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Bravery, and everything that looks like it

A3O

Summary:

Bruce had promised Dick a fun and chill weekend. Instead, they find themselves in the middle of a burning chemical facility.

When he thinks everyone should have been evacuated, Nightwing finds a scientist trying to secure some sort of container.

She’s either very brave, or she has a death wish.

Whumptober day 25: Disorientation, blurred vision, ringing ears.

Note:

Okay, so I tried and failed to make this one a little less angsty. So, warning for discussion of self-sacrificing thoughts, poisoning, explosions and fire.

Now that this is out of the way, I want to share with you that I partially wrote this while on a discord call with a friend who told me she was still working on a challenge from October. Which was funny because I’m still working on a challenge from October, too. But October 2020.

Also, the events of Infinite Crisis (namely, here, the destruction of Blüdhaven) had happened in this fic. I know I tend to ignore it sometimes (it’s convenient to have Blüdhaven still there), but here I’m acknowledging it.

Hope you’ll enjoy the fic!

-

The flames are licking Dick’s back.

“Come to the-” he takes a breath, tasting the stale air of the inside of his gas mask- “manor this weekend, he said.”

The floor had collapsed in the corridor he intended to pass to get out of the building. Alright. He can do this. He takes a few steps back and jumps, ignoring the way his lungs protest with the effort and the limited oxygen. When he reaches the other side, the floor cracks a little, but thankfully holds up.

“Fun and chill weekend with your siblings, he said.”

“Nightwing,” comes Bruce’s voice thorough his comm, sounding more annoyed than worried. “If you have the breath to complain, you have the breath to get yourself out of this building faster.”

“This is less a building than a-” he dodges a gas bottle that comes through the wall on his right, propelled by its own pressure- “giant OSHA violation.”

He hears Jason snort. Good. “Seriously, why was this factory still allowed to function? Couldn’t your Wayne friend do something about it?”

“Nightwing.”

Second warning. Bruce doesn’t like to be kept waiting. But still, his point stands. The chemical factory and lab had gone up in flames so fast, the workers had to thank the local vigilantes for the lack of casualty. There were still some serious injuries, and the fire is far from being controlled yet. Still, their job ends here; the firefighters would have to do the rest. Now that everyone had been evacuated-

A noise from above him distracts him from his thoughts. It doesn’t sound like an explosion or the natural sound of a building burning. More like a strained breath.

Everyone had been evacuated, hadn’t they?

“Oracle, can you confirm that no one except us and the firefighters are in here?”

Bruce goes to say something, but Barbara cuts him off. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t. There are no databases on entries and exits, and no functional cameras to scan everyone who entered.” Figures. Security didn’t seem to be more of an issue when the building was functioning than when it had been designed. “I think there is no one left, but… I wish I could tell you for sure.”

That’s not enough and they all know it. He would take an assumption from Oracle over a certitude from anyone else any day of the week, but when it comes to lives, an assumption is not enough.

“I think there’s still someone above me.”

“You think?” comes Batman’s question. Dick understands what isn’t said: Bruce wants to know how sure he is.

“It’s not like my thermal camera can read anything.”

“What’s the probability?” Bruce is definitely annoyed now. Worried, too, if Dick has to guess.

“Does it matter?” It doesn’t. They all know it. When there’s a life at stake, probabilities don’t matter. Bruce is the one who taught him that. If it was him and not Dick in that building, he wouldn’t even ask the question. “I’m going up.”

Batman says something else; Dick doesn’t listen, focused on finding the best spot to plant his grapple. He hesitates to remove his comm but decides against it. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice before shutting Bruce’s voice, but Damian had cut his comm a few too many times for his liking since. Now that he knows what it’s like to be on the other end, he leaves his comm on more often than not.

It doesn’t stop him from ignoring whatever Batman is saying and jumping up to the floor above him, or what’s left of it. He moves some debris, making room for himself to get toward the direction of the noise. He thinks for a second he might have imagined it, or that it might have just been his own breath, but then he sees someone.

With one quick jump, he reaches the scientist. She’s crouched down on what’s left on the ground, frantically working on removing a canister from the wall. One more look shows him she’s wearing a worn-down mask. He quickly takes a spare mask, thankful he still has one left, and gives it to her.

