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Let it be said, Henry knows far, far better than to go out into random Blüdhaven alleyways in the middle of the night.
He makes a habit of sticking firmly to those dimly lit passages around whatever warehouse he happens to be working at that evening. Though he works for one of Blüdhaven’s slightly more savoury druglords he knows full well that he’s nothing more than a replaceable goon to his bosses. Nobody else will be prioritizing his life so he keeps to his place carefully and minds his own business.
It’s really, truly, completely something that was not his fault that leaves him grumbling his way through searching the dingy alleys near where they’d been working tonight to help Nico find his lighter.
“I swear it was around here, man,” Nico exclaims for the third time that night, “You know we can’t smoke around back cause the boss’ll get pissy that we’re drawing eyes so I just went over a street or two, ya’know? I’m sure I was like, right there,” he points down some particularly dark, ominous looking gap between two buildings.
“Goddamn man,” Henry groans even as he follows Nico, “Keep a better eye on that lighter huh?”
Apparently it used to belong to Nico’s dad, back before he’d passed a few years ago in some big gang fight. Henry wouldn’t say anything, but personally he’d never even bring something sentimental like that to work. By the time he gets to the mouth of the alley, Nico is already disappearing into the shadows down the other end, searching around in the dark. He sighs deeply but goes to look around himself.
Henry’s eyes catch a glint of silver gleaming among the shadows of the gutter and, shooting a glance further down where Nico still hasn’t returned, reluctantly crouches down and picks it out. It’s a fairly simple lighter, as Nico described, but with a small engraving on the underside. The initials belong to Nico’s dad, he assumes.
“Hey!” He calls out, pushing on his thighs as he slowly stands straight again. Henry glances down into the dark, “Found your lighter!”
There’s a long moment where he receives no reply. It isn’t dead quiet—it never is in the city—but he can’t hear Nico. Dread sinks heavy in his gut and, he’s ashamed to say, his first instinct is to turn tail and walk straight out into the flickering light of the street and not return.
But Nico has been his best buddy in this gig for years, they’ve worked together through all sorts of shitty, too-long shifts and under dodgy bosses. They’ve made other friends here and there too, but Henry knows that, of any of them, Nico would be the one to come find him if he went missing. He knows most people wouldn’t consider a grunt for a druglord as a pinnacle of morality but Henry has his own kind of code and he knows he’d never forgive himself for leaving a friend that might be in trouble.
“Fuck,” he mutters as he pockets the lighter and grits his teeth, “You better be playing a prank or something Nico.”
Henry ventures down the alley, the limited light from the street dimming even further until it’s just the faint streams of moonlight and a hazy glow from lights in the high-up windows of the surrounding buildings. Still, it’s only just enough to see and he takes a second to adjust to the deepening shadows.
“Nico?” he calls again slowly, “You back here?”
The same quiet blankets over him and the most discernible sound is his own breathing. Henry’s stomach twists, preparing to go further into the dark.
“Henry!”
He startles at the sudden shout but his feet carry him quicker to the source, “Nico? What’s wrong, why didn’t you-“
Nothing in the world could prepare him for the sight that meets him at the end of the passage.
Nico is crouched down, not unlike how he had been to pick up the lighter, but instead of having a little metal object in front of him, Nico has one hand pressed to the shoulder of Blüdhaven’s very own vigilante.
“Hey Nico,” Henry starts, proud of how level his voice sounds considering how much he wants to yell, “Why the hell is Nightwing unconscious in this alleyway?”
Sheepishly, his friend looks back at him, “I have no idea man, I just came back here and boom, there he was. I don’t know what’s wrong with him but he’s bleeding through his suit. Not dead though”
Sure enough, when Henry gets closer to look he can see a darker patch staining some of the blue of Nightwing’s uniform.
“Well, what do we do?” Nico asks, “Cause... I don’t know about you but…”
“It doesn’t feel right leaving him here,” Henry finishes, “I know. But like, shouldn’t he have some buddies or something?”
The other man shrugs, “Maybe, but do we really want to wait around to see if someone comes? He could be found first by whoever got him like this in the first place and I wouldn’t want to be around for that. Or for another one of those bats to come by, to be honest.”
Grimacing, Henry realises that Nico is right. Staying with Nightwing here runs the risk of someone else with a vendetta finding them or a bat getting aggressive thinking they put the guy in this state. Leaving Nightwing feels wrong to both of them but taking him to a hospital or something wouldn’t be right either cause of the vigilantes secret identity.
“We’d have to take him to one of our places,” Henry warns, “Do you really want a vigilante knowing where he can find us?”
Nico goes quiet for a moment before his eyes trail up to meet Henry’s, “That’s alright, Nightwing always seemed decent enough.” His voice is more serious than normal as he adds, “And besides, I feel like maybe we owe the guy, for Thomas.”
The name sends a bolt of familiar emotion through him. Pride and grief and relief all mix together at the reminder of the kid.
“Yeah,” Henry agrees, his own voice going softer, “I suppose we do.”
He steps forward so that they can awkwardly lift up the unconscious vigilante and each sling one of his arms over their shoulders. It takes a second to adjust to the weight, but they manage to move together back onto the, thankfully abandoned, street. To get to Henry’s car requires only a few more steps and he lets go for a second, passing all the man’s weight to Nico, so that he can open the door to the backseat.
“Damn,” he mutters, “It’ll be a bitch to get the blood off.”
