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Part 11 of Whumptober 2024
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Published:
2024-11-08
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2,266
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1/1
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Blood on Me

Summary:

It takes a moment for Bruce to make the connection. Dick hasn’t told them – hasn’t told him, wouldn’t have told Tim, he’s not sure about Alfred – exactly what happened with Blockbuster, but he knows enough of the facts.

Enough to get an outline, anyway. Enough to understand what Dick is talking about. Dammit. Hasn’t that bastard done enough to his son in life?

...........................
Whumptober: Delirium, Bloodstained hands

Notes:

* Set in Wayne Family Adventures universe

*Set some time after the Nightwing 093 events.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

There’s no answer to his knock. Hopefully that means Dick is asleep.

Of course, normally a knock would wake up any of them – light sleeper is basically required Cape attribute – but given how exhausted Dick was, shouldn’t be surprising if he’s too out of it for alertness.

 That’s okay. There’s no need to be alert in here, in the Manor.

Bruce opens the door as silently as he can. He’ll just get in, check if Dick’s fever has spiked. If they’re lucky it wouldn’t have, and he can go back to his room – not to bed, he’s not going to get much sleep tonight anyway, he never does when one of the kids is this sick – without waking the boy.

The first thing he notices is that Dick is not in the bed. The momentary jolt of panic subsides when he hears the noise of a tap running in the bathroom.

Okay, not good that Dick isn’t asleep, but hey, interrupted sleep is par for the course for all of them. Bruce seats himself at the desk to wait.

 …the tap’s been running for too many minutes.

 “Dick?” he calls quietly.

No response. No indication he’s been heard. The fear is rearing its head again.

Bruce rapidly walks over to the bathroom door, not making any effort to muffle his footsteps. Dick would hear him, it he’s in there… Dick should have heard him.

A pause to knock on the bathroom door. “Dick? Can you hear me?”

No response, but this time he isn’t expecting any.

 “Dick, if you can hear me, say something. Otherwise I’m coming in.”

Just the sound of tap water…and a soft murmuring, like someone talking in their sleep. The bathroom door isn’t locked. Opens easily.

“Dick?”

There is a moment of relief when he sees Dick standing before the mirror, a soaked washcloth in hand and the tap running. (He’s not sure what he was expecting to find, he’s not going to think too much about what he was afraid to find).

 So yeah. There’s a moment when he’s about to sheepishly apologize. Then he catches the blank look in Dick’s eyes. And his face.

Oh God, his face.

 “Dick!”

The boy’s skin is practically scrubbed raw, his face, his hands. There’s blood on the washcloth, on the sink.

How long has he been standing here, attacking his own face with hot – too hot, Bruce winces as he brushes against the hot water tap – water and cloth? How long does it take to literally scrub away your skin enough to bleed?

He has to struggle to loosen the boy’s grip on the cloth. Dick doesn’t seem really aware of him.            

Bruce manages to get the blood stained cloth out of Dick’s hands, letting it flutter down to the ground. Dick reaches for it, struggling in his arms. He’s still not said a word.

“Dick, it’s me. It’s Bruce. Listen to me. Stop. It’s okay.”

Dick doesn’t hear…or if he hears, won’t or can’t listen. He keeps trying to rub at his face, hands, as if he’s desperately trying to scrub something away. Bruce has to catch hold of his hands in a restraining hold.

 “It’s okay, Dick. Just stop. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

 His fever has definitely spiked. No need to check with a thermometer. Bruce can feel it burn against his skin.

Dammit. He should have been checking more often. He should have stayed up in Dick’s room. Should have… Never mind should have. Have to deal with this. Now.

Dick is still struggling in his grip, though not as strongly as before. He hopes it is because something of what is happening, what he has been saying, has gotten through the delirium, but probably it’s just that Dick is now too exhausted to put up much of a fight for long.

 “It’s okay. Come on” Bruce tries to lead him back to bed.

 Got to get some meds and juice or something into him. Get a cold compress. Call Leslie again in the morning.

 And maybe while he’s at it, run those tests again to make sure this is just a bad bout of flu and not…well, not one of the other million things that go wrong with depressing regularity in their lives.

