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Dick Grayson. Robin. Nightwing. Batman.
How many things can you be before it's too much? How many identities can you take, how many expectations can you force yourself to live up to before it-
Breathe in, breathe out.
Closing his eyes, Dick imagines. Imagines what it would be like to have been anything else. His imagination is very good, something he's not sure came from his extensive training throughout his life, or if it was a gift from his mother and father.
Some people lose their imagination as they get older, but he supposes when you're constantly picturing how leaps and flips will go, where projectiles will land, what bones got fractured from which hits, you stick with it.
An internal landscape, all of his own. Somewhere to go retreat, but never for too long.
Would it have been easy, growing up with his parents in the circus?
Dick knows now that the picturesque life he imagines with his family wouldn't have been the reality. The circus, while a family, isn't the safest place to be. The general public isn't kind to people like them, and there would've been dangers from all around.
The phantom feeling of his mother's hand on his shoulder hasn't worked to comfort him since the beginning of his second decade alive, even on the rare occasions he still tries to think of it. The feeling of running his small hands through his father's hair while he sits on his shoulders doesn't do anything, either. The hole in his chest isn't in the shape of his parents, anymore, though at the beginning it definitely was.
Batman's gauntlets still feel like they're resting on his forearms, even though it's been months since he's worn them. Bruce is back, and something that should've felt wonderful just felt like another thing being taken. Dick didn't even want Batman, but it seems that no matter what he does, a routine can never be established for more than a few months.
Is routine what he's missing? Would staying in one place for more than a year do something? Would signing an eighteen-month lease instead of a six-month one fix him?
Is there a way to fix him besides-
Breathe in, breathe out.
The hole in his chest isn't shaped like Bruce, either. Whatever it is, it makes his heartbeat echo in his chest.
What does it say about you when your entire identity is based on the worst thing to ever happen to you? Dick used to think that it was noble, that it was right to look at something bad and say I can change this.
Can you?
Dick's changed a lot, he thinks. Countless people saved, countless families kept from feeling the same things he and Bruce felt.
Leg shaking in front of him, Dick opens his eyes again. His apartment is mostly barren, a drastic change from when he was younger. There used to be posters on the walls, pictures of him and the Titans—evidence everywhere that he is someone. There's evidence in the space between his ribs, carved onto the inside of his skull. He can't unsee it, but apathy has taken hold. It makes his hands numb, his fingers twitching where they rest on his legs as he fights off the urges to do something.
This has happened before.
The first time was when he was eleven, taking on a weight he himself insisted he carried. Before everyone else, there was only Batman and Robin to take it on. Bruce reacted differently to how he would react now—this was before Bruce erected the walls that now lay between them.
If Dick asked for comfort now, it would be met with something hard, something unforgiving. Dick can't fall, he can't need help because that would mean weakness, and someone Bruce loves not being strong enough is one of the things he fears most.
It happened a few times in his teenage years, spread out with months or years separating the episodes. Usually it came from something monumental happening. Nothing's happened since Bruce came back, and Dick's been tormented with these thoughts, with these visions, at least once a month for half a year.
Having a great imagination means that his intrusive thoughts can be so violent that he feels them in his gut. A flash of a knife stabbed in his thigh that makes the muscle twitch; the cold barrel of a gun pressed to the sensitive roof of his mouth; his ankle tied to the tow hitch of a vehicle speeding down the street as his head bounces on pavement-
Was this always supposed to happen? If it was him, if it was now, it would be more peaceful that what the life he leads would have him face at the end.
Fate, as he's found, doesn't always end up with the expected outcome.
There are so many people to take his weight now. There have been so many deaths that, while they would mourn, it would be okay. They would be strong enough to handle it, unlike him. In a few years, he would be a tale of what happens when you don't listen to yourself.
Maybe it would help them?
That one thought fills Dick with a twisted sense of hope, the sense of hope you can only know if you've imagined your funeral and the time spent after. They would be fine.
The devil on Dick's shoulder, the one he's been brushing off, the one that he normally buries underneath layers of Batman-trained repression, rears its head.
It won't matter how they feel when you're gone.
(It doesn't help that he knows it isn't a devil on his shoulder. There's no one talking to him but the deepest parts of himself, the parts that speak something part of him recognizes as truth.)
A swallow echoes in Dick's ears as he tosses that idea around in his head. While his eyes are trained on the wall, his mind is running a mile a minute.
It matters, how you treat others. It matters how they feel no matter if you see it or not. Your intentions do matter, but it isn't the end all be all. Actions outweigh intentions, and this action would be it. This action would hurt people.
Recovery forums say you should live for you, that you should push yourself to want to live rather than keep yourself breathing for those around you. Dick understands why that is, why there's a focus on the internal motivators rather than the external, but that's simply not something that works for someone so far gone.
Imagining death isn't something that started off as easy, tearing the hole in his chest even larger than before, but after months of practicing imagining, it's become a nightly routine almost. It no longer hurts, instead feeling like a relaxing nothingness. Even on good days, on days where his smile doesn't feel as pained and when the quips come to him quickly rather pulling them through mud.
You're a liability.
He probably is. The days have been getting harder and harder, the brief moments of respite not making up for the overwhelming melancholy that's woven through his marrow. Trying to get out of bed is like trudging through mud, and the only comfort he has is the fact that he could slip.
He could slip on a jump, and it wouldn't be his fault. The Blüdhaven buildings aren't as tall as Gotham, but there's just as many ways for him to fall wrong.
Breathe in, breathe out.
He imagines his lungs expanding with air, his diaphragm moving down as it makes room for them. A divine machine, that's what all humans are. Everyone has the right to life, and that includes him.
