Chapter Forty One

“Ugh, my head’s killing me.” Barbara groaned from across the room, staring blankly at her screen for a moment before slamming it shut and rubbing at the bridge of her nose.

She’d wanted to try and get some of the paperwork done and slip it into the system quietly for Dick, since he’d more or less entirely stopped caring to try and write up reports on any of his own patrols. She didn’t really blame him, not with how difficult and unrelentingly hostile the Cave must’ve been for him the past months. Why would he bother trying to integrate with, to accommodate, a system that didn’t benefit him in the slightest and kept causing more distress for him?

But Christ, it felt like someone was hammering on her skull with a rubber mallet the longer she tried to focus on the work, and it would be worse to put in a report with the wrong information than to put nothing in.

She lifted her tired eyes to where Dick was standing at the stove top, quietly humming away as he cooked something. She wished he’d sing, or dance, or any of the ridiculous crap she could remember him doing before, when they were together and he’d light up a whole room with an easy grin at her, before grabbing her and twirling around. Not that he’d cooked then, to be fair. He was hopeless in the kitchen, she’d learned that from his family pretty early on, and it fit. He always went for cereal or premade food, if he was left to it. Kinda weird to see him cooking now, honestly, with how good whatever it was smelled.

Another thumping sensation rocked her head, and she shook away the thoughts of Dick’s cooking skill, giving in to the need for something to calm this migraine. She raised her voice as loud as her head could manage to ask, “Dick, where’s your medkit, is it still in the bathroom?”

Without looking, his tone almost absent as he focused on the pan in front of him, he called over his shoulder, “Nah, I moved it for Zee’s stuff. It’s in the cabinet by the window there.” He pointed, still not looking, with uncanny accuracy at the small cabinet, a rickety old piece of junk made of dark wood. Mismatched, like everything in this flat seemed to be.

She took a deep breath, and made to roll herself over to it. Fortunately, Zatanna had noticed from her spot reading some old leatherbound tome on the armchair, and slotted a bookmark in before standing and carefully placing it down on the empty chair. She threw a smile at Barbara as she moved to the cabinet, and the redhead tried to return it with her own weak, wincing one.

After a minute, a short fight with a creaking door and a cupboard too small for the huge red duffel inside, the beautiful magician walked back over, and dropped the heavy bag just in front of Barbara. She cast an uncertain look at it, before offering, “I…I can try to find what you need, if it would help?”

Despite the tension in her temples, Barbara felt her lips twitch with amusement at the sheer concern with which Zatanna regarded the bag, and huffed out a short chuckle, “Don’t worry, I just need some aspirin or something. I can find it.”

The brunette sighed with relief, and explained, “I tend to rarely grow unwell now, a side result of the interaction of my magic usage with my body, and when I do, it typically requires a spell to help. Conventional medicine doesn’t do much for me now, and I didn’t really learn anything about it before that change, so…”

Babs nodded, still smiling slightly, and tugged the zipper to open the duffel. She dug through it for a minute, a little surprised by how many of the pockets seemed empty or loose. Maybe Dick was going through a lot of supplies, since this bag must be serving both him and Harley now, she reasoned.

She frowned slightly, leaning forwards again to look closer into the bag, and when she did, Zatanna asked from beside her, “Is everything alright?”

Barbara absently replied, “Yeah, I just… I can’t find anything…”

The more she looked, now properly focusing for her second dig through the bag, the more she began to notice flaws in her earlier reasoning. There was still plenty of gauze, a bulging pocket of the thick pads with adhesive, for covering wounds in all different kinds of awkward spots on the body. She could see the suture kit a little depleted but nothing out of the ordinary. There were the empty or loose spots she knew to expect from… from the night with the toxin, the places where there should be full sets of antidotes for fear toxin, joker gas, Bane’s venom, Ivy’s spores, and all the other less eccentric poisons, the natural ones. But…

She sat up, and looked across the room to where Dick stood, “Hey Dick, where have you put the pain meds?”

He didn’t seem to really register what she said, still focused, replying “One sec…”

It was only when he switched off the heat, moving the pan to a different burner, and turned to her with a smile that she repeated herself, “I wanted to take something for my head, but I can’t find your pain meds in this kit. Where’ve you stashed them?”

