Chapter Text
Dick hiked his school bag over his shoulder as he ducked around a group of students and brought his phone to his ear. The dial tone cut to a cheerful voice warning people not to leave a voice note because it would never be acknowledged.
“Walls, I’m gonna kick your ass for not reading my texts,” he huffed, “I’m on my way home now, so I’ll be at your place at five.” He paused for a moment to slide into the limo Bruce always sent to pick him up and nodded at Alfred, who returned the gesture. “I’ll - I’ll see you then,” he murmured, nerves closing around his throat.
“Is today the day, Master Richard?” Alfred inquired from the driver’s seat.
“Uh,” Dick flushed, “yeah. Yeah, it is.”
After years of shoving his feelings for the other superhero away, Dick was finally going to be honest. His fears of rejection had been soothed by the way the seventeen year old had been looking at him the past few months, and Dick would have had to have been deaf, blind, and completely tactiley unaware to think his feelings weren’t being returned at this point. They’d been dancing around each other for so long it had almost turned into a dynamic, but Kid Flash wasn’t going to be around for much longer - at least not with Wally under the mask. Barry was slowing down, and Wally was only getting faster. Wally would be taking over as The Flash before the end of the year, and with Bruce taking Tim in, Dick was also considering moving onto a new mantle.
As a solo hero.
If that happened the days he spent with Wally at Mt. Justice would dissolve into nothing. If they didn’t resolve things now, they’d drift apart, never see each other… move on. But Dick knew he could never move on from Wally, so he needed to do this. He needed to tell Wally he loved him.
He hadn’t realized he’d opened the folder on his phone where he kept all the photos of him and Wally that had ever been taken, and his eyes refocused to see his thumb rubbing over a picture of Wally’s sleeping face. This one was a couple months old. Dick had broken his wrist in a mission gone wrong, and Wally had refused to leave him alone. He’d passed out on Dick’s bed sometime after five in the morning after checking and rechecking Dick’s wrist. Even asleep, the speedster moved around like his life depended on it, and Dick smiled down at the rare moment of peace he’d managed to capture.
“I’ll tell Master Wayne not to stay up for you,” Alfred said, and Dick’s head jerked up to stare at him.
“It’s not- It’s not like that,” Dick said, words tripping over themselves, “we’re gonna stay turbed tonight. It’s going to be completely-”
Whatever Dick was going to say was cut off as Alfred pulled in through the front gates of the Wayne Manor. Something caught his eye as it hung from the arch of the front door.
Not something. Someone.
Dick scrambled from the limo and sprinted to the entrance, heartbeat hammering in his throat as he slipped in a slick pool of blood. He landed hard on his backside and hands, and the world ground to a halt as he stared up at the person, horror bringing bile up his throat.
Wally’s body hung limp from where he had been strung up by the wrists. The graphic print on his yellow shirt was obscured by blood. Dick pushed himself to his feet and pulled out one of the batarangs he always kept on him, throwing the blade at the rope that held Wally in place. He sprinted under Wally before the weapon could slice through the fiber.
Puberty had hit Dick hard, and at fifteen he was already taller and more filled out that the wiry runner, but he still stumbled back as Wally crashed into him. He closed his arms around the other boy and clutched him close to his chest before dropping to his knees and laying Wally on the blood smeared porch tiles.
A faint heartbeat resonated in Wally’s chest, but Dick’s breath caught at how slow it was - barely faster than his own, when Wally’s pulse usually sat at over one hundred beats a second.
“Alfred,” he choked, “get help, please!”
He tore his eyes from the dark blood spatter on Wally’s face and searched for his butler. The older man was gone, probably into the house for medical supplies. Dick’s guess had been right, because Alfred appeared a second later with a first aid kid that put most surgery rooms to shame.
“I have contacted the league,” he said as he began cleaning away some of the blood, “we need to make sure moving Master West won’t do more harm than good before we take him to the League Headquarters. Dr Mid-Nite is on standby for us.”
Dick stared at him, ice welling in his lungs as he ran his hands along Wally’s side. He was at a loss as to what to do, and for the first time in his life, he felt completely useless.
Alfred began listing Wally’s obvious injuries and Dick realized he was in communication with the League. Dick scanned his best friend’s body as Alfred spoke, focusing on every gash and tear. Wally’s throat had been slit, but the angle wasn’t right, and it hadn’t killed him. There was a hole in his chest, but the damage narrowly missed his heart. His lower arm had been shredded, but the major artery had been avoided.
“Wait,” Dick interrupted Alfred’s assessment, “they had three opportunities to kill him. Throat, chest, wrists. It would have been impossible for all of those to be non-fatal unless…”
“Unless whoever did this wanted Master West to live,” Alfred provided.
