Only thought, Talia al Ghul and Dick Grayson having their casual hatred for each other. Like, she moves in and she's a silly w/ Jason and Damian but she and Dick just have this :squints:Â :squintsfurther: dynamicÂ
and they don't like, actively hate each other or are cruel, but there's this kind of underlying disdainÂ
And then one day, Dick has like, a horrid day
I'm talking, fucked up on patrol last night, got benched from patrol tonight, bombed a test in school, and got hit with like 4 quips about his dead parents for no reason other than Middle school crueltyÂ
So he's like, guttered in the trenches of hell and Bruce, well meaning and loving as he may be, has no idea how to handle it. Dick is like, lashing out every time anyone approaches. He's isolating, cooped up. And this spans for like 3 days.
By the third day they've learned to leave him alone, to not engage, because if they so much as stare at him for too long, he'll bolt, even if it means sacrificing a meal in the process.
He doesn't eat any of the food left outside his door either.Â
Everyone's concerned. No one knows what to do. Bruce is at wit's end.
And then Talia, in all her motherly understanding glory, tells him to take the boys out. To get out of the house, give Alfred errands to run. Empty the manor sans her and Dick for the day.
And Bruce looks at her like she's asked him to hold a knife to her throat. He's painfully confused how sticking a moody dick with his least favorite person in the world, will at all work in her favor.
But she begs him to trust her, and he does.
And to his credit, he more than obliges to her request. Quickly fabricating a 3-day "necessary" outing across the country. Clad with two eager tag-alongs and a knowing Alfred. He worries his lip, concerned that Dick will take this as further rejection, carefully studying his blank expression as he and Talia stand beside the Jet. Poised to wish them a farewell.
But it's Talia who picks up the almost imperceptible exhale of relief when the doors shut. Effectively sealing off Dick from the one source of insufferable monitoring he'd been suffocating in for 3 days now.
The result is instant. By the time an hour has passed since Bruce's departure, Dick seems practically back to himself. Wandering around the manor, though uncharacteristically wordless, with a spring in his step and a passion that had been long missed.
But Talia knew better than to get excited in the face of progress. She had to remain calm, unbothered. Let Dick come to her. Or at least settle into his new space with her alone.Â
This was the first time the two had been entirely alone, so she had to upkeep her façade of normalcy. She made it a point to remain in open spaces all of the time. Doing paperwork at the grand dining table, rather than cooped up in Bruce's office. Preparing food loudly in the kitchen. Allowing for the clattering of pots and pans, the whoosh of a running tap Alfred never let carry on for more than a minute drag on for ten, fifteen.
The manor may have been empty, but Talia made it a point to fill the house with life.
And Dick, ever the victim of curiosity, hardly let her efforts go to waste. She'd spot him, like a shadow, peeking behind walls and pillars, watching her. Observing.Â
He'd seen her do all of these things before of course. But that had been for Jason and Damian. For her children. The ones she wanted. The ones she loved.
He supposed it was only natural that she'd keep up her actions, even in temporary absence of her kin. But there was a strange pang in his chest as he observed her.Â
A mother in her element. Carefully preparing dinner, even in her lonesome. Her every move dripping with love and passion, intent. She moved with intent.
It was the same way B moved in the field. He never wandered. Never hesitated. He walked like he was going somewhere.Â
And she worked as if she had someone to attend to. A hungry child eagerly awaiting their dinner.Â
A heavy twisted emotion reverberated in Dick's chest and he had no idea why.Â
He retreated back to his room that night. Only daring to inch his way back to the kitchen when he was certain she was asleep.
He found the kitchen spotless when he returned, and it twist something awful in his chest. Of course she hadn't left anything for him. He wasn't her son and he hadn't even had the courtesy to come down and eat with her. He didn't deserve whatever it is she had made, no matter how good it smelled.Â
He tried to bite back the sliver of hope in his chest as he opened the fridge. A tiny piece of him holding out hope that she'd at least had the fleeting pity to leave him some leftovers. But any spark of hope he'd had was quickly crushed as he stared back at nothing but produce and other staples. Not a hint of cooked food in sight.
He sighed, biting back the wretched unwanted tears welling up and resigned himself to whatever he could muster in the next 15 minutes, before his appetite was thoroughly purged by disappointment and self pity.
He picked up some 2 day old leftovers Bruce has messily shoved into the back of the fridge, just out of Alfred's sight, and retreated to the microwave. Not caring enough to even take whatever it was out of the container.Â
When he opened the microwave, Dick nearly dropped the stupid container.Â
Sitting there, innocently wrapped in a lining of plastic wrap, was a plate of food.Â
Dick of course, wasn't stupid enough to assume it was for him, and picked it up, trying to squish down the spark of hope that had returned to his chest. It was only as he turned to place it in the fridge, that he noticed the bright green sticky note placed on top of it.
In pretty scrawled cursive it read.
"I thought you might get hungry so I left this for you."