Dick whimpers, his struggle weakening. “Please…please, I…I gotta…”

 “You just got to rest now, chum”

 Dick is still fighting against him, trying to pull away. Trying to go back to scrubbing his face off. There are tears in Dick’s eyes now, delirium pulling off any effort at masking. “Please. I… I gotta wash it off.”

“Wash what off, Dickie?” Bruce manages to keep hold of him, but it is becoming more difficult

. “The blood” Dick mumbles. “It’s…it’s all over my face. His blood. Brains. It got all over my face.”

There is blood on his face, alright. His own blood, from the skin scrubbed raw. Trickling down sluggishly.

 “I gotta wash it off. Get it off me. The blood.”

 It takes a moment for Bruce to make the connection. Dick hasn’t told them – hasn’t told him, wouldn’t have told Tim, he’s not sure about Alfred – exactly what happened with Blockbuster, but he knows enough of the facts.

 Enough to get an outline, anyway. Enough to understand what Dick is talking about. Dammit. Hasn’t that bastard done enough to his son in life?

“Please” Dick pleads, trying to get free “I’ve gotta wash it off. Can’t let Tim see.”

“Okay. Okay.” Maybe another approach would be better “How about I help you, then, chum?”

 Dick stops struggling for a moment.

 Bruce presses on, tone as soothing as he can manage. “I can get the blood off you. Will you let me help?”

 Dick turns to face him, still breathless from the struggle, but some trace of calm returning to his face. “Will you?”

 “Of course” Bruce promises “Of course I’ll help, Dickie. Always.”

Dick nods. He looks very young. He is young, barely past twenty. Much too young to have seen what he has, much too young for the weight on his shoulders, the pain in his eyes. The weight he’s been bearing since far younger an age.

Sometimes Bruce hates himself for ever letting this happen. Letting this begin, in the first place.

He knows what Robin has done for Gotham, he knows Robin, maybe even more than Batman, is responsible for Gotham managing to hold on, hold firm, against all the madness that seethes against it.

 Robin is the light. Gotham needs Robin.

That is one cruel reality he has had to accept, after… After. Tim was right that Robin was needed, but wrong too.

It’s not that Batman needs Robin. It is Gotham that needs Robin. Needs the light. Needs the bright colours, needs the child laughing in the face of darkness.

Batman can keep them safe. But only Robin can give them hope. And without hope, Gotham would long since have surrendered, Batman or no Batman.

 He knows Robin is needed. He knows both his boys – and his lost boy – believes that worth it. Worth what they have to pay.

 He still hates it. Still, sometimes, want to let Gotham burn, if that would mean he would never have to see his children like this.

But it’s too late for that, of course. If he could have set Dick’s life  - even Tim’s life - on a different course, the time for that is long past.

He can’t change it anymore. He can’t save them. All he can do is be there (but even that he can’t manage too often, can he… He wasn’t there, not when Blockbuster was hunting his son, another mad man after one of his sons…away on a mission, one that went on much too long..)

. He leads Dick back into the room, sitting him down on the bed. Dick obeys silently, eyes still glassy with delirium. But trusting. Even now, trusting him. A trust he has never deserved. Can never earn.

No. Stop. Castigate yourself later.

“There’s so much of it” Dick murmurs, looking down at his hands, at the blood only he can see.

“That’s okay” Bruce manages a smile “We’ll get it all off. Just stay here, okay?”

Some cool – not quite cold, hopefully cold enough to bring the fever down a bit – water in a basin, the softest washcloth he could find, a towel.

 Dick looks up at him hopefully as he comes back. “I’m sorry, B…”

“It’s okay” he promises, kneeling so that he is face to face with Dick. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

 “The blood…”

 “Blood washes off.” He doesn’t really believe that, himself. But what he believes doesn’t matter right now. That’s not what his son needs right now. “You just sit there, Dickie. Just rest.”

He runs the cloth gently down Dick’s face and then his hands, wiping away the imagined – and the real – blood, patting the skin dry. He folds another towel into a cold compress.

“Is…is it gone, B?” Dick sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.

Bruce puts his arm around the boy (Dick is still small, the acrobat’s frame still looking deceptively delicate beside Batman or in his arms).

 “Yes, chum. It’s all gone. No more blood, okay?”

Dick nods, relief plain in his eyes.

Bruce smiles soothingly. “It is all gone. But you’re still burning up, so we gotta get some meds into you.”