Dick nodded and scooped Wally into his arms, pushing past Alfred to get to the Zeta Tube in Bruce’s second office. He held Wally’s body close in the small space and tightened his shaking fingers around the boy as the familiar whir of the machine starting up rang in his ears. He realised a second too late he hadn’t received permission to get into HQ, and he’d probably end up sucked into the void of space.
Bruce must have anticipated Dick’s rash behavior though, because a second later Dick was falling into the main hall of the satellite. Dr Mid-Nite lifted the boy from Dick’s arms, and Dick watched as he bustled towards the med center. The Flash darted after the doctor, and it took a moment for Dick to notice most of the League members were huddled around him.
“What happened?” Batman demanded.
Dick ripped his eyes from the door Dr Mid-Nite had disappeared behind. “I don’t know,” he said, voice mechanical and quiet, “I got home from school to find Wa- Kid Flash strung up by his wrists from the roof tiles. He’s not in costume, which means somebody outside of the League knows his true identity. He was at our house, which means someone outside of the League knows our true identities as well.”
Batman set his jaw in a grim expression but said nothing.
“And he wasn’t self healing, so whoever did this to him probably pumped him full of something that nullifies that ability.”
“You get all that, Mid-Nite?” Bruce asked, and the doctor’s affirmation rang through a set of speakers. The other members had kept quiet, but their sudden concern sat like a layer of snow in the hall. The knowledge that several of the hero’s identities had been discovered was almost as disturbing as the sight of Wally’s broken body.
Dick glanced between them, and for the first time, he realized none of them knew what to do either. And he realized he was still in his school uniform, standing in the League’s HQ as Dick Grayson . Stifling silence closed around Dick until Batman cleared his throat and shattered it into a thousand pieces.
“Manhunter, can you scan Wally’s mind for any clues as to who the perpetrator is? If our identities are being leaked, then that is our first concern.”
Manhunter considered his words for a moment. “I cannot guarantee it would not harm Kid Flash while he is in this state. We must weigh the pros and cons.”
“Pros and cons?” Dick exploded. Several startled stares landed on him, but Dick brushed them off and glared at Batman. “If there is even a chance this is going to affect KF negatively, we are not proceeding with this.”
“Robin,” Batman snapped, “If we can catch this person before another hero in this team gets hurt, then we must consider everything we can do to achieve that.”
Dick glowered at him, anger and terror ripping at his insides.
“At any rate,” Manhunter interrupted, “I cannot do anything until Mid-Nite has cleared Kid Flash’s blood. If he does indeed have something in his veins suppressing his powers, it could affect my abilities as well. We have a few minutes to discuss this, we need not rush into anything.”
“Robin, contact the rest of your team and fill them in. I’m opening the Zeta Tubes for all of them.”
“Fine,” Dick ground out, knowing he was being dismissed from the conversation that decided what happened to the person he loved, but also knowing if he resisted he would only worsen the situation. He set his jaw and turned to the communications room. Bruce handed him a bag as he passed, and Dick snatched it from his mentor, scratching through the spare set of clothes as he walked. His fingers closed around a pair of sunglasses and he pushed them onto his face. He threw the bag onto a chair once he’d reached the comm room. Despite the blood drying on his school uniform, he needed to get in touch with the team before he sorted himself out.
A row of communicators sat on a table and Dick picked one up, listing the names and Zeta Tube numbers of everyone he wanted involved. The device connected to seven others.
“Robin,” Superboy said sharply, “what’s wrong.”
“It’s Wally. He’s hurt. You all have permission to come to HQ. Get here as soon as possible,” Dick said without acknowledging the barrage of questions and gasps that flooded over the line. He disconnected the call and walked back to the bag.
The flaking blood pulled at Dick’s skin as he tugged the shirt off. A wave of panic crashed over him as he stared at the red stained shirt, and he dropped it to the floor. Tears pricked at his eyes. Dick wanted to tear the person who had sliced Wally’s blood from his body into a thousand pieces. He yanked on the fresh set of clothes and headed back to the main hall for the arrival of the others.
It didn’t take long before Megan appeared, and a couple seconds after that the entire team was gathered around him demanding answers. Dick repeated everything he’d told the older members and gave them a rundown of Batman’s proposed plan. The team’s response was much the same as the Justice League’s - shock, anger, confusion, fear.
Roy exploded first, tearing away from the group and storming towards the med bay. Dick caught his arm and Roy twisted on him. “What the fuck, Robin? You’re okay with them - you think it’s a good idea for them to go rummaging around in Wally’s brain while he’s lying unconscious? I don’t know about you, but when Manhunter starts getting vague about the consequences of his actions I do not find that reassuring.”
Dick tightened his grip around Roy’s wrist, digging his fingers into the archer’s skin. “Of course I don’t like this! But what is you storming in going to do? Get us thrown out! And then how are we supposed to be here for Walls?”