It didn't mean anything, Dick told himself. It was the bare minimum. Common curtesy, the very same that he'd lacked the effort to extend to her earlier.Â
That was all it was. It was hardly a heavy task to set aside a plate of food for the only other person in the house. He begged his chest not to swell with desire. With hope, that he may be extended the same luxuries as Jason and Damian.Â
The one thing Bruce was never able to buy him. Never able to *give* him.
The gift of being a child. The luxury of being loved and cared for, in that intimate suffocating, insufferable way that only a mother could provide.Â
Dick didn't want that anyways. Bruce was a helicopter parent enough. He didn't need Talia and her ever present questions on top of that.
He'd seen the way she interrogated Jason. Every time he came home. Incessantly badgering him with questions. Everything from "How was school" to "Do you have any homework" and "Did you like the lunch i packed you?"
Dick didn't want that. He liked his freedom, enjoyed his independence. All Talia's care would do it chain him down.
So he warmed up the food. Shoving down the way it tasted painfully familar. The paprika, allspice, and cinnamon dredging up was Dick was certain were unwanted memories. Sarma, and Christmas. Horko jabuka and chilly Gotham nights.Â
Masali thud and his mother, after the boys he'd been practicing with laughed in his face.
Dick hadn't realized he was crying until he was hiccuping between bites.Â
*Dick missed his mother.*
He hadn't realized it a first. Genuinely. He'd been convinced his temperament was bitterness over being banned from patrol and annoyance at middle schoolerâs petty attempts at insults. But it wasn't the things that hurt him that had left Dick moody and incapacitated.
It was the lack of comfort. The absence of soft warm arms to lick his wounds in. The hollow emptiness of Bruce's shallow attempts of comfort and the freezing chill of he empty room. *That* is what had torn Dick apart.
That is what had left him miserable and hostile. Desperate to reject a world that had clearly rejected him.
Dick harshly scrubbed at the tears dripping down his face and glance down at his plate. Surprised to find it empty and unsure of how long ago he'd finished his food.
He shakily deposited it in the sink. Grabbing a glass of water and preparing himself for the miserable journey back to his dark empty room.
Yet, as Dick stood in the hallway, not two steps from his destination, he noticed something. The door, to Bruce and Talia's room, was ajar. It wasn't wide open, no neither Dick nor Talia was stupid enough to think that would be effective, but it was definitely ajar. At least 3 or 4 inches lay between the door and it's frame.Â
To anyone else, anyone not raised by the worldâs greatest detective and worst paranoiac, it would've been nothing.Â
But Dick saw it for what it was. An Invitation.
He was no stranger to climbing into Bruce's bed after nightmares. Blindly wandering through the very same hallway with ghosts of tears in his eyes, just like now. But he hadn't done that in years. Since long before Talia moved in.Â
On any other night, Dick would've stared the invitation in the face and declined. He would have strode into his room in disgust, appalled at Talia's audacity to try and reach out the child she clearly despised.
But something about tonight, something about Dick's brokenness, and the cinnamon and clove still wrapped around his teeth, drew him to the door.
Dick took slow shaky steps toward it. Ready to bolt at the sight of life. But it never came
Either Talia was truly asleep, or she was a hell of an actor, because as Dick approached the door not only did he fail to hear so much as a shift in the covers, but his carefully attuned ears also heard her soft even breaths.
As he neared the door, hand still too afraid to reach for the handle, his heart stopped.
He hadn't seen it from so far down the hallway, but now that he was close enough to peer inside the room, it was clear as day. Talia has left the nightstand lamp on.
It was meaningless. Tears pooled in Dicks eyes and sniffled, frustrated at his body's lack of cooperation.
It didn't mean anything. She left the door open on accident and forgot to turn off the light. She must've been really tired, she did a lot of paperwork today.
But Dick couldnât bring himself to believe his pitiful lie for even a moment.
He was just too scared to entertain the truth.
Bruce slept with the light off every night. He couldn't sleep with lights on in his room, it's part of the reason Dick started sleeping in his own room actually. Dick was the exact opposite. Dick was terrified of the dark.
It was a bit ironic. Night stalking, crime fighting, fearless vigilante Robin, was afraid of the dark. But he couldn't help it. There was something about that pitch black emptiness. The unknowing aspect of darkness, that terrified him.Â
Dick had never told a soul. He told Bruce he just preferred his own room, told Alfred the night light was a saftey measure, to ward off emergency intruders. Told Talia nothing at all, he didn't owe her an explanation and he'd rather die that willingly admit weakness to her.
But she'd noticed. Despite his bitterness, and his distance, and his childish effort to conceal his phobia, she had noticed. The blinding lights left on in the kitchen and the hallway, hell the entire rest of the manor, could be disregarded. She'd left them on knowing someone else was in the house to turn them off, and knowing if he didn't, they's shut off on their own eventually.
But to leave on *her* bedside Lamp?
It was a sign. Another invitation. The final tug Dick needed to yank open the door and stumble his way into the room. Hiccuping with harsh, painful sobs.
(Different from my usual content but I love them, lmk if i should make this into a fic)