She only seems to notice his presence when the gas mask is shoved under her nose. She takes it and keeps working. He doesn’t know what she’s doing, but he has to get her out of here. Now.

He takes her by the waist, and she begins to struggle in his arms. “No!” she yells, now on the communication channel since she’s got a Bat-tech mask on, “I have to get this away from the fire, or half of Gotham is gone!”

“I’ll do it!” Dick screams into her ear even if he knows the actual distance between them doesn’t matter, since they’re communicating via the technology in their masks. “I’ll get you to safety, and then I’ll do it.”

She stayed. She’s the only one who stayed to make sure she could secure whatever is in that canister. She’s either very brave, or she has a death wish. Possibly both. In Dick’s personal experience, the two can be hard to distinguish.

The woman looks at him with wide eyes. He hears Batman say his name in his ear, and then…

Nothing. Or, more accurately, everything.

It’s instinct, more than any rational thought, that has him pushing the scientist to the ground, protecting her with his own body, as a pipe explodes. The sound is overwhelming, taking over his entire world for a second or two. When he dares to get up, his ears are ringing. He’s down one sense, and his only way of communication with his family during the crisis. Great.

By some miracle, the canister that the scientist wanted to secure so badly held on. Dick has the feeling neither of them would be there if it hadn’t.

The scientist looks at him, but she doesn’t seem to see him. She’s hyperventilating inside her mask, and he’s worried she’s going to pass out soon. He can’t blame her for finally losing it; she’s done amazing so far, but everyone has to break down eventually.

He doesn’t waste time in securing her in his arms, getting his grapple to the more stable looking wall, and getting them both out of the window. The fall, even slowed down by his line, is short, but it seems like an eternity, knowing that the canister above him can explode at any given time, and that it can apparently take out half of Gotham.

Was it an exaggeration? Or is this thing really that dangerous? He can still remember the city in ruins, after the earthquake, and he never wants to see anything like that again. He might not be as much of a child of Gotham as Bruce, Jason, Tim, Steph, and Duke are, but this is still his city. Maybe the one he stayed in the longest in his life.

He can remember another city, the one he actually called his going down in toxic chemicals and radioactive fumes. He remembers the fear, the screams, the deaths. Will this one be as devastating?

He doesn’t intend to find out. As soon as the scientist is secured on the ground, firefighters running towards her, he pulls himself back up into the flames.

When he reaches the floor he met the scientist in, the canister is, thankfully, still there and still intact. It is also, unfortunately, still attached to the wall. His ears are still ringing from the explosion and he has to push back the idea of permanent damage: anything that isn’t an absolute emergency has to be forgotten for now.

He can’t think about his ears. He can’t think about Blüdhaven. He has to focus solely on that canister.

He has already started working on the screw holding the canister in place when he notices he’s crying. Weird. He’s the first one to admit that he tends to cry easily compared to Bruce or Alfred, but he’s not one to cry in the middle of a mission. His tears usually come after the job is done, with only the night to see them. He supposes it comes from his family history: he remembers seeing his parents’ eyes shine once or twice while they were bowing for an exceptionally cheering audience, after the show, but never during the performance.

The show must go on. And, as he grew up, the show ceased to be a trapeze act and started to be rescues, arrests, and overall vigilante work.

And now, he’s crying. His eyes hurt, too, he realizes as one of the screws comes loose. His vision is growing more and more blurry.

His mind takes a while to catch up, and he would be ashamed of himself if he wasn’t so focused on detaching the canister. There is something in his eyes.

He’s wearing a gas mask, which covers his entire face, plus his own domino. Nothing can get in his eyes… unless his mask is compromised.

He gave his last spare to the scientist. The pipe that exploded earlier and deprived him of his hearing is still leaking a white, dense smoke. A smoke he’s right in, on top of everything else floating in the air.

He can’t hear a thing. He doesn’t know if anyone is coming to his aid. And now he’s slowly starting to lose his vision too.

Another screw comes loose in his hands. There is just one more to go before he can take the canister out.

He can do this.

Gotham will not burn (or explode, or suffocate, or whatever this thing does) tonight. Not if he can do something about it.

He feels, more than he sees, the last screw. His hands may feel weaker than he’s comfortable with, but he keeps going.