“Fine,” Roy hissed, wrenching his arm from Dick’s grip, “what’s your plan then, Boy Wonder?”
“I don’t really have one in momento,” Robin admitted, “but…. If we can stall Manhunter... Dr Mid-Nite is clearing out Wally’s blood, and once he’s poison free, he’ll self heal and wake up. Hopefully. It usually takes Wally a couple minutes to heal cuts and gashes and a couple hours to heal broken bones, but I don’t think we have to worry about the later, so if we can keep the League occupied for twenty minutes or so that should give Wally enough time.”
Kaldur hummed as he considered the plan. “Robin, I’m not sure Batman will buy any excuse we could come up with to waste their time when the secret identities of the entire League could be at risk. And if Wally has internal damage we could be looking at a lot longer than twenty minutes.”
Dick dragged in a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. A headache was building at the base of his skull and the only person he actually wanted to talk to at that moment was currently being stitched together in a space hospital. “You’re probably right, Aqualad. Maybe if we approach Manhunter he can be more specific about the risks and we can all feel a bit more whelmed knowing exactly what’s happening.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Batman said, and even Dick, who had become used to Bruce’s silent entrances flinched at his unexpected voice.
“What do you mean?” Conner demanded.
“Manhunter has already performed his scan.”
“And?”
“Kid Flash wasn’t harmed in any way during the process, but Manhunter can’t access any information from the last thirty two hours. There’s a wall surrounding a section of Wally’s memories Manhunter can’t get around.”
Dick twisted his arms over his chest, stamping down the white hot fury that flared at the fact that Bruce had completely ignored his protests. “So it was all pointless?”
“Not exactly,” Batman responded, uncharacteristic uncertainty curling around the words. “The wall closes off much more than just the last day and a half. Manhunter says the area is big enough to contain years worth of memory, but a quick scan through what he could access didn’t indicate anything obvious that was missing. When Wally wakes up there’s a big part of his life he won’t remember, but we can’t predict what it will be.”
“Is he healing yet?” Dick asked.
“His body has basically already patched itself up, but he hasn’t woken up yet.”
Artemis had been quiet until that point, but she grimaced at the words. “Can we go see him? Wally isn’t the biggest fan of waking up alone in strange environments.”
“Of course,” Batman said. Dick pushed past him and could hear Roy a split second behind him as he bolted for the med bay.
None of the others were far behind, and Megan dragged all the chairs in the room to surround the bed with a flick of her wrist as soon as she flew through the door. Zatanna pushed Dick into the seat closest to Wally’s face, and Dick pulled his feet onto the cushion as he stared at his best friend.
Wally’s face was pale, cheeks flushed and feverish, eyes darting rapidly under his eyelids, but he was very much alive, and a tremor started working its way through Dick’s body. He reached a hand out to rest his fingers against Wally’s shoulder, and the heat sinking into Dick’s fingertips was so different from the slick cold that had covered the boy earlier that Dick felt tears burning at the backs of his eyes for the second time that day. Had he really only found Wally an hour ago?
“C’mon, Wallman,” he muttered, “open your stupid eyes.”
Bruce’s words were swirling through his mind like oil. If it was nothing obvious to Manhunter, it was possible Wally had shut away his childhood, or school life, or a million other things that were ‘inconsequential’ to Wally being Kid Flash, but very consequential to who Wally was as a person. He shook the thought away. If Manhunter hadn’t deemed it to be obvious or important, it probably wasn’t.
What was important was Wally waking up, so Dick could press their lips together and tell him exactly how he’d been feeling since he was thirteen.
Nobody really said anything, and other than M’gann’s gentle reassurances and the clock ticking away steadily on the wall, the room was silent. Dick spent a few hours watching the febrile blush fade from Wally’s skin, and the next few committing the rhythm of Wally’s breathing to memory. More time passed as Dick focused on the barely perceptible white line lingering around the base of Wally’s neck.
Somehow eleven hours slipped by, and Wally was still locked deep in his pseudo coma. By this point the team had spread themselves out around the room. Dick had yet to move from Wally’s side, and he sat with his upper body sprawled against the hospital bed, tapping out the tune to Wally’s favorite song against the other boy’s wrist. His face was buried in the crook of his elbow, so Dick felt more than saw Wally stir from his sleep.
Wally’s body twitched almost imperceptibly, and Dick’s gaze shot up to meet Wally’s green eyes. “Uh,” Wally said, voice bogged in the same confusion swirling in his slightly unfocused stare. Dick felt frozen under Wally’s attention, and relief in a way he’d never known it surged through him.
“You’re awake,” he whispered, voice trembling. He lifted his hand to press it against Wally’s neck, suddenly desperate to feel the other boy’s pulse beneath his fingers, even though they’d spent the last eight hours on Wally’s wrist.
“Wally!”
Dick flinched at M’gann’s exclamation and he yanked his hand back. Somehow he’d forgotten anyone else was in the room.
