hug.
"I've got you," he says, and whether it's a promise or a threat it holds the weight of solid truth. Bruce is solid, rough Kevlar and iron blood mixed with a trace of expensive cologne and a chin tucking him beneath it.
"Dad," Dick says, and his voice breaks on the syllable, a wet croak, weak embarrassing failure, but Bruce only squeezes him tighter. His fingers twist into Dick's hair, his clothes, like they're going to hold on forever, twining themselves into one solid whole. Dick squeezes back just as tightly.
"I've got you. We're going home."