Prompts

“Just get it over with.” | treading water | “Take my coat.”

Chapter 18: let's break the ice

In the end it doesn't matter. 

Dick breaks. He falls. He begs and pleads and promises to serve Owlman, to wear his colors, to do whatever he asks.

Then Owlman leaves. Then Ultraman takes him. 

The cell is different. Deep within the Watchtower, built of titanium and steel, special machines stand at the center of a cavernous room. Dick has never seen the inside of it before. He sees it now, wrapped up in metal and wiring, arms and legs trapped in the machine. He can’t do anything else but see. 

He’s alone. That might have been a relief, before. Now it makes him tense and shaky, straining his tortured joints to try and look behind him, to try and see the rest of the room. He can’t believe that Ultraman would just leave him here. This is another game. This is another way to break him—only he’s already broken, already reduced to a begging, shivering husk. He doesn’t know what else they want. He doesn’t know what Owlman and Ultraman are to each other, he doesn’t know why they put him here, and he doesn’t know what they’re going to do when they come back. 

He doesn’t know anything except pain. 

His head falls. He sags against the metal bars holding him upright. The overhead light casts hard shadows across his vision. Streaks of dark and light across the floor. Wires twist and tug at his skin. His back hurts. His shoulders hurt. His thighs hurt—he takes a shuddering breath—where Owlman grabbed him. He left deep bruises, Dick thinks, but he didn’t go farther than that. He didn’t do anything worse. And that—for that—

Dick still broke. A few days of torture, a few threats, and he folded like a bad hand. He knew better—knows better—he knew how to hang on, how to stay alive and stay sane, and still—he failed. He gave them what they wanted. He couldn’t just hang on and wait. 

Wait for what? 

The door opens. 

Dick doesn’t lift his head. He stays limp, resting against the restraints. His mind races ahead, observing, deducing—if it were Ultraman he would have already grabbed Dick, they would already be moving faster than Dick could comprehend. So it’s not him, it’s Owlman, or Superwoman—

—and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who’s here. It doesn’t matter what Dick does. It’s over. He has nothing left to give, no tricks left to pull, and no one is coming to save him. 

“Dick?” Owlman says. 

Dick closes his eyes. It sounds so much like Bruce. Quiet, grave, but so full of feeling if you listen close. He feels grief clawing up his throat. He wants to cry. 

“Everything’s going to be alright,” Owlman says. “I’m here.” He approaches the platform, heavy boots on metal grating, and he sounds so much like Bruce, it’s not fair—

There are hands on his face. Thick leather gloves, on his cheek, on his shoulder, in his hair. He should open his eyes now. He should lift his head and at least try to look Owlman in the eye. But the hand soothes through his hair more gently than it ever did before, and he’s afraid to look up and see the softness melt away, and he hates himself for being afraid. 

“I’m sorry,” Owlman says. “I’m so sorry.” 

Dick’s eyes open. He didn’t—he didn’t expect that. The words, or the tone of voice, soft and horrified and hurt. He doesn’t know what game this is. He doesn’t know how to play it. 

He doesn’t want to play it. He wants this to be over. 

“Just get it over with,” he whispers. 

The hand stills. Dick shuts his eyes again and waits for it tighten in his hair and drag his head to the side—

“Dick?” a new voice says. 

Dick freezes. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, because he knows that voice. That’s—that’s—

That’s Kory’s voice. 

He looks up. The man in front of him, with one hand buried in his hair, wears a sleek black cowl. One with pointed ears. 

“Batman?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, Batman, Bruce, standing right in front of him, gripping Dick’s shoulder through a layer of rough leather, and it hurts too much to be a hallucination, Bruce, combing his hand through matted, bloody hair, “I shut you out, I didn’t want you getting hurt—I’m going to get you out of this, Dick, I promise—” 

Then the cell door slams shut. The walls rattle. Dick flinches, feels Bruce’s grip tighten, and flinches again. 

“Shit,” a robotic voice says. Dick looks over Bruce’s shoulder—Bruce’s shoulder, Bruce!—at a whole group of people. Catwoman, Lex Luthor in some kind of armored suit, Roy—Kory, who he hasn’t seen in years—and the Red Hood. 

“Jason?” he whispers. The red helmet turns toward him. 

“Yeah, Dick,” and his voice is hidden by the modulator, but it’s Jason, the same hard edges and tilting vowels in his words, “It’s me.” 

Then a display lights up over Dick’s chest, and he hears a distinctive ba-deep. 

“What is that?” Catwoman says. 

“Heart monitor,” Jason says. 

“It’s a countdown,” Luthor says. “This isn’t just a fancy pair of handcuffs.” 