But doesn't he think that people who are in extreme pain should be able to take matters into their own hands? Not in the way some countries have implemented, where it feels like they're recommending government assisted death to anyone they don't know what to do with, but in the way that's humane.
Is living like he is humane? Is going to work, coming home, being Nightwing, all the while being miserable worth it? It doesn't feel like it's something that a change would fix. Being someone other than Nightwing wouldn't heal him. Being in a different place wouldn't heal him.
Every second of everyday is a struggle, in more ways than he thinks he's capable of dealing with.
The obligations he has are the only things that keep him around—and when did he start thinking of his friends and family as obligations? Surely that would be something to bring up to a therapist, if he ever got one.
He doesn't know how Bruce would react. Sometimes he thinks that they're on the same page, that there's a reason he's the longest lasting relationship Bruce has besides Alfred. Other times, Bruce tries so hard to push him away that Dick wonders why he tries, why he stays only an hour away from Gotham when Bruce so obviously wants him as far away as possible.
(A part deep inside of Dick knows that it would break him, but he doesn't know in what way.)
Dick still holds all those he's lost so close to him, memories clutched tight with white knuckles. Dick's heard that each time you relive a memory, it changes, becomes distorted. These must be the most inaccurate memories he has if that's the case.
Others feel the same, he knows. Bruce has the ghosts of Thomas and Martha standing over him at all times, dictating every move he makes. Joey, Jason, Donna, Grant, Tera… only a few in the crowd of those he can't seem to let go off.
What's another name? What's his name? Would he be most remembered as Dick Grayson, son of the Flying Graysons? Or would he be immortalized as Nightwing?
He squeezes his leg. His nails are grown out slightly, something that Bruce would scold him for. The pinch of his nails in his thigh would usually help him get out of this, would help push him from a sitting position to standing.
Dick can barely feel it. All he feels is pressure.
There was someone who told him something when he was a kid, someone he's now forgotten though his words he'll never forget.
Sometimes, I look into someone's eyes and just know they'll die young. There's no helping some people.
And what a fucked up thing to tell a kid, right?
That sentiment has played on repeat in Dick's head since he heard it. Is that what that man saw in him? Someone who couldn't be helped?
Morally, Dick thinks of the statement as wrong. Everyone can be helped, everyone deserves help. Though, for some reason, when Dick puts himself in that position, he can't justify taking resources from another who could actually recover. Dick's stuck like this.
What a self-absorbed thought to have, Dick thinks, a sigh escaping him as his eyes focus in on the world around him. His apartment isn't a mess, but it isn't what he would consider to be clean. No time to take care of it—that seems to be the standard of which he lives.
No time for work, no time for Nightwing, no time for himself, but he seems to do all of these things anyway. Burning the candle at more ends than just the two. It's like he's inserted two more wicks into the center of this metaphorical candle, the middle melting away before the two ends can even meet.
Dick doesn't know if dying now would be dying young for what he does. There are so many others who didn't even make it, who tried their hardest and pushed themselves and wanted to live, and they didn't get to. They didn't even get to twenty.
What makes Dick so special?
A boy who inspired an era of child sidekicks, something he used to see as a necessity, as saving those children, but now he looks back and wonders…
It was most certainly the best option for him, he has no doubt about that. Could Bruce have been better? Definitely. Did he do his best? Dick thinks so.
Maybe some of those kids would've been better off in bed instead of out in tights. Even if they helped out, maybe they shouldn't have been out in the field.
It's a lot of "maybe"s with no real answer, and he'll never get one.
What if he comes back?
The thought is enough to make him shiver. A coldness that extends from his stomach to his spine, nauseating him. He doesn't know what's out there, though he thinks he knows more than the average person. What if it starts over? What if he's forced to live this out entirely?
What if something happens to him like Jason? What if he has to come back and face what he's done?
He's not sure if he could do it twice.
Dick thinks he's used all of his sobs, all of his tears. His diaphragm twitches with the memory of what it's like to cry, though he hasn't been able to since Bruce came back. Nothing brings him the relief of tears anymore.
Breathe in, breathe out.
There's something. A part of it that he doesn't think about, if only to keep himself from delving too deep he can't crawl out again.
Who would find him? There are ways he could make himself never be found, yes, but wouldn't it be better to have closure?
Bruce kneeling over his body is the one image he forces out of his head whenever it appears. It'll happen someday, Dick feels. It reads in his mind as something that's bound to happen, a fate that he can't escape even though it's entirely within his own hands.
Fingers digging into his thighs again, he finally pulls his phone out from between the couch cushions. He's been sitting here for too long, long enough for calamity to strike. Luckily, the only thing noteworthy is an investigation Damian has requested him on, which Dick suspects is the kid's way of saying he misses him.
Closing his eyes, it allows the few tears that have gathered in his eyes to escape and fall onto his shirt.
So many people, yet none of them close enough to touch. Dick is surrounded by hands that are extended until they're needed, a fact he knows is on him. He doesn't communicate, doesn't tell them what he needs or when he needs it. He left, he grew strong on his own, and to others he must be what they imagine their sidekicks to grow up to be.
A city of his own. A city that's not his home.
Nonetheless, he gets up. He gets off the couch, off the sinking cushion, and gets ready to join Damian in Gotham.
Gotham doesn't feel like home anymore either.
Each step forward gets easier as his body gets used to being in motion, but when night comes and he's in his car alone, it'll come back with a vengeance.
There will be a time he isn't strong enough, he knows. Looking in the mirror tells him all he needs. There's no helping some people, and the touch of gray in his eye is similar to looking at a gravestone on one of the rare sunny days in Gotham City.
It isn't today, though.