Work Text:
He’s mid spin when he sees Robin stumble, when he sees him fail to catch himself. When he understands, in less time that it takes him to blink, that Damian’s not going to recover in time to push himself out of the way of the hammer, the gigantic, one-armed, Joker goon is swinging high, high above his head, gaining more force with each and every inch that’s between it and Damian’s head.
And, no.
Not Damian.
Anything but this again. Anyone but another person he loves.
Anyone but his kid.
Dick doesn’t remember moving. Doesn’t remember much of anything, really. When he tries, it’s a blur of disoriented impressions, rather like when he was still an uncoordinated six years old, learning how to backflip on a thin blue mat. He remembers his only thought being ‘Not again.’ He remembers Damian’s face, three shades paler than it usually is. He also remembers thinking, idly, just how stupid of a pun calling yourself “Monsieur Marteau” is.
Then, Damian’s thrown out of the way, sent sprawling away from the danger, and the hammer comes down.
Dick doesn’t really remember the pain. He loses all coherent thought when it happens. He’s nothing but a single sensation pulsing from his left leg. He’s doesn’t think, he can’t. He’s nothing beyond the pain.
Maybe he passes out, at some point. Not enough for it to stop.
Damian later tells Bruce, quietly, almost ashamed and very obviously traumatized, that, after that first hit, the goon had let go of his hammer. Grabbed Dick by his injured leg. And thrown him. Damian describes the scene in a horrible voice that’s devoid of any emotion, he describes it well, in the smallest details, down to the screams, while Dick pretends to sleep and does his best to keep himself together.
If there’s screaming, he either doesn’t hear or register it.
When he comes to, head swimming, and the world a hazy blur, he’s on his back on a slab cement that’s quickly darkening with red stains.
When he looks down, there’s something protruding out of his leg, and what he feels is something between confusion and horror. That doesn’t belong to him, he’s sure of it.
Later, much later, he realizes that was his femur.
—————
Damian tries to keep him awake. He’s putting all his strength on pressing a sterile cloth on what Dick’s just started to register is his leg. What Dick’s trying not to think of as his leg. Someone nearby undoes their belt and Dick does not want a tourniquet, is certain he wouldn’t survive the pain of one, actually. He tries to scramble back, but it's too much, it’s unbearable.
“Don’t,” Damian stutters, pressing down harder, and it’s so wrong, seeing his confident kid acting like that. Dick shouts. The sound’s so ragged it sounds awful even to his own ears. “Don’t, we cannot afford nerve damage. Open your eyes, Nightwing.”
Dick does, sluggishly. Thankfully, whoever it was that wanted to bind his leg has backed off.
“He’s bleeding out.”
“With enough pressure,” Dami says. “The resulting vasoconstriction should be.” Dick is only made aware that he’s let out another sound because of Damian’s flinch. “It. It should be. I-”
—————
He wakes up on the way to the hospital.
He wakes up to Robin, pants and gauntlets still covered in blood, trembling for head to toe. He wakes up because someone is cleansing his leg and it burns. He’s used to the heavy drag of powerful pain meds by now, he knows the feeling, but despite it, it still burns.
Damian’s holding his hand, but he’s not looking at him. His hood’s up, his head turned away from Dick, white lenses fixed on a point next to the gurney. He doesn’t even seem to register the flurry of activity around them.
“Wh-where?” Dick rasps, and Damian turns back to him so quickly it’s as though he’s been burned.
“Ambulance,” The tone can be qualified of dead, at best. It rattles something in Dick’s chest but he doesn’t have the attention or the energy to do anything about it. “I thought it best to involve external help.”
The most he can do is blink and squeeze Damian’s hand.
“T-That bad?”
“You will live,” Damian replies. To Dick’s confusion, he turns back to stare at that same point, next to the gurney, just behind the paramedics. A box with a big yellow biohazard sign stamped on it.
It takes him too long to realize that it is a promise. Damian’s promising him that.
“You’re an idiot.” And it’s a bit unfair to call him that when he doesn’t have the energy to defend himself, he thinks. “I am not worth this.”
“Wrong,” Dick slurs, “Y’r wrong.”
After that, there is a flurry of questions, maybe.
—————
The next time Dick opens his eyes, he’s in a hospital bed. His head is feeling significantly clearer, though he can still feel the heavy, head-muddling sensation of pain meds. This never bodes well. An actual hospital almost always means trouble.
The last time he’d woken up in a hospital like that, Two-face had just beat him half to death.
Slowly, he takes his time to assess the situation. His left leg is throbbing in pain, as are his ribs and head. Decreased amount of pain meds, then, to check how aware he actually is.
