alright long ass meta about dickory incoming, the way Kory leaves the Titans this week vs her appearance in Nightwing #138 last month has me climbing the walls. Because genuinely, I was thinking this during Nightwing, dick is really negging her for some reason. and it hadn't clicked for me until she yells at him:
because it directly parallels what she tells him here:
dick is looking for someone to need him in a tangible way, and that's the titans, but it's also kory. and the way he's going about it here is going to end badly for both of them (which i love reading but yk. storytelling).
Like calling her up to be like hey, your longtime captors are just hanging out in my neighborhood, and he immediately tries to hit on what she's told him in their past, like hey, do you remember when we were younger and i helped you with this. do you want help with that now. do you want to do that again so i can feel like i'm doing something right???
and the fact that he spends the entire issue like, oh so you're not healed. does this bother you? are you traumatized? you're not healed. you're not actually healed. nobody is actually healed. you're not more rational and more emotionally developed than me. you're still like i am. we're still on the same level of emotional maturity. you're not healed. you still need me. look at me and tell me this hurts you and that you need my help to get through it right now RIGHT NOW!
it's the specific use of him saying "this is you having moved on" where's he's so obviously needling her for a revisiting of their connection, even if that looks like a fight — he feels cut off right now, lost, but he can't use those words to explain it, because he doesn't view what he's doing here as being vulnerable. but kory knows.
dick never walks away and he is incapable of not picking his scabs, and kory can clearly see his nail digging under the one with her name on it. why would she let him do that again? why would she do that to him again?
he is immediately, specifically like, is this because we're not together? i still need you. i mean i need my friends. i mean i need to be needed. him saying i'm alone at the heart of it after their adventure in nightwing is so telling! he wanted her to be the person she's always been for him! and that's so dangerous for her. because this is not him wanting to get back together with her, so to speak, this is him going "i haven't changed, please give me what i need."
why would she do that? the best thing she can do for him right now, as a friend, as an ex, as someone who loves him and is loved by him, is lead by example. she's genuinely tried everything else.
She doesn't deny that she cares about him, she doesn't deny that her time with the psions was awful, she doesn't deny that she means something to him. she doesn't even deny that she might end up back here anyway, and that she would be okay with that! but she still cares about dick so much that if she stays, she will get pulled back into the spin cycle. and that would break her heart.
and there's this touch of distance she puts in here, where she calls him richard in nightwing and dick here, when she's leaving, where richard has always the more intimate name she uses for him. when she met up with him in nightwing, she was still assessing the situation. now, in titans, she sees what's happening for what it is and puts the wall up.
we also have to do a little legwork as readers, here, because we don't know where in the timeline nightwing happens compared to the titans, though we can assume based on him talking to her about bludhaven and that she's leaving earth now that this is probably after. i'm also so struck by dick really having kory as the rising and setting of the sun in his life, something that he literally goes without all the time (he lives in the city of night) but that he is always turning back to for comfort. but who's comforting her? dick isn't reliable for that. not right now, especially!
and the idea that these two are now going to be separated or that this has all been strictly platonic when they're literally acting out ariana's "we can't be friends" is such a purposeful misunderstanding of the story and the characters, and i'm really glad that watters and bromball were willing to let these two be messy and hurt each other for a bit. i'm glad someone is willing to give teeth back to relationships!
take it away gale of waterdeep
