Chapter Text
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was –
for what I was: from the beginning of time.
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
-First Memory by Louise Glück
Dick woke up feeling groggy. His limbs were strangely heavy, as though they weighed more than he was used to. He blinked his eyes open. He was staring at a very familiar ceiling. It took a second for that information to settle into his brain, but once it did he sat up with a pained grunt.
He wasn’t supposed to be in the Cave. He wasn’t even supposed to be in Gotham . Bruce had made that very clear. He looked down at himself warily. He was dressed in a simple pair of dark gray sweatpants and a plain blue t-shirt. The last he’d been aware, he’d been wearing a threadbare pair of jeans, an old t-shirt, and a leather jacket – the only clothes he’d managed to take with him when Bruce had kicked him out. When he’d been fired from being Robin. The pain of that memory was still fresh and he shied away from it instinctively.
He had no memory of getting here. He didn’t know what series of events had led Bruce to rescinding his order of exile, but it must have been particularly terrible. There was an IV stuck in his arm. He pulled it out. Luckily, he was alone in the medbay right now and thus didn’t have to deal with an angry Bruce berating him for whatever fuck up he’d committed most recently. If he could just sneak out on the Cave’s back entrances, he could maybe avoid that confrontation forever. He stood up and swayed slightly, his body protesting. He couldn’t see or feel any major injuries, only a few bruises he didn’t quite remember getting and a vague nausea and dizziness. He breathed until the feeling faded enough for him to walk with forced steadiness toward the door.
He peeked out. The main room of the Cave was also empty. He wasn’t sure how his luck was holding out this far, but he didn’t plan to look a gift horse in the mouth. He stepped out cautiously and started walking as quickly as he was currently able toward the exit that led to a tunnel to the far east side of the Manor. From there it was another seven minute walk, ten minutes at his current pace, to the highway. He briefly considered changing course for the garage and taking one of Bruce’s vehicles, but that would take too much time and be too loud to assure a stealthy escape.
He’d almost made it to the exit when he heard the sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs. There were three sets, one of them heavy and brash in a way he didn’t recognize, while the other two were far quieter. One, he knew, was Bruce’s. He walked faster. He just managed to slip through the heavy metal door when voices began filling the cavernous space.
“We still don’t know the effects –” Dick heard Bruce say as the door closed silently behind him. Whatever the rest of the sentence was, it was lost. Dick didn’t give himself time to dwell on it, instead hurrying down the tunnel. The nausea had worsened, but it didn’t feel like there was anything in his stomach to throw up. That made sense. Since Bruce had kicked him out, Dick had been doing his best to make it on his own but he still skipped more meals than he ate. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t had anything to eat in at least thirty six hours, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t helping his recovery with whatever had happened to him.
The trek down the tunnel was long. It was dark in here, darker than the Cave, with only small red lights spaced out every five feet. He couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of him at a time, which only succeeded in making the dizziness worse whenever he focused on it.
Eventually, after a mind-numbingly long walk, Dick emerged into the open air. The tunnel let out just past the Manor’s walls and Dick knew from experience that there were no sensors on this side of the property. He used to sneak out this way all the time as a kid whenever he needed space from Bruce since he was pretty sure the man had completely forgotten the exit’s existence. Or, perhaps not forgotten so much as he found it largely irrelevant since it was never used and would only ever be of importance in an apocalyptic-level emergency.
The Manor was ringed with dense forest which seemed deceptively large while one was inside of it. It ended after only a few hundred yards, opening up to a short field that bordered the highway beyond it. The trees effectively muffled the sound of traffic, making it seem from inside the Manor that they were completely isolated from society. Dick knew better.
He walked along the highway in the direction of Bludhaven, the city he’d chosen to lick his wounds and start over. It was an hour drive from Gotham, meaning it would be a much longer walk, but anything was better than being at the Manor with Bruce. With the reminder of how much Dick had failed, how much he had lost. Unfortunately, though, it gave him a long time to think.
Distance had provided him perspective in the past few months. He knew that Bruce was terrible at showing his emotions in a way that was even vaguely healthy and that it had really been fear that had caused him to lash out at Dick the way he did. The way he always did. That didn’t really make Dick feel better about the situation. Robin was his . Robin was his mother’s name for him, his costume was his parents’ colors. It had all been carefully chosen by him when Bruce had sat him down and told him that there were better ways to honor his family than killing the man who’d murdered them. Bruce became Batman primarily because he’d wanted to honor his own parents. Dick had understood that. It was the reason they’d gotten along so well at first.
Dick stumbled over a rock in his path and had to suck in a deep breath as he righted himself. The terrible feeling he’d woken up with had faded, but he still felt weak. Vulnerable. He was suddenly acutely aware of how dangerous it was to be alone in this state. It didn’t matter. He’d been alone for a while now, in much worse states than this, and he’d survived. He didn’t need Bruce to save him. He’d never needed Bruce for that. He kept walking.
It was still a long way to Bludhaven.