Dick always marries Barbara at the end of the world.
They’re battlefield unions born of Dick saying please, please, please and Babs responding of course, of course, of course.
It’s never legal, though that doesn’t necessarily make it less real. Dick and Babs are married for a week or two as the world falls to pieces and then they’re not when all is well. It never sticks. Their marriage is made up of maybes. Maybe we’ll survive this, maybe we can build a better tomorrow. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The Titans stop a Sun-Eater from swallowing their star system and Nightwing crashes back down to Earth thrilled to be alive.
His joy has its own gravity and Barbara can’t help but revolve around it. She follows him like a sunflower turns towards the light, happy to twist and twirl in whatever way she needs to so she can watch him shine.
“You didn’t ask me to marry you this time,” Babs says, resting her head on his shoulder. Dick’s stretched out behind her like a spoon. He pets down her hips, quietly pleased that the contact is because he wants her instead of some utilitarian purpose. There are no injuries here, no pain. It’s just Dick Grayson loving Barbara Gordon in the safety of Babs’ favorite blue sheets.
Dick clicks his tongue as he thinks of the best way to respond, a little -tt- sound he’s picked up from Damian. Barbara finds it endearing.
“I want to marry you,” he says. “I want to marry you every day. You could ask me and I’d say yes in a heartbeat but I can’t play at it anymore, you know? I want it to stick.”
“We’re partners,” Barbara says, frowning as she rolls over to face him. “We’ve been together for almost a decade. We do stick, Boy Wonder. What would a wedding give you?”
“You, as my wife,” Dick says, tipping his nose down so it rests against Babs’. They’re pressed up against each other and Barbara still wants to be closer. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not the party and it’s not the performance. I don’t need a dance. I just want everyone to know I love you.”
The line between proclamation and performance is thin but Barbara doesn’t call Dick on it. She tries to think of herself as his wife.
It’s not markedly different than the life they live now. She doesn’t think she’d change her name and Dick is understandably attached to his. They already live together, though Barbara often sleeps at her Clocktower quarters when work runs late. Their finances aren’t a factor as those have been figured for them since Dick inherited his sum from Alfred. There’s not a real social difference either. Their friends and family all know they’re a unit.
“Is it possessive?” She asks. “Do you want to own me?”
“Only as much as you want to own me,” Dick says, which is fair. They’re both possessive people. They like to protect what’s theirs and they’ve belonged to each other in some way or another since they were children. “It’s more of a promise, I think.”
“An oath,” Barbara says, understanding dawning. “You want to swear to love me.”
It shouldn’t be revelatory. Dick has been honoring a vow he made as a child for nearly thirty years. He affirms it often. Dick swears to help make the world a better, more righteous place every day. It’s foundational. He wants to fold their love into the vow, making their marriage part of the mission. It’s ritualistic in a way that Babs doesn’t know that she’ll ever get but she sees it now.
“Yeah,” Dick says. “I do. If you don’t want to get married that’s okay, because you know I swear it anyways.”
“You should ask me again,” Barbara says. A smile crawls across her face, the affection she feels for Dick uncontainable. Dick stills, studying her.
This time when he asks her it’s different. The question is less urgent, more measured. He’s not asking because the world is ending. Instead, Dick is offering her a beginning. Barbara has known a million Dick Graysons. She’s known him as an overconfident teenager with anger problems and as a man shaken by his past. Even when they weren’t lovers, Babs loved him. She thinks she’ll love Dick Grayson forever.
“Babs,” Dick asks. “Will you marry me?”
“Yeah,” Barbara says, pulling his face towards hers by the jaw. “Yeah, I will.”