His lungs burn with every breath, crushing a little more under the weight of whatever goes past his mask. He resists the instinct to tear it away from his face; even broken, it has to protect him at least a little. He would’ve passed out from the smoke inhalation only if it wasn’t.

Time seems to stretch out as his hands slip and slide around the screw. He would have cursed if he had any breath for it.

Finally, he feels something going loose in his hand and falling to the ground. He takes the canister and pulls: the thing comes off easily. He’s done it.

It’s still too early to cheer, the Batman voice in the back of his mind reminds him. He doesn’t have to say it: Dick knows. He doesn’t bother securing his line this time; no point if he can’t see anything. He just jumps, holding the canister and hoping this thing isn’t sensitive to shocks.

The fall is fast, and the impact with the ground is painful. He braces himself for it, and he can actually hear the thud of his shoulder on the ground. This would feel him with relief if he wasn’t busy rolling down with the force of the impact, hitting other things expelled by the burning facility.

When his infernal spinning stops, he doesn’t know where he is, or when the canister is. The fact that there is still a him means the canister is probably intact. He’s probably also not far from the factory, which means there are firefighters and vigilantes nearby.

His vision is still blurry, his ears are still ringing, and he breathed in who knows what. He needs help.

He gets to his hands and knees, looking around himself wildly for anything, but none of the colorful shapes he can distinguish seem to be on their way to help him. He scrambles to his feet, up and down mixing as the world spins around him. It is, unfortunately, not the first time his sense of balance has betrayed him, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It takes away a little more of his control over the situation.

“Nightwing!”

The name might have been screamed, but he barely hears it. Sure enough, there is something coming toward him. Not something, someone. He can’t really see who it is yet, but this is the help he was looking for.

He needs to call them, to explain everything. He needs to tell them about the canister, and he needs to check on the scientist he saved.

Most of all, he needs to sit down. The familiar feeling that tells him he will pass out if he stays up washes over him suddenly, and he barely has time to resist before his legs give up on maintaining him upright.

His fall is stopped by a pair of arms, and he hears his rescuer huff under his weight as they slow his descent to the ground.

He blinks, and his vision clears enough that for a few seconds, he can see a familiar emblem. It reminds him of other times, simpler times. He knows it’s impossible, but…

“Babs?”

His mask is gently removed from his face. When his rescuer comes next to him, he can see she removed hers, too.

“Sorry, other Batgirl. Or, I mean, other, other Batgirl,” he can hear her say, now that the ringing in his ears is lessening.

Despite the situation, he smiles. Steph has this gift, getting some spark of joy out of others, even in dark times. She would have done well in the entertainment industry, he thinks absentmindedly.

“The canister?”

He tries to move, but she’s fast at getting him back on the ground. “The thing you fell with? I’ll have Red recover it.”

She puts her hand to her ear, activating her comm, and he doesn’t listen to what she says. He refocuses when she puts something in his eyes. His vision doesn’t clear, but the burning feeling he had barely registered before recedes a little.

“Breathing is heavy but not compromised,” Steph says in the comm. “We need the Batmobile, but not an emergency evac.”

Dick is suddenly hit with how grown up she is. She’s handling the situation with calmness and confidence. She made so much progress since the first time he saw her, she became brave where she had been reckless.

She’s putting in another dose of whatever it is she’s putting in his eyes (saline, probably) when the Batmobile pulls up next to them. A black blurriness takes the place of the purple one.

“Can you stand?” Bruce asks. His hand hovers over Dick’s face. Dick knows the instinct to wipe up the tears is stopped by the knowledge, or more accurately, the lack of knowledge, about what his gloves had been in contact with; there is no need to compromise Dick’s eyes more than they already are.

“I can try,” Dick murmurs, taking in both how weak his voice is and how tired he is, now that the adrenaline is wearing off.

“I’ll take it.” He can hear the smile in Bruce’s voice before he’s pulled up. He has to close his eyes in an effort to stop the world from spinning so much.

“Red Robin, Batgirl. Take this thing somewhere safe and analyze what is in it,” Batman orders and Dick can hear two simultaneous “yessirs.” Though they sound all responsible and heroic, there is a faint fear that wasn’t there before, when Steph was taking care of him. He can understand it all too well: now that Batman is here, they don’t have to be the responsible ones, and some of their worry unconsciously slips out.

