Chapter Twenty Nine

There were a few rules that Dick made up for himself and kept to, when he got home from Spyral and realised he was going to be on his own. Maybe if he’d had support from his family, or friends, he might have worked on the issues and dealt with situations as they came. But he didn’t, thus the rules.

There weren’t a lot. He controlled himself enough most of the time that the littler things could be shrugged off. And even if they couldn’t it was more important to keep the rules, since they avoided the big things. The things that would crumble the world if he let them free.

Rule Two had been easy to make, right after he came back- ‘Never tell them the truth about Spyral.’

Easy to make, because it was verbatim what Bruce had said when he’d finally been able to return home. One last order from a man he would never allow to order him around again.

The others had been more difficult to work out. They meant that he had to think about the reasons he needed the rules.

‘Avoid rain at all costs and never go out in storms.’ for example, meant he had to think about that day in the rain, with the scent of gun smoke and the creeping cold that soaked into his skin and- The rule existed for a good reason. And, yeah, he’d broken the day he brought Harley back, but while he didn’t regret it now, after the fact? It was still proof of the rules' importance. He broke one, and the result was an ex-villain in his Nest and him revealing his identity. He hardly needed a better example.

‘Never take pills’ made him hyperventilate, nausea rising at the phantom feeling of foam dribbling from his lips and twitching limbs that didn’t realise they were dying, and that welcoming darkness. It meant he kept syringes and a bottle of morphine in his bathroom, or simply went without pain relief for anything less than large wounds.

‘Don’t go to the tallest rooftop on 37th’ because that was where the gravel dug into his spine through his wet suit, and sickeningly spiced perfume crept into his nose, and hands moved along his body to the hazy sound of murmured spanish. That meant his route was sometimes strange, to avoid the location, and he sometimes had to let crooks get away to avoid it. A necessary cost.

The one thing all of the rules had in common wasn’t that they kept Dick functional, or even kept Nightwing in action. It was that they kept his secrets from hurting anyone else.

The most important of all of the rules when it came to that goal?

‘Avoid fear toxin at any cost.’

Before Spyral, he’d spent weeks building an immunity to Crane’s toxins, microdosing himself with each new strain whenever he was alone in his old apartment, where nobody would know.

After Spyral he’d lost that immunity, the time undercover too long to keep up with Crane’s rapid development of the toxin strains. And when he couldn’t bear to go to the cave again, not for any reason that didn’t need a mask on his face, that dated level of immunity became moot anyways, since he couldn’t synthesize the dozens of newer strains he had missed whilst undercover.

Luckily, he was based in Bludhaven, and Crane very rarely left Gotham. Dick had avoided the toxin entirely so far, and was grateful for it. Because honestly? He didn’t know what would happen if it hit him now. Dick’s mind was such a deeply layered construct at this point that even he didn’t know exactly how many moments of fear and terror it could draw on. He just knew it’d be bad, and it’d probably break Rule Two if anyone else was around, even Harls.

He’d come to trust her with some of himself, finding a kindred soul in her, developing a balance. It was just like they had said that day he’d been so **** from emotional turmoil and bloodloss that he asked her to date him- He would let her see the shattered pieces of himself, and she would do the same, so that each one of them could help the other try and rebuild. But even so, he couldn’t tell her it all. There were some things that he wouldn’t ever willingly share with her. Some things that, if she knew them, she’d realise the truth and never let him near her again.

The only exception in the rules was Rule One.

The only rule he hadn’t written himself. The only rule on the list which predated Spyral. The only rule he’d had to acknowledge as a fact since the start of his second chance at life. Since the moment he woke up and realised he had died.

‘I trained you to LIVE and I watched you DIE!’

Since the glass display case had shattered under the weight of Dick’s beaten body in the air. Since the shards had gouged out the wounds that turned into the thick red scars that marr his back angrily.

‘...but now there’s only one rule.’

Rule One,

‘You have to win.’

That was one he never forgot. Not when he was in Spyral. Not when the desert beckoned. Not when his family hated him. Not when Bruce tried to apologise for it all.

Not even when Scarecrow showed up in Bludhaven that night with a new strain of fear toxin.

—

Dick was already so absolutely fucking pissed.

His quick hour of light work had almost immediately been derailed. Nightwing was out there for all of twenty minutes when his priority alert went off, telling him that not only was Crane out of Arkham, but he’d just fear gassed a biochemical lab in downtown Bludhaven.

That had been two hours ago. Despite the lab only being ten minutes away when he got the alert, he’d run into nonstop problems from that point.

First, the toxin gas was leaking from the building, and Dick knew he didn’t have an antidote to this one. He used to always carry antidotes to fear toxin, before everything. But he hadn’t been able to access somewhere he could synthesise more, so he kept the handful he had leftover in his medkit instead, so they couldn’t get broken when he fought. Still, it meant that he needed to put on the breathing mask kit, and that took a little while to hook up, since his suit was such a slimmed design.

By that point, not only had the electromagnetic door seals been activated, but all the entrances and windows had industrial grade steel shutters locking them down. In theory, Nightwing could have gotten through anyway… except he didn’t carry a laser cutter anymore, since he couldn’t safely charge or replace the battery at his place. Nor did he carry any of the small-grade explosives intended for this, since Jason had complained the last time Dick took some.

That meant he had to go find an alternate entry, which took even longer. And, naturally, the only other option he found was the damned sewers. So instead of being tired and irritable, he was tired, angry, and reeked of all kinds of human waste.

Then he got into the damn building, only to find all of the poor late-night staff so terrified by their hallucinations that they either ran screaming or charged to attack him. Which meant that he had to actually hurt them to keep them from hurting him, something he had always hated doing.

So when he finally got to Crane? He was tired, absolutely furious, still smelled of waste, and more than a little upset.

Later, when he reflected on it, he could admit that he perhaps should have been a little more cool-headed. Dealt with things better and less…

Well, as it was, he reached the lab Crane was working in, kicking through the keycard-locked doors without even considering looking for the key.

Crane turned to look, and a mad smile overtook that stupid stitched bag of his as he taunted, “Is the great Nightwing feeling a little-”

He never finished the taunt. Nightwing had kicked open the door, then simply stalked straight to Scarecrow without pausing to listen or quip like he usually would, and snagged the front of his chest as he swept his feet from beneath him, using the momentum to slam the villain into the ground with a loud crack.

Crane went out like a light. Nightwing turned off the machines creating more toxin before they finished, and deleted all of the input processes so that none of the more crooked cops could sell the info. Then, he simply scooped up Scarecrow and left.

A trip to the security office disabled the locks and raised the shutters, and a simple switch set the air purifiers to filtering out the toxins.

It was only as he dumped Crane outside the front entrance that he realised his mistake. He moved the Rogue’s limbs to tie him up, and as he finished, a shard of glass snagged his inner wrist, cleanly slicing the thin spot on his suit and opening the vein there.

Dick’s blood froze in his veins as he plucked the glass from Scarecrow, intending to keep his blood away from the scene, and saw that it was a vial of fear toxin. A broken vial, now coated in his blood.

He remembered the crack when he’d slammed Crane into the floor with sickening clarity. It hadn’t just been the man, it was this glass cracking. Fuck.

Nightwing dropped the villain as he was, and shot off his line, racing to reach home before the toxin hit. It was straight in his bloodstream, meaning it would already be hitting him now, but maybe-

The line between reality and hallucination faded right as he stumbled through his apartment’s window, crashing loudly onto the floor space. He only had a moment to be grateful that he’d made it to safety, and more importantly, that Harley was gone today and he would be alone for this.

Then, he was lost to the fear toxin.