The pills are placed at the bedside table, within easy reach. So Bruce doesn’t have to let go of him to reach them, or one of the juice boxes set there. He shakes two pills into his hand.

 “Can you take these, Dickie? C’mon. Take it with this juice”

Dick follows directions dazedly, not quite listening. Bruce smooths his hair back from his forehead.

“Drink a bit more of the juice. Yeah, that’s it. It’s okay.”

Dick murmurs something unintelligible, but he doesn’t seem upset anymore. His eyes are beginning to droop. Bruce keeps an arm around the boy to steady him till he finishes the juice.

“Want to lie down?”

 Dick nods, already beginning to drift off. Bruce eases him back into bed, carefully pulling the blankets over him.

“Get some rest, son. It’s okay.”

 It will be okay. He will make sure of that. He has to. He won’t – can’t – lose another of his boys. Dick’s lips move as if trying to say something. Bruce presses a quick kiss to his forehead.

“There’s no blood on you. None that won’t wash off.” He pauses. “You’re good, Dick.”

That, at least, he has no doubt about. He may not know for sure what happened the night Blockbuster was killed, he may not know for sure what happened in the week preceding that night, but he knows that, at least.

They will have to talk about it. He tried, before, only for Dick to deflect from the topic. But then again, he…hadn’t tried as much as he should have.

It’s…just not a topic he knows how to handle properly. He can forgive Dick, of course, for what happened.

But the problem, he knows from experience, will be convincing Dick to forgive himself.

And, of course, many – including a lot of their colleagues – will be of the opinion that there is nothing to forgive, that there was nothing else Dick could have done, there.

Bruce doesn’t really agree with that. There were other options to deal with Blockbuster. Several, in fact.

Only, given everything that had been happening…Dick was almost certainly in no condition to logically consider all the options. In no condition to take a step back and think. There was no time, no breathing room.

And even then, he is sure Dick would have found another way, in the end. Except, there was no time. Catalina Flores – or Tarantula, whatever she chooses to call herself these days – made sure of that.

Or…would there have been more lives lost, if she hadn’t acted then? Would the delay have been worth it?

He’s not sure. He doesn’t have all the data – he doesn’t seem likely to ever have it all, given the way Dick responds to any attempt to talk about it.

He can’t make a judgment call on Flores’ killing of Desmond.

But he is never going to forgive her for forcing Dick to make the final choice.

If she was so certain Blockbuster needed to die…why couldn’t she have just done it? Why did she have to involve his son, make it seem like his choice?

 It wouldn’t have preyed on her mind, killing Blockbuster. She has killed before, and it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to justify killing him. And she would have known it won’t be – can’t be – the same for Nightwing.

She knew him. She should have known that. She should have known what it would do to Dick. Had she? Was it intentional?

Some of them do that, he knows. For some, it is not enough to be judge, jury and executioner. They want to pull others into the same quicksand. Make them more effective, they claim. He knows how the Elite tried that with Clark.

Was that what Flores had been trying to do to Nightwing?

 Bruce sighs. There is something more wrong about that woman and her…relationship (?) with Dick than the facts he knows indicates, but he’s not sure just how far he can afford to push.

They need to talk, though. He will have to find the right words. He’s not sure how, but he will have to.

Notes:

* Hated the canon scene where Bruce gives his tough love talk to Dick about Blockbuster's death. Like, okay, he says he "may be able to forgive" Dick for it, then says he can't forgive Dick for being suicidal in the aftermath. Seriously, Bruce? Never read any actual psychology stuff along with your criminal psychology books? Wanted a comfort scene to get the taste of that out.

*One of my main reasons to love Wayne Family Adventures is that a lot of the events in canon happened, but not in the exact same way - different in the way it would be with a more or less functional batfamily. I'm gonna headcanon that in this timeline Batman was away for the duration of the Blockbuster mess - because there's absolutely no way WFA Bruce wouldn't have turned up ASAP if he heard Dick's apartment was blown up.

*Not going into the other traumatic incident that happened to Dick that night - have done a fic on that. Bruce doesn't know about it. He knows Catalina was bad for Dick, but no idea just how bad.

*Comments of all kinds - including concrit- welcome and appreciated. They are my main motive for posting, lol.

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