Secrets, not Sins
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2
2,525 words | Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence
Young Justice fanfiction | Talon!Dick | Ao3
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The ride back to the mountain was shrouded in a tension, the team trying their very best not to look at Nightwing. He was a ghost, eyes dull and unfocused and coated head-to-toe in his own sickening imitation of blood. Usually, the atmosphere would drag the trip out for an excruciating eternity, but Nightwing was so detached from himself that he blinked and they were gliding down into the hangar. The second the hatch morphs open he flies out of the Bioship and bolts for his quarters, Red Tornado doesn't attempt to stop him and the protests of his team are too far behind him to mean anything.
He urgently locks the door behind him, shouldering through and dashing into the adjacent bathroom. His mind urges him to glance in the mirror. Assess the damage; see what they saw. He strips and jumps directly into the shower, cranking the hot water all the way up and neglecting the cold knob entirely.
The flash of cold that meets him first is startling and, for a moment, he swears he's trapped deep in the labyrinth of Gotham's sewers shoved into his coffin and frozen stiff. The water heats within moments and he scrubs at the black still clinging to his front, painting his chest and face, the stream swirling down the drain a dark and dirty navy. His chest is heaving, breaths clipped and frightened despite all the danger being far away, but it had never been the danger that had hurt him. He was some morbid Superman, unkillable and without pain, no mission held a true threat to him the only worry he ever had was about his teammates. No, it was always the aftermath that would haunt him. The casualties, the failures, the secrets.
There was nothing to distract from the truth now. They would need answers he wasn't ready to give.
He grits his teeth and wheezes unnecessary breaths, panic flowing through him and clogging his throat as his scrubbing got progressively more violent until he was raking the skin from his chest almost faster than it could heal. With a frustrated yell he slams his fist into the wall, cracks spider-webbing away from the impact point.
The water runs clear. He steps out and dries off, avoiding the mirror with practiced ease, and slips back into his room to collect a pair of civvies and his favorite leather jacket. It was Bruce's, when the man was his age, worn black leather that had a history that Bruce thought Dick worthy to hold. It had been an unspoken apology. Dick wore it almost every day since he got it and he needed the comfort more now than ever.
Now, he had no more distractions, he had to give those answers.
He was positive he'd find the team hovering in the commons, lounging on the couches and trying to act normal despite the fact that nothing was normal anymore. He had been able to pretend for years now, he had felt human with them, and he was a fool to have thought that would last forever.
Cautiously he slips through the halls and out into the commons, peaking into the living area and finding his team exactly where he expected to. They lounged, they chattered, but they certainly didn't look normal. They were dull, and quiet, and uncertain in a way that they were after a mission gone wrong and he ached knowing that he wasn't sitting there with them but rather he was the cause.
"Stop stalling," Conner, of course, looks over to him with sharp blue eyes. The Kryptonian had gained plenty of nuance and perspective since he'd first been rescued from Cadmus but he was still as blunt and impatient as ever. Clearly, he wasn't willing to let Dick do this on his own terms, but, in all honesty, Dick didn't have the emotional capacity to care anymore.
He hums, gliding fully into the room and letting his team silently take in his appearance. This would be the first time they saw him without his glasses, not including Wally, rather, this would be the first time his best friend saw his true eyes.
"I thought they were blue," Wally murmured, and the suggestion that he'd known who Dick was longer than any of the others hangs in the air.
"I lied." Dick whispers back.
"Why." It really wasn't a question, Wally was hurting in a way that was so potent it was visible in the way he held tension in his shoulders. In the way he looked at Dick like the man had wrapped everything he knew and loved in a present and set it on fire in front of him.
Dick hums, and while the answer clearly isn't satisfying, he doesn't think anything else he could say would make it better. What was he supposed to say to that? Because I hate myself, or because I'm not what you thought I was or maybe even I couldn't bear to see the look on your face when you realized what I've done.