She didn’t think too much of it, even at that point. For their line of work, it wasn’t uncommon to move things around a bit, and the kind of medkits they kept would raise eyes for any knowledgeable medic, with the amount of unusual or controlled medication they had on hand.

But when his smile froze in place on his face, and his body went still, she paid attention. She’d learned the hard way, recently, to watch him for these new habits and signs. Or maybe they were old ones, and she never realised before, but either way.

“O-oh? Really? Well, I guess, um-” He stammered out, still smiling that fixed smile at her, the one that tried to convince her nothing was wrong, he was the same good ol’ charming Dick Grayson, etc etc.

“What do you mean?” Zatanna asked, clearly catching something was amiss.

Barbara tugged the edge of the bag for visibility as she pointed at various spots, “These usually are stocked with different meds, aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen, co-codamol, naproxen… even the stuff like hayfever meds or vitamins aren’t here? Not to mention I don’t see the saline and other pieces for a drip setup, or the emergency morphine that’re usually-”

“It’s in the bathroom cabinet.” Dick said, and the smile dropped, giving way to an expression of such discomfort that Barbara’s chest ached. He sighed, and woodenly said, “I don’t have any of the other stuff here, but Harls might have some in her bag.”

Barbara actually bit her tongue when habit and practice tried to push the question past her lips. Yes, she wanted to know. But the flare of sharp pain on the sensitive flesh let her resist the urge to ask, to follow it up, to find an answer. Because Dick clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and she was trying her best since that awful night to be better to him.

So obviously she desperately wanted to know why he didn’t have any of the actual medicines that the medicine kit should have, but instead, she grit her teeth against the natural inquisition, forced herself to nod, a sharp motion that she immediately regretted, and said, “Right. I’ll text her.”
Then she watched with a new ache in her chest as Dick, this wonderful amazing man, looked surprised and confused, his head lifting to blink directly at her rather than off to the side. Very slowly, uncertainly, he asked, “You…You, um…You’re not going to…ask?”

And this time, she didn’t have to bite her tongue or grit her teeth to reply, an immediate response coming after the sight of such confusion that she was respecting his privacy, “No, Dick, I’m not going to ask. I know I’ve always been shit at it with you, but I’m trying now. I won’t ask, not unless you want to tell me. That’s your choice.”

Again with the confused blinking, as if the concept that she would leave the topic without forcing him to share was impossible. As if the concept of it being his choice was completely unfamiliar. God, she must have been such a bitch before and never realised it, if he thought that he wouldn’t get the chance to refuse to share.

But, after more quiet, confused blinking and a slightly tilted head, he blurted out suddenly, “Most were out of date and I got rid of the rest. I can’t- I can’t take pills anymore. It’s not worth the…effort. When I try, I just- it just-”

He started stammering, stumbling over what he wanted to say, his eyes growing wider to something only he knew, and Zatanna strode across the space in a second, placing a hand in the middle of his chest firmly, “Breathe, Dick. It’s alright. Just breathe for me. There you go.”

She smiled at him as his eyes refocused on her, and she started to tell him, “You don’t have to-”

“It reminds me of Luther, pushing that pill down my throat, and I just throw it back up now.” He said, then seemed to relax, relief at having shared his reasoning threading through his body.

Barbara felt her eyes prick, and jutted her chin out against it. No matter how her chest ached and she wanted to scream because her Richard had fucking died and was traumatised by an unbelievable bastard, she would keep it together right now.

Except he always saw through her ballsy bullshit, whether they were kids in overly colourful tight pants, or a young couple in love, or the people they’d become now. He looked up at her, and saw through it all, and fuck him, he pointed a soft and gentle smile at her that whispered ‘I love you’, that she hadn’t seen since he died, and hadn’t deserved in years before that. Fuck him, because he pointed that smile at her, and came over and hugged her, and then fucking reassured her, “It’s alright Babs, really. I’m way better about it these days, it’s not as bad now.”

Fuck him, for knowing her better than she knew herself and making her cry, and fuck herself for ever letting down this brilliant man she loved that didn’t believe he was worthy of love anymore. Fuck him, but really, fuck her for never deserving him and never appreciating what she had.