ᴀʟʟ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ʙʟᴜᴇ

“no no, i really-- i insist. i was heading inside to get some myself, anyway.” he motions back towards the door just behind the other guy before glancing down towards the slice momentarily. “i mean you don’t have to come inside with me if you don’t want to, i can just bring it out-- that is, if you’re not in too much of a hurry?” he gives a small shrug as he swings the door open for them both, his smile turning sly in a joking manner as he winks playfully. “promise it’s not a date or anything.”

she mentions being an angel though, and weirdly enough, that’s somehow enough to ground him-- something humorous, something not terrifying, something he can latch onto the way he always has, young, powerless kid in a bright costume, cracking jokes at monsters and villains who actually scare the shit out of him. his eyes focus on her for a hot second, his head jerking tilted to the side, one corner of his lips curling, that instinctual charm peeking through. “i certainly wouldn’t mind someone like you being my angel, heaven or hell.”

but then just as quickly, the grin is faded from his features and before her explanation can fully seep into his bloodstream, he hears her voice in his head, that lilt filling his thoughts like mud in water, it’s content shifted wholly out of his control. “you’re a telepath.” he confirms, eye squinting and focusing tightly onto her face, focusing on the words and images he needs to convey for her to understand without having to struggle through his addled brain-- he’s played this game before as well. i don’t know where i am or where my family is. do you know bruce wayne?

he can’t help it ( but then, he supposes he doesn’t really need to worry too much, if she’s super-powered as well ); his mind drops through the kaleidoscope of him and batman on rooftops, their last argument, the last few months of searching for him.

when wally jumps into his arms, dick catches him because he always does and he always has, and even with the breath knocked out of him he still laughs and squeezes tighter, barely hearing anything the speedster is saying over the rushing in his own ears. a sting of reality threads down his spine like a freezing spear for a split moment-- the worry and helplessness he’d been struck with only two days ago, thinking everyone was dying and blipping out of existence, wally disappearing and dick having no answers about what had happened to him.

he bites that down though, clears his throat as the other pulls away, does his best to look normal, to seem casual and not at all about to cry or freak the hell out, his hands still desperate to touch wally, even if it’s just his arms and shoulders, the smile spreading on his lips bright but a bit broken. “maybe i’m waiting for you to carry me over the threshold like a married couple-- that’s the tradition isn’t it? how rude!” he laughs and shoves his friend playfully, walking past him and into the apartment before such a silly suggestion goes to wally’s head and he actually tries it.

the place isn’t too bad, actually larger than the apartment dick had been living in back in bludhaven, although that’s been a few months now, but there’s something slightly off about it, something inherently suspicious, and he pauses mid-stride, dark eyes squinting for just a moment before a chuckle bubbles up. “i know you’re messier than this, wally-- did you clean? for me? without anyone telling you to? wow, character development. it really has been a long couple of weeks, huh?”

he could almost feel the vaguely nervous energy drain out of zee as soon as they make eye-contact though, her gaze shifting over to his and finding a home there that she’d always had, the place inside him that he keeps warm for all the teen titan kids he’d fought with, bled with, won with, still somewhat his team even though it wasn’t his team anymore, the camaraderie difficult to break even if he wanted to. his grin mirrors her own, former boy wonder gleaming in the lamplight, just as bright as he’s always been amidst the shadows, and she has no idea how good it is to see her, to know she’s here, she’s safe, she’s still alive somewhere, after having lost her, after having lost all of them. air floods into his lungs after what’s felt like a year.

he swallows down that gut-urge to grab her and hug her, crush the two of them together and pummel her with questions, because they’re still on the job, because there’s still work to be done, because ignoring the softer sides of his personality is something he’s been trained to do since he was prepubescent, the batman burning his nerves to charcoal. “aww, won’t he be cute, all fluffy and helpless. then again, he’s not doing much better right now.” an eyebrow lifts slightly as he makes his way over to the victim, the girl terrified and crouched against the wall and the dumpster. “are you alright, miss? do you need a ride home?”

she declines in stuttering sentences and clutches her bag to her chest even tighter as she practically flees the scene, high heels clicking against the asphalt, while zatanna drops the culprit and claps him in cuffs. “hey you’ve already done more than my partner has all week, although i’ll warn you, the dress-code kinda sucks and there’s no top hats allowed. you’d have to wear pants and everything, which i know neither of us are used to.” he shrugs playfully and winks at her, walking up to grab hold of the assailant’s arm to wheel him around towards the car that’s still idling a block away. “are you patrolling tonight or just being a good samaritan?”

he comes into the world like a gasp, the collected atmosphere bursting through space and time, the lungs of the universe expanding just enough to strain, to threaten of breakage, of bursting, of rupture, and he collapses onto the street, the musty city evening air bleeding down from the walls of the alleyway buildings, down into his scraps of clothing, down into his cuts and scratches. his breath shatters through him like a sob, the white blinding light finally leaving him as he blinks and looks around himself, the onslaught of noises crashing over him-- it takes him longer to stand up than it does to realize that he’s not in gotham anymore, he’s not anywhere near home anymore, his mind whirling and churning, shoving pieces together of guesses he’d had before.

he’s been wondering about what’s been happening to the other superheroes, how they’ve all been disappearing, where they’ve all been going, what’s it all mean, how he’s going to get them back. he’s about to find out now, isn’t he?