Dick thinks, as he is gently dropped in the Batmobile backseat, that he will have to reassure them he’s alright later.

Later, this will be one of the last things he’ll remember from that night. That, and Batman’s voice, telling him distinctly, “Don’t fall asleep.”

-

When he wakes up, he’s in his bed, in the manor. His ear has stopped ringing, and he can see well. This is a relief, and so is the fact that, even though his head spins for a few seconds after he gets up, he can properly stand after that.

His head is killing him. That, along with the slight nausea, is a definite sign of poison of some sort. But since he’s out of the med bay and alone in his room, it must not be too bad. He makes his way downstairs, the sun shining through the manor’s window. Bruce raises his head from the tablet he’s working on when he hears him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hungover,” says Dick, falling gracelessly onto the chair in front of his dad. He guesses it conveys the feeling well enough, even though by now, he had been poisoned by unknown substances more often than by alcohol. A glass of water, aspirin tablet, and a plate of mashed potatoes and carrots magically appears in front of him.

“Thanks, Alfred,” he says, not even surprised the butler managed to sneak up on him. It’s a gift that runs in this family, after all.

The old man smiles. “I’m glad to see you awake and well. You gave us quite a scare.”

“Sorry I passed out on you-” Dick starts before being cut off by Bruce.

“You didn’t. You were awake for all the tests, until you were cleared and went to bed. Though, some dark spots in your memory are to be expected.”

Dick hums, taking in the information. He tries to reach back for the memory, flashes, anything, but comes up empty. It’s not the first time he’s been missing a night, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

“What was in that canister?”

“Some nitroglycerin derivate. The scientist you saved was right: it would have blown up half of Gotham, poisoned the rest.”

Dick focuses on his food. He stirs the puree, trying to get images of another city out of his mind. “Why did they have that?”

“It’s still under investigation.” Sure enough, Dick can see that the tablet Bruce had been working on is displaying a copy of the company’s bank statement.

“The scientist?”

Bruce sighs. “She didn’t know why it was there, just that it was. She’s in Gotham General, being treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation. I need to do a background check, of course, but Wayne Tech is launching a new research project on clean batteries. We might need chemists.”

Dick hums again. “She was brave,” he says.

He keeps eating, feeling Bruce’s eyes on him. “I need you to know,” he finally says after a while. “What I did was bravery too. I did what I had to do, and I came back out of that factory.” It wasn’t a death wish, that much he knows. And he needs Bruce to know it too. Because it looks too much like what happened years ago, in Blüdhaven, but his mindset is completely different this time.

“It’s what you would have done,” he adds when Bruce stays silent.

His father sighs. “You’re right. It’s what I would have done.”

Something in the way the sentence is said drills a hole in Dick’s heart. He’s hit with the realization of something he always knew. His voice feels small to his own ears when he asks, “Would it be bravery or…?”

“Yes.” Bruce takes his hand on the table. “Yes, today, it would be bravery.”

“After Jason?” Dick asks, even if he knows the answer. After Jason, the heroics of Batman weren’t powered by bravery, but by a death wish. It didn’t take being as smart as Tim to figure it out.

“And before you came into my life, yes. I struggled with similar feelings. But,” his hand squeezes Dick’s, looking at him in the eyes, “This isn’t your burden to carry. What matters is that you’re here, now, and you’re alive. And so am I.”

Dick looks away. It might not be his burden to carry, but he still feels like he should do something about it.

“Steph did well last night,” he says, because he doesn’t know what he should say, what would make everything magically better.

“She did,” Bruce agrees and Dick lifts his head quickly. It’s rare to hear praise from the Batman. “And so did you. You’ve all grown so much, sometimes I forgot you can take care of yourselves.”

“They were scared, though,” Dick says, because he can’t get himself to say, “we still need you.”

Bruce’s hand tightens a little more against his, so maybe he understood anyway. “I’ll have them come for dinner tonight, so you can reassure them.” Dick nods. “And, after all, I promised you a fun and chill weekend with your siblings, didn’t I?”

-

Ending note: Hope you enjoyed the fic! Many thanks to JustJellyJackal for beta-reading!

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