Then Dick knows exactly why Ultraman left him here. 

Ba-deep. Ba-deep. Ba-deep. 

“I’m going to disarm it,” Bruce says. His hands move to the mess of machinery over Dick’s chest, the wires, and Dick can’t believe he didn’t figure it out sooner. “I’ll get you out of here, Dick.”

“No,” Dick says, “you don’t understand—”

Luthor—and the person with him, someone with grey skin and empty eyes and Superman’s colors—they both attack the cell door, hammering at it to no effect. Kory’s starbolts are just as ineffective. 

“Why can’t we break through?” Luthor growls. 

“This cell was designed to hold Doomsday, Luthor,” Bruce says, and the sudden dryness of his voice is enough to make Dick smile. 

Steady hands peel apart the display on his chest, and Dick remembers. 

“Is the countdown monitoring his heart?” Roy says, peering around Bruce’s shoulder. Roy—Roy is here, alive—

“Yes,” Bruce says. 

“Why?” Catwoman says.

“The detonator is hooked into it,” Bruce says. 

“B—Batman,” Dick says, because Luthor is here, and his secret identity is a lost cause, but Bruce’s isn’t. Bruce would never let that happen. “The bomb—it only disarms—if my heart stops.”

Bruce’s hands brush over his chest. Over the wires embedded in his chest. Dick can’t stop the shudder that runs through him. 

“I die,” he says. “Or we all die.” 

This was the plan all along. To use him as bait, use him as leverage, use him to break his friends and kill whatever heroes are left. 

Ba-deep. Ba-deep. Ba-deep. 

“Listen to me,” Dick says, only it’s not him speaking, it’s someone else, someone who looks Batman in the eye and speaks with a steady voice. “You have to go. You still have time to get to safety. If the Crime Syndicate is here—”

“I am not leaving you, Dick,” Bruce says. “I am not abandoning you.”

“You’re not,” Dick says, “you never have—”

“Bullshit,” a modulated voice snaps, and the Red Hood shoves in front of Bruce, filling Dick’s vision. He can’t stop his flinch. “The only way we’re getting out of here is together. You hear that, Dickhead?” 

There are hands on his chest—Roy’s hands—poking and prodding and pulling—

“Hey, no,” Jason snaps, “don’t look at him, look at me. Hey.” He taps Dick’s face. His gloves are different, sleeker than Bruce’s, softer on Dick’s skin. “It’s Arsenal. He’s gonna get you out of here. And then we can all go home, and no one’ll touch you if you don’t want ’em to—”

Ba-deep. Ba-deep. 

Roy curses under his breath. Dick can’t see him, but he can hear. “The wires—every time I disconnect a relay, it fixes itself.”

Ba-deep. Ba-deep. Dick doesn’t know how long they have. He didn’t see the countdown start, he hasn’t been keeping track—

A bolt of green energy knocks Red Hood to the ground. He goes down with a strangled yelp, and the whole room erupts in chaos. 

Ba-deep ba-deep ba-deep—

Batman goes down next, stunned. Then a starbolt knocks Luthor clear across the room—the monster wearing Superman’s colors stops Catwoman’s whip and swings her into Kory and sends them both sprawling—

No, no, no. Dick doesn’t realize he’s saying it until Luthor steps over Roy’s body and climbs the stairs to the machine. His armored boots ring against the metal. “No, no, no—”

“What are you doing, Luthor?” Kory yells. 

“I’m making an executive decision,” Luthor says. He reaches for Dick’s face. Dick tenses, but he can’t stop it. He can’t stop any of it. “I’m saving our lives by ending his.” 

Luthor’s hand closes over his mouth. His nose. It presses against the bruises on Dick’s face, trapping the meager air in his lungs. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Grayson,” Luthor says. 

He has green eyes. Dick never noticed before. They stare at him, unflinching, unapologetic. Dick can respect that. If he has to die—if this is where it ends—he wants it to be him. One life for the rest of them. His life, for Kory, for Roy, for Jason. For Bruce. 

It doesn’t hurt. That’s more than he thought he would get. 

Ba-deep. Ba-deep. Ba-deep. 

He doesn’t have enough air. He wants to breathe—his body is desperate to breathe—it kicks against the restraints, seizing, trying to struggle. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. Something is happening, there’s noise and heat and light around him, but all he sees are cold green eyes. 

“It’s the only way to save us,” Luthor says. It sounds like he’s talking to someone else. Dick can’t see him anymore. He wants to breathe—he can’t breathe—

But everything is fading away. Luthor’s face, and the noises, and the lights, and the pain.

Just get it over with, Dick thinks, and then it all stops.