Batman drabbletimes: One Time That Dick Grayson Was Not A Good Man
Been busy coding, running, sleeping and then coming alive with the realisation that I have an informal philosophy essay due in tomorrow (insert arurughghg here). Wanted to write more Lead, but I think every time my FFVII genes switch on, my Batman alleles turn off. Ergo, drabbleface.
One Time That Dick Grayson Was Not A Good Man
Batman. Dick/Kory, Dick/Babs, Dick/Bruce.
469 words and Dick being, well. A bit of a dick.
It wasn't done out of spite. But he didn't do it for her, either - not for Babs, who he thinks he still loves more than any other woman on earth. It'd just been one thing on top of another thing on top of another: saving alien nations, Babs' paralysis, his absence, and the startling, undeniable wretchedness that settled in the pit of Dick's stomach the moment he'd started planning for the wedding.
(I don't know, Dick Grayson confessed to himself that day, what the hell I want from anybody.)
He knows now like he did then that he loves/loved/will always love Kory. For any number of reasons - she looks terrific, and she's got a personality as fiery as her name. Kory was arguably the first unafraid, unbound creature Dick ever experienced. They call him a free spirit, but he learned most of his freedom from her, not from any inherent part of his nature. He loved Kory. Loves Kory. Likes Kory a lot.
Liked her loved her needed her wanted her enough to want to marry her. Didn't love her enough to not feel paranoid and frightened and so damned disappointed in himself the day he came from a world he should/must/shouldn't have ever visited to find her broken and patched up and permanently disabled.
Babs holding onto him made him feel so, so good. Made him feel wanted the way that sex didn't, couldn't make him feel. Even the sex he had with her after that; old memories of days gone by mixing in with regret and apologetics and sweat as he pushed her into the sheets and as she let him. Dick loves Barbara, loves his Babs, has always loved her but it always - it has to - it falls apart. The way the wedding invitation had burned into his skin through the pocket of his pants. The way he hadn't given it to her until the morning after, during which he was a coward, a bad man, a confused boy, a thousand things but who Dick Grayson promised the world he'd be.
He didn't go home to Kory, even though he didn't sleep with Babs to spite her, even though he could've told Kory and have been forgiven for his excesses and failures and foolishness. Dick'd followed Kory across the universe and he'd go to wherever Babs was, but he - doesn't. Can't. Won't. Mustn't. Didn't. Doesn't know how to go home to them.
He spent the afternoon on the bike, doing enough laps around Bristol that at least one of Bruce's sensors must have picked him up.
But Bruce never called.
A part of Dick knows that Bruce never will, but it doesn't stop him from hoping. And hope's what makes him -- a better man.
If never really a good one.
One Time That Dick Grayson Was Not A Good Man
Batman. Dick/Kory, Dick/Babs, Dick/Bruce.
469 words and Dick being, well. A bit of a dick.
It wasn't done out of spite. But he didn't do it for her, either - not for Babs, who he thinks he still loves more than any other woman on earth. It'd just been one thing on top of another thing on top of another: saving alien nations, Babs' paralysis, his absence, and the startling, undeniable wretchedness that settled in the pit of Dick's stomach the moment he'd started planning for the wedding.
(I don't know, Dick Grayson confessed to himself that day, what the hell I want from anybody.)
He knows now like he did then that he loves/loved/will always love Kory. For any number of reasons - she looks terrific, and she's got a personality as fiery as her name. Kory was arguably the first unafraid, unbound creature Dick ever experienced. They call him a free spirit, but he learned most of his freedom from her, not from any inherent part of his nature. He loved Kory. Loves Kory. Likes Kory a lot.
Liked her loved her needed her wanted her enough to want to marry her. Didn't love her enough to not feel paranoid and frightened and so damned disappointed in himself the day he came from a world he should/must/shouldn't have ever visited to find her broken and patched up and permanently disabled.
Babs holding onto him made him feel so, so good. Made him feel wanted the way that sex didn't, couldn't make him feel. Even the sex he had with her after that; old memories of days gone by mixing in with regret and apologetics and sweat as he pushed her into the sheets and as she let him. Dick loves Barbara, loves his Babs, has always loved her but it always - it has to - it falls apart. The way the wedding invitation had burned into his skin through the pocket of his pants. The way he hadn't given it to her until the morning after, during which he was a coward, a bad man, a confused boy, a thousand things but who Dick Grayson promised the world he'd be.
He didn't go home to Kory, even though he didn't sleep with Babs to spite her, even though he could've told Kory and have been forgiven for his excesses and failures and foolishness. Dick'd followed Kory across the universe and he'd go to wherever Babs was, but he - doesn't. Can't. Won't. Mustn't. Didn't. Doesn't know how to go home to them.
He spent the afternoon on the bike, doing enough laps around Bristol that at least one of Bruce's sensors must have picked him up.
But Bruce never called.
A part of Dick knows that Bruce never will, but it doesn't stop him from hoping. And hope's what makes him -- a better man.
If never really a good one.