"I'm sorry, my friend," Kaldur sounds truly apologetic, looking upon Dick like he was a wounded animal, "But that will not be enough."
"I didn't want you to know,"
"Know what? That you don't die?" Artemis huffs, crossing her arms and glaring. Dick knows better then to think she's truly angry. She's hiding. She's scared. "I think that would've been nice to know."
"I can die." Dick disagrees on principle alone.
"Sure didn't seem like it," Conner interjects before Artemis could start something. Dick would have preferred the fight but that wasn't what they were here for, there would be no more hiding for him.
"It takes.. a lot." Dick agrees, "I'm not.. human." He doesn't know a better way to put it.
"Who would have guessed," Wally deadpanned, unimpressed.
He doesn't know what to do here. He knows, logically, that he can't just put this off and refuse to talk about it. His team have known him for years and he'd lied to his best friend for even longer. Kaldur had looked Cobb dead in the eyes and declared that it didn't matter but what if it did? There was a line, there was always a line, and when it came to most heroes he's crossed it. He remembers the first time he killed someone vividly, he was a child, and he remembers slitting a man's throat with the claws of the Talon gauntlets and feeling nothing. Not horror, not satisfaction, not even pride at having served his masters; he had felt nothing. That hadn't changed until long after Bruce toppled the Court.
He couldn't imagine telling them that. He could physically feel the disgust they might project curling around his limbs and filling him up with nausea.
"It's not like that," Dick disagrees, "I'm not an alien, I'm not a meta." He knows, now, how to explain. How to show them. He doesn't want to.
"What do you mean, Nightwing," M'gann asks innocently, trying to patiently help him along. Her heart was so big and she likely felt like she understood, that he didn't want them to see him and think he was a monster. That was only half the battle.
"I'm," he pauses, swallows, shifts uneasily. He hums, trills, grimaces and tries to find a way to avoid all of this but it was far too late for that. "Not alive."
Silence. Heavy, suffocating silence. They stare at him like he's insane but like they could fix him. Pity and sympathy, and his stomach twists. "Of course you're alive, 'Wing." M'gann murmurs sadly.
"No," he shakes his head, but that's all he can get out. He's falling, tripping back, and his brain stumbles to keep him from regressing into horrible, deadly mindsets but it's so hard not to embrace the numbness lurking, waiting to swallow him whole.
"You're breathing," Conner shrugs, like that's all that matters, "I can hear your heart beating."
"It doesn't need to."
Silence. Again, and again, and again there's silence and if he hadn't been cultivated and molded in silence and tension he's sure he'd go mad. He was tired of silence. Silence meant that if he wasn't on guard a Talon would dash from the shadows to teach him to do better. Silence meant that he was watching, waiting to take a life. Silence meant that Bruce was angry and he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do to fix it. Silence was a death sentence.
"What." Wally breathes.
Dick doesn't explain. Rather, he just stops.
He stops breathing, his chest stops rising and for a moment it's just like he's holding his breath. Then, his heart stutters and he feels it struggle valiantly to beat beneath his ribs. If he was normal he'd recognize that this hurt. If he weren't a monster, he'd clutch at his chest and gasp for air, fearing for his life. Instead, he simply stands with his hands clenched into fists deep in the pockets of his jacket, noticing vaguely that his heart is failing and he's letting it.
Conner jerks, eyes wide, but he doesn't know what to say. The others try to ask what's going on, not everyone has Kryptonian hearing, but they taper out when Dick's skin starts to lose color. His heart doesn't beat, his lungs don't inflate, and as his complexion steadily pales his veins create vivid, navy paintings across his body, intricate designs that stand out starkly against his pallor and make his unsettling eyes all the more eerie.
It feels cold without the constant pumping of electrum coursing through his veins, there's a chill embedded so deep into his very being he knows from experience he'll never feel warm like this. He wants to burn, jump into a fire and swallow the coals to feel even a semblance of heat.
