Original Author's Note

content warning: blood and injury, dangerous medical treatment in an emergency scenario, probably more medical inaccuracies.

featuring a special guest star!

Prompts

fracture | dislocation | “Are you here to break me out?”

Chapter 13: can't make an omelet without breaking a few legs

And then one day the door opens. 

It doesn't startle him. He doesn't have anything to do in the cell, except sit on the bed, pace the floor, and think about how slowly his body heals. When the latch springs open and the door swings back on mechanized hinges, it's a welcome rush of stimulation. 

Dick stands and looks at it for a minute. 

This is a trap.

This is obviously a trap. Another mind game: open the door, give Dick an obvious route of escape, and see what he does. It's transparent. It sets Dick on edge. 

He tests it. He sticks his hand through the doorway—fingertip, fingernail, finger, palm, wrist—and when nothing burns or electrocutes or cuts him, he sticks his head out into the hall. 

The hall is empty. The rest of the cell doors are open, as if some glitch in the system released the locks, only Dick knows for a fact that the Watchtower holding cells are designed specifically to make sure that doesn’t happen. 

This is a trap. 

This is deliberate. He doesn’t know who opened the door—any member of the Crime Syndicate might be toying with him—but the most likely candidates are Owlman and Superwoman. They’re probably watching him now, waiting to see how he reacts. 

The smart thing to do—Dick ignores the voice in the back of his head that says there is no smart option, no way out, only pain—the smart thing to do would be not to play. To ignore the obvious prompt, avoid the obvious trap, and bide his time until an actual opportunity presents itself. 

He can’t do that. Dick stares at the open door, at the empty hallway just outside, and he knows. If he ignores the open door—if he stays in his cell and waits for Owlman to come back—

He can’t. He won’t. He refuses to stay in a cell with an open door and wait. It feels too much like breaking. 

So Dick takes a single deep breath and runs. 

He’s still healing. He’s still off-balance. He knows he’s favoring his left side, the side that took the brunt of Owlman’s taser. At least his ankle is healed—still too tender for a full night’s workout, but strong enough to run on. He’s half naked. The air in the hallway is cool. It smells like metal and dust. 

He makes it to the first checkpoint without seeing anyone else. He hurls himself toward the computer terminal in the wall. He doesn’t touch it—these can be weaponized, and the Watchtower is compromised—Dick doesn’t remember much from the control room, beyond the haze of pain and submission, but he knows that. One of the Crime Syndicate is good enough to hack the Watchtower and good enough to hold it. 

He doesn’t touch the computer, but he leans into the speaker. “B-command-override-zeta-zero-three-one-nine-four-zero-run.” He says it like one word and then moves on, before he can see if it works. 

There are multiple overrides built into the Watchtower’s system, each buried deeper than the last, in hope of avoiding even the most determined cyberattack. Dick has no idea how many of them are still viable. It’s been weeks, and whoever has control of the Watchtower is good—good enough to take down the Watchtower, which is supposed to be impossible. But Dick knows the Watchtower. He knows it better than almost anyone else on Earth. If Bruce—

No. No. He’s not thinking about Bruce now. He turns a corner, down another empty corridor, and dashes up a flight of stairs. The metal grating stings against his bare feet. He can’t remember when he lost his boots. Somehow the loss of his socks is more disturbing. He wears compression socks with the suit, so they would have had to peel the socks off of him, from knee to ankle—

He decides not to think about that either. 

The stairway leads to another empty hallway. Here the doors are still locked. Dick turns left and keeps running. 

He knows the Watchtower better than anyone. He knows that at the end of this corridor there’s a manual escape hatch with no lock, completely disconnected from any computer system. Bruce made sure there were plenty of those. The hatch leads straight through to a manual airlock on the outer wall—which Dick won’t need, since the station is grounded. If he can get into that hatch—he’ll be away from any computer sensors, at least. There’s a possibility the Syndicate doesn’t even know about the manual hatches, if they’re relying on their hacker for layouts. He doesn’t think they’ve had time to map the place—although Owlman will want to, if he’s anything like Bruce—

He rounds the corner and sees a body on the floor. 

Dick stops on instinct. Takes another step, because he needs to go, but—he can’t just leave them. They’re crumpled in a heap, covered in blood and—the clothes are dark and nondescript, but when he leans closer he sees white hair. A strip of black cloth tied over one eye, torn and bloodied—

“Rose?”

The body twitches. 

“Rose,” he breathes, and drops to his knees at her side. They didn’t—they weren’t friends, before, they were teacher and student and strained by the Deathstroke-shaped gap between them, but—it’s been so long since he’s seen anyone who didn’t want to torture him that he feels a sob in the back of his throat. 

She tries to lift her head. She’s in bad shape—one arm broken and one dislocated, what looks like a dislocated kneecap, hair matted with blood, clothes stained with it. But she’s conscious, and she looks at Dick with clear recognition. 

“Nightwing,” she says, “Dick—” Then her breath hitches. She winces and makes a sharp, pained sound. 

“Don’t move,” Dick says, even though they have to go. He has to do this right, or he’ll just make the injuries worse. He’s going to get her out of here. 

“What’re you—” Her words are slurred, but she recognizes him. She’s talking. That’s a good sign. Dick shifts into a crouch and puts his hands on her shoulders. Her clothes are torn, but not in a way that suggests rape. He could be wrong about that. He hopes to God he isn’t. 

“Helping you up,” he says. Glances over his shoulder. They’re alone. No one is coming after them yet. “We’re getting out of here.”

“—you here to break me out?” Her voice is disbelieving. Dick rolls her onto her back, cushioning her head so it doesn’t hit the floor. 

“I have to fix your kneecap,” he says. “The rest can wait, but I need you on your feet. Do you understand?” 

Rose stares at him for a second before she jerks her head in a nod. Dick moves his hands to her kneecap. 

“Wait,” Rose says, “let me—let me bite something—” 

So Dick helps her stuff the end of her sleeve in her mouth. Rose clenches her teeth and closes her eyes. Then Dick fixes her kneecap. She screams through her teeth. 

“Fuck you,” she pants, as Dick pulls her onto her feet. 

“You’ll thank me later,” he says. She follows his lead, limping down the corridor with grim determination. Her arms hang useless at her sides. Dick keeps one arm around her shoulders, though she doesn’t need him to hold her up. The feeling of another person at his side—not hurting him, not taunting him, just there—

“Where’re we going,” she says. Dick doesn’t answer, aware of the cameras on the ceiling. They’ll pick up his voice, and he doesn’t want to tip his hand yet. 

The escape hatch is in a blind corner, just out of view. He leaves Rose standing against the wall and drops down to open the hatch. He finds the mechanism by muscle memory, unlatches it, swings it open. 

“Well I’ll be damned.” Rose crouches next to him, hissing in pain as her knee bends. She shouldn’t be moving it. The relocation is a temporary fix, she needs real medical attention, she needs rest—and she’ll get it, once they’re out, Dick tells himself. They’ll find someone who can help, but they have to get out first. 

“Go,” he says. Rose shoots him a glare, but doesn’t argue. She shifts forward, sliding through the hatch on her knees. She can’t use her arms—that will be a problem later—but she makes it in. Dick throws a hurried glance over his shoulder and climbs in after her. He closes the hatch behind him. 

“It can’t be that easy,” Rose says. Dick takes a deep, desperate breath. 

“Cross that bridge when we come to it.”