Original Author's Note

additional warnings: mention of needles, intravenous lines, and blood. probably some medical inaccuracies.

posting 1 day late. school is killing me rn so I have no idea what the update schedule looks like from here on out, but I'll do my best. no rest for the wicked, and no rest for Dick Grayson either.

Prompts

ransom video | “I’ve got a pulse.” | screams from across the hall

Chapter 6: proof of life

He doesn’t black out. 

He starts counting when he feels the needle. One, two, three, four— He counts in English, then Spanish, then Caló, clinging to threads of consciousness. He holds onto the pain. He twists his fingers in stiff sheets. He takes deep breaths. He grabs for every sensation he can. 

When he reaches thirty, he sees the tube in his arm. He sees Owlman holding the other end. 

“Hold still,” Owlman says. 

Dick breathes in. There are only a few reasons for Owlman to put an IV in his arm. He doesn’t like any of them. He could pull it out, but—if he does that then Owlman will subdue him, tie him down, and replace it. He probably won’t be gentle. 

Dick can’t get away. 

“What are you doing?” he says. His voice is hoarse, dry, but it doesn’t shake. Small victories. 

Owlman looks at him with faint contempt. “Giving you blood,” he says. 

That wasn’t one of the reasons. “You—what?” 

Owlman says nothing. He slides a needle into his own arm and inserts the IV line with practiced ease. He tapes it in place. 

“Wait,” Dick says. “You can’t.”

Direct blood transfusion is dangerous for both the donor and the recipient. They’ve never done it in the cave—though Dick knows how it works, the anatomy, the mechanical steps, just in case. The IV line leads from Owlman’s artery to Dick’s vein. The difference in pressure will fill the tube and send Owlman’s blood into Dick’s body. 

The blood will kill him. 

Dick grabs for the IV. Owlman is faster. He lunges across the bed to grab his wrist. 

“I said hold still.” 

“No—”

“Hold still,” Owlman says, “or I will tie you down.” 

Blood flows into the clear plastic tube. Dick tries to pull his arm free. He tries to dislodge the IV. Owlman reaches across and holds him down. 

“Stop.” 

“Why?” Dick says. 

Bruce's blood type is AB+. He can receive blood from anyone, but he can’t donate outside his own type. He should know that—just like he should know that Dick’s blood type is A-. They are not compatible.

“You stitched me up,” Dick says. Breathe. Breathe. In, out— He tries to keep his voice steady. “You saved my life.” He repeats Owlman’s words, not because he believes them, but to get his attention. “Why go to all that trouble if—just to kill me?”

Blood moves through the tube. 

“Owlman,” Dick says. Talk. Negotiate. Stall. But he can’t stall. He can’t stop the blood moving through the tube, and once it reaches his vein—

“What makes you think I’m going to kill you?”

Dick laughs. It sounds more like a strangled wheeze, but it’s the thought that counts, and the thought is Are you fucking kidding me? 

“What do you want?” he snaps. “You want me to beg? Or—give up? What?”

“You’re talking nonsense,” Owlman says. He lifts Dick’s arm and turns it to look at the IV.

Blood creeps through the tube.

“Just tell me,” Dick says. He’s not begging. He won’t. But it won’t matter what he says if his immune system attacks the blood in his body and kills him. “Tell me what you want.”

“What I want?”

Owlman leans over him. His fingers dig into Dick’s arms. He holds Dick down on the mattress and bends toward him until Dick is forced to look him in the face. Until Dick can’t see anything else. 

“I want you to think.”

Blood flows through the tube. It flows into Dick’s vein. 

It’s too late. 

Dick takes a shaky breath. In. Out. That's all he can do. He can’t reverse the transfusion—even if he could fight off Owlman, even if he could move. In a few minutes the symptoms will start. His body will reject the transfusion, he’ll stroke out, and he’ll die. 

This is it. After everything—this is what kills him.

“Why?” he whispers.

Owlman sits back. He releases Dick’s arms. Dick doesn’t move. There’s no point. Blood ticks through the plastic tube. Filling him with poison. 

“You still haven’t figured it out.”

Dick looks at him. Dread curdles his stomach. “What,” he says. It doesn’t matter—he’s already dead, and he’s going to spend his last minutes with his murderer—

“Disappointing,” Owlman says, almost offhand. “I thought he taught you better than that.”

“What are you talking about?”

Dick wants to scream. His heart beats faster, and he can’t get it to slow, even though it’s killing him, even though it’s spreading bad blood further and further—and any minute now—

Owlman leans forward. Dick clamps down every muscle and manages not to flinch. 

“I’m not Bruce Wayne.”

Dick’s mind stutters and stops. 

“You,” he says, trying to wrap his mind around it, trying to understand. This is important. “You’re—” 

“His blood is incompatible with yours,” Owlman says. “He’s, let me guess—a universal recipient.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “That’s what worried you. You assumed that we would have the same problem.” 

“Don’t we?” Dick says. He matches Owlman’s tone, calm and calculating, as if his life doesn’t hang on the answer. 

“I’m not him.” Owlman stares at him. His eyes are almost dead—devoid of any emotion that Dick can see. And he grew up with Bruce. 

“So you’re,” Dick says. If the two of them are compatible—if this isn’t some sick mind game—“A-negative. Or O-negative.” 

“Correct.” Owlman taps the IV line. He glances at the blood moving through it. “And I’ve got a pulse.” 

Dick sets that sentence aside. He takes it, puts it in a box, and closes it up to deal with later. One thing at a time. The man in front of him, the man playing games with Dick’s body, is more important. 

“It’s just Bruce, here,” he says. “I didn’t know there was anyone else.” 

“No. You wouldn’t. It seems the two of us are incompatible. Ruling each other out. It’s one of us or the other, occasionally neither, but never both.” Owlman looks at him again. He makes eye contact. “But you are constant.” 

Dick takes a shallow breath. He holds it to the count of two. He gives himself that long to wish he was somewhere else, anywhere else, that none of this was happening to him. 

Then he breathes out. This is happening. This is where he is. Find the threat. Find a way out. Fight back. 

“No matter who prevails,” Owlman says, “you always find us in the end.” He touches Dick’s forearm, tracing the injection site. Blood feeds through the tube. His blood. Owlman’s blood in Dick’s body. “Why would I waste that kind of devotion?”