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(Watchtower Therapy Bay 03)
The Watchtower is quieter at night, the kind of quiet that hums beneath the skin rather than fills the room. Even the stars seem muted from up here, pale things beyond the glass.
Dick sits across from Dinah, jacket still zipped to his throat, gloves shoved into a pocket. He looks like he hasn’t exhaled properly in months. She doesn’t press him, she never does. He’s not the kind of man you pull words from. You wait until they break the surface on their own.
He drums his fingers once against his knee, then says, almost sheepish,
“You ever hear a song that sounds like it’s been spying on you?”
Dinah tilts her head, offering that faint, knowing smile that means go ahead.
He takes out his phone, scrolls, and lets the song play.
The sound is soft at first, almost tender, that first verse spilling through the space between them:
Count me out like sovereigns, payback for the good times
Right foot in the roses, left foot on a landmine…
His heel taps to the rhythm. His eyes don’t meet hers. The song swells and dips, and he listens with that half-grin people wear when they’re pretending not to ache.
Wear me out like Prada, devil in my detail
I swear it’s getting harder even just to exhale…
That line lands like a blade. Dinah sees the shift, the tightening of his jaw, the way his breath catches. When the chorus comes, his voice almost breaks trying not to hum along.
So stick to me, stick to me like caramel,
Walk beside me till you feel nothing as well…
He exhales through his nose, a bitter laugh under his breath. By the time the bridge hits — “This stage is a prison, a beautiful nightmare…” — he’s staring down at his gloves, thumbs worrying the seams like they might tear.
The last note fades into silence. The hum of the Watchtower’s systems fills the absence, steady and low, like a heartbeat underwater.
Dinah waits.
He rubs a hand over his face, muttering, “It just… gets it. The show. The smile. Everyone watching. I’m supposed to be—”
He stops. Corrects himself. “No, I am fine. Just tired.”
Her voice is calm when she finally answers. “You’ve been tired for years, Richard.”
That lands heavier than the song did.
He leans back into the couch, eyes still fixed on the glass pane above her shoulder, where Earth spins slow and indifferent. “Feels like I forgot how to stop,” he admits. “Even when I do, it’s like… someone’s still watching. Like the whole world’s waiting for me to mess up the choreography.”
Dinah’s tone softens, but her gaze stays steady. “You’ve built your whole life around keeping the spotlight from burning anyone else,” she says. “But all that light had to come from somewhere.”
He doesn’t look at her, but his eyes close, like he knows what’s coming.
Her words are slow, deliberate, not rehearsed, but honed by truth:
“Your light was never meant to be ornamental. It was meant to guide.
But somewhere along the way, you mistook illumination for obligation, and learned to smile even as it burned you.”
He flinches, just barely, at obligation.
“The stage isn’t your prison, Richard. It’s your confession.
You kept dancing because stillness felt like death.
But you can stop now. The world has seen enough of your grace.
It’s time they see your grief.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty; it’s alive, pulsing between them. He sits very still, shoulders drawn tight, the kind of posture that looks like strength until you see the tremor in it.
She leans forward slightly. Her voice, when she says the last part, is quiet enough to sound like mercy.
“You are allowed to be unlit.”
The words hit him harder than they should. For a moment, he looks every bit the boy he was; raw, earnest, afraid to stop performing.
He laughs once, a cracked sound, then nods, eyes glassy. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s not,” she says. “That’s why it’s your homework.”
He quirks an eyebrow, half-deflecting. “Homework?”
“For one week,” Dinah says. “No masks. No smiles you don’t mean. Let them see you. The part you keep behind the light.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but doesn’t. Instead, he glances down at his gloves again, twisting the leather until the seam splits.
Outside, Earth turns, slow and bright.
The song starts over from his phone speaker, quiet now, the chorus bleeding faintly into the air.
Too young to get bitter over it all
Too old to retaliate like before…
He doesn’t sing along this time.
He just listens, and for once, doesn’t pretend.
(the day after the session)
The cave hums with a familiar, mechanical stillness. a living mausoleum of secrets and half-finished crusades.
Dick stands at the threshold for a long moment, watching the glow of monitors stretch across the damp stone. He shouldn’t feel like a visitor here, but he does. His reflection flickers across the Batcomputer screens, tired eyes, jaw set, a man trying to remember what it means to just be.
Dinah’s voice loops in the back of his mind, soft but immovable:
You are allowed to be unlit.
He doesn’t know what that means yet. But he’s here to find out.