he steps out into the busy sidewalk, the city that never sleeps bustling around him in a haze, the view of lady liberty vaguely blending out against the darkening skyline in the distance, but he doesn’t get enough time to really absorb it before tumbling a bit and running smack into another person walking along the sidewalk. instead of apologizing though, he grabs at her, hands wrapping around forearms, eyes blazing into hers, the time around them suspended for a moment. “oh... my god. is this real? did i just slip into the twilight zone or...? am i dead? i’m dead, aren’t i? is this a grungier, seedier corner of heaven?”

it’s been months, weeks piled onto weeks, days tumbled into mountains, hours weighing like brick tons of concrete down onto his psyche and he’s carried it because he’s had to, because he’s been trained to, because it’s what he knows and how he operates and sometimes he’s almost certain he wouldn’t be able to recognize himself if he wasn’t trying to lift the whole entire planet up anyway most of the time, but these particular months have been difficult simply for the uncertainty of them all. every heartbeat flooding him with questions, every midnight past burning a hole in his equilibrium-- once again, gotham left in his hands with no word of goodbye, no clue as to why.

and he’s done his best, but he’s here now, racing through hallways with a scrap of paper between his fingertips, a name and door number scrawled across the white of it, information he’s not necessarily supposed to have, a burning, tightening hope coiled around his lungs. he doesn’t want to hope, doesn’t want to be wrong-- again. he’s already had a dozen false positives, a dozen leads that ended in nowhere, a hundred suspicions he’s laid awake mulling over instead of sleeping. where is batman? it’s not the first time he’s been left with that question, but the number on the paper might just be the answer.

he gets to the correct door and knocks on the wood of it in a panic, harsher than he’d intended but the nerves all along his body won’t let him relax, everything buzzing in his ears, jaw clenched tight, muscles drawn taunt. he can’t unwind. not until--

not until it opens and he locks eyes with its recipient, his mentor, the man who’d raised him, who’d saved him, who’d shaped him into everything he is right now, everything he’s come to understand; bruce wayne, tall and strong and completely not-dead. the breath in his lungs catches sharply, holds, exhales, everything in him straining to let go of a million nightmares. don’t cry, dick. don’t hug either. he nods once, gaze dropping for a moment, standing there in the hallway. “i knew it.”

it takes quite a bit of convincing on his part, and a multitude of tests he has to retake in as quick a pace as he can manage, but he makes earning back his police badge a priority, even before establishing himself on the streets as nightwing again. honestly, it’s been a while since he’s played that role, having taken up the batman mantle for bruce’s five-month absence from gotham out of necessity, and he’s admittedly a little hesitant to fit into it again. not that he doesn’t love it and isn’t eager for it but… culture shock is a killer and dick wants his feet under him first just in case he has any more punches to take.

he misses his old partner though, misses his old squadron, his old precinct, everyone he used to know now looking at him like a stranger or a ticking time-bomb, the uncertainty of why he and other multidimensional refugees are here plaguing them almost as badly as it plagues him. they don’t trust him yet, so even though he makes it through testing with flying colors, he’s still something of an outsider trying to wear the black and blue. it doesn’t help that his new partner on these midnight, alley-watch shifts is blunt and unapologetic about his stiffened stance on how dick and the rest of his ilk should just ship themselves out into the atlantic with nowhere to land-- america fighting against the onslaught of immigrants, as though it’s not a country built from immigrants.

someone screams and hollers down a darkened lane and dick and his partner get out of the vehicle to check it out, splitting up to cover more ground, but by the time dick reaches the source of the sound, he’s not the only one who does; hand on his gun, stars in his eyes, the uniform slowing him down in a way his other uniform never would, he comes face-to-face with a young frightened girl, a criminal hanging suspended in the air, and the one and only zatanna zatara, in all her full, magnificent glory.

“well, isn’t this a show.” he grins a moment. “do let me know if you’re about to turn him into a rabbit, i’ll need to alert the zoos in the area.”

the lady behind the desk hands him the documents, her clothes as clean and clear-cut as her hair, as her atmosphere, as the world in which she has been created in, the universe she is constructed in, and dick wonders if this is why he feels so awkward, if this is the epitome of what it means for him to exist here, him only a kaleidoscope of a man in a world of black and white and grey and straight, sharp lines. and he’s never been one for those straight, sharp lines. but she hands him the papers and he’s filled with worry before his eyes even absorb the information, worry about his space, worry about his secrets, worry about what he’ll have to do in order to slip around another person to continue on with his work-- because city or no city, the job is never really finished. learned that one from the Big B himself.

but then he reads the words, the decree, the name of his government-assigned roommate and the grin that floods in across his features could convince deep-sea creatures of the sunrise, a mirror of plants blooming in summarized spring; he smiles like summer and chuckles, recognizing the name instantly. there is a god, and she is showing him favor. “wally fucking west. i can’t believe it.”

it takes him about thirty minutes to get to the building he’ll be living in for the foreseeable future, nothing but the clothes on his back, nothing but the breath in his lungs, nothing but the stars in his eyes, the excitement mixed in relief shining through him with every step that brings him closer to his room number. he slides the key into the lock and opens the door, doesn’t walk through though, doesn’t breach the threshold, not yet, not until he’s certain, not until he’s infallible, eyes searching, heart hammering. “hello…?”