“Megan!” Wally replied, eyes lighting up in recognition. His voice pulled the other’s from their sleep and suddenly the entire team was converging on their injured partner.
“I’m fine,” Wally said over the jumbled questions being thrown at him. He grimaced as he pushed himself into a sitting position, but the pain seemed to fade quickly enough as he stretched out. His usual grin slid onto his face and he leaned forward onto his knees. “What hit me this time?”
The team looked to Dick for the explanation, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Wally, because the person he loved was alive and smiling, and the last twelve hours already felt like a distant memory, because Wally was right in front of him .
Roy scoffed at Dick’s inability to focus on anything but the curve of Wally’s vibrant smile, and even Artemis rolled her eyes. Dick’s feelings for Wally were somewhat of an open secret in the team, despite Dick’s attempts to keep them under wraps, and it was obvious they found his sudden fixation with the boy in the hospital bed funny.
“Hello?” Wally interrupted the sudden pause in the conversation.
“Right,” Kaldur said, “you were found injured in front of Batman’s house and brought to the League Head Quarters-”
“We’re in space right now?!”
“But it seems some of your memories are sealed off, so although Martian Manhunter tried to establish what happened we are still unsure.”
“Huh, yeah, I can’t remember anything past sneaking out of math class yesterday,” Wally said, screwing up his face in concentration before his eyes blew wide, “Wait, Batman’s house? As in where his civilian identity lives? The civilian identity that should in no way be linked to me or known by our enemies? Wait, was I in costume when I was found?”
Kaldur’s grim expression had Wally frowning. “Yikes, okay, that’s not great info to wake up to.”
“Agreed,” Conner said, “Superman pulled me aside earlier to say the League has a few leads and several informants have mentioned that none of our civilian names are floating around the criminal grape vine yet, so whoever attacked you doesn’t seem very keen on sharing, but the situation is still pretty bad.”
Surprise sparked in Dick’s chest. Had Superboy shared this information with any of them yet? Nobody else seemed to be caught off guard, but Dick couldn’t even recall Conner leaving the hospital room at any point.
Wally scrubbed at his face. “Well, at any rate, whoever it was must’ve had me out for a while.”
“You’ve been unconscious for half a day, Kid Mouth,” Artemis said, “If you ever scare me like that again I’ll kill you myself.”
Wally’s smile slipped. “Only twelve hours? How’d we get a new member in twelve hours? Usually Bats takes longer than that to pull in new people, even in these kinds of emergencies.”
“What are you talking about?” Roy asked when it became obvious nobody knew what Wally was talking about.
“Uh, the new guy?” He said, thrusting a thumb at Dick, who was still sitting by his side. “You guys gonna introduce us or?”
There must have been a breach somewhere in the hull of the satellite, because the air from Dick’s lungs was sucked into the void of space, and by the blank expressions on his teammates’ faces, he wasn’t the only one who suddenly couldn’t breathe.
The not “anything obvious” that Wally couldn’t remember was Dick.
Dick’s brain started sprinting through the implications of what that meant, but the realization that Wally had forgotten him was ringing in his ears and closing its fist around his throat.
“Wally,” Miss Martian said, agony dripping from his name, “Robin is-”
“Yeah,” Dick cut her off, “I’m new. I’ve been training with Batman for a while and when he realized your attack meant none of the League’s identities were safe, he thought I’d be a good asset in figuring it out. Code name Robin.”
“What-” Roy started, but Miss Martian cut off his question by creating a mind link between everyone except Wally, and asking one of her own.
Why are you lying to Wally?
We don’t know what telling the truth could do to him. At the very least he’ll panic, at worst any memories of me he has that have been sealed away could have some kind of fail safe around them. Trying to recall them might destroy them permanently.
I don’t agree with this-
No, Speedy-
Don’t call me that!
-I do agree with Robin, we should not make any rash decisions when we do not yet know the consequences
Kaldur, If he finds out later we lied to him….
He’ll understand why we did, Zee
Look, guys-
“So,” Wally said, unknowingly cutting through their argument, “Do I get to know your real name? I’m Kid Flash, by the way. Wally West to my classmates.”
We’re not telling him the truth, end of discussion, Robin sent to his teammates before focusing back on Wally. “Nobody has ever gotten my real name, so I’m gonna pass on that.”
It was a lie, because Wally had known him as both Robin and Dick Grayson. But he was the only one, and now he’d forgotten. Panic shot through Dick’s chest again, and he swallowed before it could surge up his throat and choke him. How had everything gone so wrong? Right now Wally and him were supposed to be planning their future, but instead they were here, in a place where Wally didn’t even know they had a past.
“I’m going to inform the League you’ve woken up,” he spat out through the acid in his mouth. Dick fled the room, trusting the others to follow his order to keep their mouths shut.