Scarlet Justice - Young Justice Fanfiction

Worth Waiting For

Dick's Pov

I can remember sitting over her broken, bleeding body back in the Tower. I can remember that I couldn't even force myself to cry because I refused to believe she wasn't going to wake up. I can remember the hole that was carved out of my chest because she had my heart and I didn't have her.

Then week two rolled around, and hope was starting to slip right through my fingers. I was desperately grasping for something to hold onto, but there was nothing. I started to believe that she was gone. I had lost another person that I held too close.

Bruce had her moved to the hospital since Mal couldn't exactly see her if she was unconscious in the Tower. So Mal and I decided to rotate. We hadn't really known each other before this. Maybe I would say hi as I came to pick up Kristen when she was off the Team for a short while. But now we agreed to help support Kris.

Sitting in the hospital does something to a person. It eats at your willingness to live. You lose all sense of reality. I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, and the only human contact I had was with the nurse, Barb, and Mal. And at this point, I wasn't really sure if I was mad at Kris or at Darkseid. Maybe both.

I never left that room except for when Barb came to visit with Mal and force me to go home and shower.  By the third week, the Team was starting to recover and need my services with missions   since the Hall was still under repair. I needed to leave the hospital more frequently, but I still made sure to switch with Mal and take weekend shifts.

I couldn't really focus on present moments. I was putting the Team at risk, so Bruce and Kaldur stopped putting me in missions. I ran them with Babs from the Tower, but that was all. I couldn't function enough to go through a normal day outside that hospital.

It's week four almost five, and I'm sitting here in the chair by her bed watching the heart monitor. My body's tired, and my eyes were drooping closed. This chair wasn't the best piece of furniture I've come across, and the coffee from downstairs had grown cold already. The nurse knows me, and she tries her best to get me food and water when she can, but we both know it won't help.

I closed my hand around her's as I usually did and tried my best to relax, but the beeps of her heart beat kept me awake. Long story short, I was a mess. It wasn't Kris' fault, though. I was attached to her. Her smile, her laugh, she kept me alive. And that is all on me.

"Are you gonna get off your ass anytime soon?" I jolted up to see Barbra sitting in the doorway. Her arms were crossed and Tim stood behind her chair with his head down, covered by a baseball cap.

"Mal isn't out of work yet," I said, sluggishly while rubbing my eyes. "I'm not moving."

"There it is," Tim grumbled, pushing Barbara's chair into the room. "I hope you know we're all worried. But you can't let this devour you. The Team, the world, still needs Nightwing. Unfortunately."

"What he means to say is that we don't need you in the same state you were in when I-" Babs cut herself off before she could finish that sentence. Her eyes were wide with shock. She looked down at her hands in her lap "Can you give us a minute, Tim?"

He nodded warily, giving me some sort of glare before walking out and closing the door behind him.

"I am so sorry-"

"No, I get it," I said, slouching down in my seat and checking the time on my watch. "I know you mean well, but I will be fine. After you...I just can't slip back into bad habits. I can't put other lives at risk."

I paused, "Bruce told you?"

She nodded, wheeling herself over to my side of the bed. "I know about everything. But that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that you'll just crack one day and never come back. I'm worried that you might never...you know move on."