"His heart," Conner blinks, unsettled. "It's.." "I told you. I'm not alive." Dick insists, "My name is Richard Grayson, I was bred to die. I can't-- won't-- tell you everything. Not yet. I'm not ready, and I hope you can respect that," he sucks in a long breath, and another, and his heart sluggishly kickstarts. He can feel his body rush to heal the damage, blood flowing through his veins and filling him with that very warmth that a few years back he didn't think he'd ever be able to feel again after the Court. The team lets out a collective sigh of relief when he starts stops looking like a walking corpse, "I was indoctrinated into a cult of elitist assassins when I was a child, that was the first time I died. I've killed hundreds of people in their name, I was their legacy. Batman took me away and now I'm here." It was a crude retelling, barely scratching the surface of everything he's done and all the pain he's suffered. He doesn't have it in him to offer anything more. Not yet. Maybe not ever. "If you can know that about me and still see me as your friend, I would love to keep fighting alongside you all. But if that's too much, I will resign." And he would. Their comfort meant more to him than his feelings. Who cares if an undead heart broke?
"Woah, slow down. We don't want you to resign." Artemis' brows furrow, startled and confused, "I told you, I've killed people before, I'm not proud of what I've done but we can move past it," Artemis stands, looking at him with something sad in her eyes.
"It's not the same, I didn't feel a thing." Dick insists.
"That's means you didn't enjoy it, either." Artemis throws back, defending him despite his sins. He wishes he could scream that it didn't work that way, that there was still red staining his very soul if he had one left, but he knows that it'd only make him a hypocrite. He had always known about who Artemis was and what she'd done but not once had he ever thought she wasn't worthy of being a hero.
"I killed so many innocent people." His hands were dripping with the blood of people that were fighting against the Elite. Fighting for equity and justice. He stood in the way of progress that could've meant something.
"That is a soldier's place in a war," Kaldur adds-in, almost regretfully. "You two are not the only people who have taken lives. Fighting in a war, whether a public battle or not, you are bound to take the lives of men and women you do not know. People who could have been good people fighting for a cause they believed to be right."
"Do you regret it?" Wally asks. "Of course I do!" It comes out more desperate than he had wanted it to. What kind of question was that? Of course he regrets it. It haunts both his restful and waking moments, the faces of civilians he slaughtered in the name of a world catering to a already privileged one-percent desperate to maintain a society they ruled over.
"Then isn't that what matters?" M'gann asks, quietly floating over and landing a few feet in front of him. "You're different, sure, but no one here is quite normal, Richard. You've done some bad things, you have regrets, but so do we. You are no less our teammate than you were yesterday, and you're no less our friend. Thank you for telling us this, and I am so sorry that you've suffered like this, but it doesn't change how we feel about you."
"Dick," Wally chimes in. "Wally," Artemis hisses, "Not the time!"
"No, it's his name." Wally throws his hands up in surrender. "He prefers Dick."
M'gann nods, turning back to Dick with kind eyes and passion, "We love you, Dick. Not because of who you were but because of the man you are."
Dick blinks, trying to keep the tears from his eyes so he can see the heartfelt smile on her face. See the way Kaldur looked at him with a protective fire, and the way Conner stared with a frightening understanding. Wally still looked hurt but he smiles that goofy smile that never fails to make Dick feel whole, and Artemis is painted with empathy and support. His vision blurs and he gives in, diving forward to wrap M'gann in a hug he hopes communicates how much he appreciates them. He's choked up and the idea of speaking is exhausting, but he opens his mind fully and thinks as loudly as he can Thank you.
M'gann wraps her arms as tightly around him as she can without snapping his bones, though, he couldn’t say he'd mind. You're welcome, she presses a gentle kiss to his temple and suddenly he can feel the rush of the mindlink embrace his mind. He sobs, a gross and unexpected noise, when the warmth and love and unwavering acceptance of his team floods into his head.
He wasn't ready to share everything, and he didn't know if he'd ever be, but for now this was enough. Both for him, and for them.