“Dick. You’re awake.”
“Bruce,” Dick mutters, barely refraining from groaning. He opens his eyes, glances past and exhausted-looking, stubble-sporting, Bruce. He has about a million questions he would like to ask, among the first of which are what the damage is, and what on earth happened to Damian, because the kid sure isn’t anywhere in sight. How long he’ll have to wear the cast for, too, because he’s not dumb enough to think he’s getting out of this one without some extensive physio. “What’s.” He glances down.
There’s something wrong with his leg.
There is something very, very wrong with his leg.
In that.
It is not there.
He can’t see it.
Where is it.
Where the hell is it.
Dick stares down at the white, crisp, hospital sheet, uncomprehendingly.
“You’ve been in the hospital for more than a day,” Bruce is saying. His voice far away, a faint buzz in Dick’s ears.
He tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but his body protests even that. Bruce’s there immediately, too, putting a hand on his chest, pushing him back down.
“Help me up,” He gasps. There are things attached to him everywhere, tubes tying him to IVs, and dripping bags, medical grades handcuffs tying him to the bed and Dick needs to not be there. “Bruce, help-”
Bruce does not help. Not with what Dick wants.
“You need to calm down, chum.” He’s saying, but actually, Dick’s known how to get out of handcuffs from the tender age of eight, so he does just that. The second his hands are free, he tears the sheet away from his body.
His leg’s not there, he thinks dumbly, frozen on the spot. It should be there, though. Where is it.
“B, what?”
He’s going to wake up. He’s going to wake up and this will be Crane’s doing. It has to. Any minute, now, he’s going to open his eyes to the grey ceiling of a containment cell in the cave.
He waits, only half-listening to Bruce’s soothing reassurances, and pleas to lie back down, but it doesn’t happen.
Waking up doesn’t happen. He’s stuck there with the harsh reality of what’s just happened. He’s stuck with that... that weirdly colored thing that where his left leg should be. It’s misshapen, swollen beyond recognition.
There’s a trickle of something cold down his spine, and he wants out.
“Damian?” He rasps.
Bruce seems to understand immediately, even as his expression shutters.
“Safe. He’s not hurt. Thanks to you.”
Dick nods. His head feels strangely empty. He can’t stop staring at the swollen lump.
“Our identities?”
“Taken care of.”
He nods again.
“Get the hell out of my room.”
He wants out. He wants to wake up.
—————
The first few days are awful.
There’s no coming back from this, he realizes. Like a few other moments in his life, it will now forever be divided in a “before” and an “after” and it causes people to stare at him in pity.
He’s used to that.
He’s not used to being clumsy, or to having his movements restricted.
His balance’s all off.
Damian’s still nowhere to be seen. The one person he actually wants to see, the one person he could help, reassure, make sure he is okay, remind himself that it was all worth itn is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Dick gets a myriad of doctor visits, and physio appointments, stupid training to get him in and out a chair without falling flat on his face. Like he hasn’t mastered that since becoming Nightwing. Like he needs to be kept under observation.
Dick thinks ‘fuck that, actually’ and while he doesn’t quite say it out loud, he does make sure to make the point come across by stealing a pair of crutches and walking.
He doesn’t make it far.
“Dick,” Bruce says, and anger’s all over him. But Dick’s known him longer than Bruce’s known how to express emotions, and if there’s anyone Bruce is furious with right now, it’s himself. Not Dick, not Damian, not even Joker. That doesn’t stop it from grating on his nerves, from making him tense in anticipation. “Do you know what the leading cause of complications in limb amputations is?”
“Should I,” Dick asks innocently, with a grin so sharp it could help shave Superman. He knows full well what the answer to that question is. He knows full well he won’t. “Does it concern me, do you think?”
“Secondary injuries caused by a fall,” Bruce continues, as though Dick hasn’t spoken.
Dick heaves himself on his crutches with a shit eating grin, debates on doing a full handstand on them. On the one hand, he can manage it, even with his impaired sense of balance. On the other, is the wound still too fresh? He also takes a moment to wonder if he’s the only one who can hear the grinding of Bruce’s teeth, see the clench of his fists around the wheelchair’s handles, or if the people hiding in the rehab room can, too.
“Mr Grayson,” a physio comes running, panicked.
“Grayson,” his surgeon — a small, stern, woman — says, pointed and harsh, “Sit your ass back down in that chair. You’ll get to use crutches when I say you get to use them, are we clear?”
Dick smiles wider. Something inside him is bubbling with furious rage. “No crutches, got it.”
He delights in the look on Bruce’s face, revels in it for a moment.
“What’s your stance on handstands?”