He doesn’t announce himself. There’s no banter, no forced grin. The familiar performance, the effortless charm, the brightness everyone leans on has been deliberately, painfully set aside.
Bruce is at the console, silent as ever. He turns slightly when he senses motion, one gloved hand pausing over the keyboard. “You’re here early.”
Dick nods. “Couldn’t sleep.”
That’s all.
No deflection. No humor.
Just the truth, unpolished.
Bruce studies him for a beat longer than usual, then simply nods back. “There’s a report from Blüdhaven on the table.”
Dick takes it, grateful for the normalcy. The exchange, bare, unadorned, feels heavier than any argument they’ve ever had.
He moves through the cave with a new quiet. The way he handles his gear, the absence of chatter, the stillness in his body — all of it feels foreign. He catches himself halfway to smiling at Alfred when the old man enters with a tray, then stops. Just nods. Alfred’s eyes soften, but he says nothing.
Stop performing. Let them see you.
It’s harder than any acrobatics.
When Bruce gives him the night’s assignments, Dick listens — no jokes, no “you got it, B.” Just a curt nod and a faint exhale. His hands tremble when he pulls the cowl down.
The quiet clings to him as he mounts the bike. For a heartbeat, he hesitates — helmet in hand, Dinah’s words heavy in his chest.
He whispers them to himself, like a confession no one will ever hear.
“You are allowed to be unlit.”
Then he starts the engine.
The roar fills the cave, swallowing the words whole, but the echo remains.
And for once, when he drives into the night, he isn’t running toward light or away from shadow.
He’s simply there, unguarded, unmasked, and painfully, beautifully human.
AFTER-ACTION
The Cave hums with the usual after-patrol rhythm, the scraping of boots, armor unclasping, the rustle of Alfred’s first-aid kit.
It’s all so normal that it almost disguises how wrong the air feels.
Jason tosses his helmet down with a hollow clunk. “So we’re not gonna talk about how Nightwing turned into a damn ghost tonight?”
Tim doesn’t look up from the console. “He said he didn’t need to call out.”
“Yeah, I heard him,” Jason bites back. “Still calling bullshit.”
Dick’s still in half his suit, cowl off, gloves folded neatly on the desk. There’s blood on his knuckles, a split lip, and a stare that never quite finds anyone’s eyes.
He says nothing. Just scribbles the last line of his report.
Bruce’s voice breaks through the tension, low and exact. “Explain.”
Dick finally looks up and the mask he’s worn for decades is gone. No grin. No easy warmth. Just exhaustion drawn into a human shape.
“I’m tired, Bruce.”
“You don’t get to be tired,” Bruce says flatly. “Not out there.”
Jason scoffs under his breath, muttering, “Classic.”
Bruce’s glare cuts to him. “You have something to add?”
“Oh, I’ve got plenty to add,” Jason snaps, stepping forward. “He’s been holding this family together for years, and the second he slips, you’re on him like it’s a goddamn crime scene. You don’t even ask if he’s okay, you just—”
“Enough.”
The word cracks like a whip.
But Dick doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t rise to it. Just sits there, shoulders loose, eyes hollow. “He’s right.”
Bruce’s jaw tightens. “You’re off your rhythm. You put the team at risk.”
“I’m allowed to have an off night.”
“You’re not.”
That’s what does it, the quiet, dangerous finality in Bruce’s tone. It lands like a verdict.
Something in Dick just… snaps.
The restraint, the professionalism, the therapy, all of it splinters in one exhale.
“You know what’s funny?” he says, voice shaking but steady. “I spent years trying to be the son you needed. The partner. The symbol. And for what? So the one night I stop performing, I’m a liability?”
“Don’t twist my words.”
“I don’t have to. They twist themselves.”
Jason mutters, “Jesus…” but no one moves.
Dick stands. The silence around him is suffocating. The hum of the cave, the faint hiss of bats overhead.
He takes off the domino mask and drops it on the console. It lands soft, but the sound feels final.
“You wanted us to be soldiers,” he says quietly. “You got them. Congratulations.”
He starts toward the exit. Jason takes a half-step forward, like he might stop him but Dick gives him a look that says don’t.
Bruce doesn’t call after him. Not even his name.
The elevator doors close. The silence that follows is brutal.
Tim’s voice breaks it, small but sharp: “You could’ve just asked him why.”
Jason lets out a hollow laugh. “He did. Just didn’t like the answer.”
And Bruce just stands there, staring at the empty space where Dick had been, surrounded by all his ghosts — the memorials, the glass cases, the city still bleeding above them.