“I’ll help ya,” Nico smiles wryly as they shuffle Nightwing into the car, “I heard you saying you found my lighter after all. Consider it returning the favour”
Henry scoffs lightly as he picks the lighter from his pocket and hands it to Nico before closing the door and going to fish out his keys instead for the drive home.
It’s then that the absurdity of the situation hits him. The one time he goes out wandering at night he ends up with an injured Nightwing in his car, being propped up in the back by his best friend.
Henry bites back a groan as he gets behind the wheel, this is why he never goes into random Blüdhaven alleyways.
~*~
For a single, blissful moment, Dick is aware without opening his eyes. There is no pain, just the feeling of stiff but comfortable fabric beneath him and soft warmth on top.
Then, the pain hits and his eyes fly open with a gasp.
He almost curses out loud but instantly realizes that he’s not at his own home. Lingering, hazy confusion clings for a moment before all of a sudden a wave of memories crashes into him. He’d been in a fight and been nicked by a knife that he was pretty sure had some kind of poison or a sedative considering how fuzzy his head felt the moment he’d knocked the guy out. He faintly recalls escaping out the side of the warehouse into the cool night air of Blüdhaven but he supposes he mustn’t have made it very far with how heavy his limbs had felt. Who knows who found him or where he had been moved?
Fuck.
Dick’s eyes close again immediately, hoping that whoever has taken him isn’t in the room to have realized he’s awake. He moves his fingers around though to feel around him, expecting to find he’s restrained but instead his movement doesn’t seem restricted. Now that he’s paying more attention he can’t hear any other breathing in the room aside from his own, slowed again to mimic sleep.
He chances fluttering his eyelids open again, glancing around the room. It’s not a cell or some other place evidently designed to hold someone. Instead, it looks… just like someone’s house. There isn’t overwhelming, bright light, just a lamp in the corner of the room. Dick seems to be on a couch with a slightly garish patterned fabric and a blanket has been laid over him.
Dick’s brows furrow as he realizes he’s still wearing his suit and he can still feel his mask on his face too. There are a lot of precautions to make sure their identities stay hidden even in the event of capture but, he realizes, it doesn’t even seem like his mask has been tugged on at all with how there is no sting from the skin on his face.
He pushes himself up slightly, now leaning towards the theory that maybe some civilian had seen him passed out in some Blüdhaven back alley and brought him home. It’s still an unsettling thought and he shivers at the idea of who else could have found him but, ultimately, this was better than the alternative.
Looking around the rest of the room, he can’t see a window so there’s not such an easy escape point. He’ll have to go through the door to the left of the couch that has been left slightly ajar and, although he thinks he probably isn’t in danger, Dick knows far better than to expect that this’ll be smooth. He’s been treated well by plenty of civilians in the past but still, few people would have the guts to just grab Nightwing. He should get out of here quick and back to his apartment to treat his wounds and check how long he’d been out.
Just as he’s brought himself to sitting up fully, putting pressure on the wound at his side and breathing slowly through the ache of it, he hears voices beyond the door.
“Well how else can we help the guy? He’s obviously injured somewhere but we can’t do nothing with that suit either,” the voice is male, not young but not old either.
“I know, I know, but I think we might startle him if we try to wake him up. He didn’t seem bothered at all when we were moving him so it’s gonna shock him to be in a different place and I for one don’t want a punch in the face from Nightwing.” Another male.
Dick feels relieved that he was right, that these two—because no third voice had spoken up—don’t seem hostile toward him. The mixture of relief and lingering sluggishness from whatever had been on the knife stops makes him realize a moment too late that not only can he hear the voices, but they are also accompanied by muffled footsteps.
Alarm darts up his spine but he doesn’t have enough time to lie back down and pretend to be asleep before the door swings open, revealing two tall, well-built guys. Both of them look at him, sitting up on the couch, and freeze.
Dick, not knowing quite what to do either, just looks at them. Both men are tall and well-built; one even has a scar across his cheek. They look, he realizes with a creeping sort of apprehension, a lot like the kind of guys he often fights. The sort of good muscle that appeals to the mob bosses and drug lords and other miscellaneous rouges that run around Blüdhaven.
“Hello,” he says, deciding to lean on trying to charm them first, “Do you mind telling me where I am?”
No benefit being the first to get aggressive, Dick knows. He can take out two guys if they might be in the business he thinks. The rest of this setup doesn’t fit a villain plot, too cozy and simple, so maybe they are just some civilians who go to the gym a lot.
“Ah, well,” one of them, the slightly shorter guy with the scar, looks between Dick and his friend like he’s trying to figure out what to say, “You’re at my apartment, Mr. Nightwing,” huh, a slightly strange title but definitely not the worst he’s gotten, “Henry and I found you and brought you here because you seemed a little, uh, unconscious?”
The other one, Henry apparently, shoots the first a faint glare, “Right, go ahead and tell him my name then.”
“Oh! Sorry, so, uh,” the still unnamed man fiddles with something in his pocket, “We weren’t really sure what to do with you because you’re bleeding and what not-”
“You can go if you want Nightwing,” Henry interrupts his friend, “Or if there’s anything we can do for you, name it.”
Dick looks between both of them, rapidly trying to understand the dynamic of the situation. He should try talk to one of them alone. After a moment, he asks, “Could I have a glass of water then please?”
The shorter one seems only too happy to have something to do and darts back through the door, calling behind him, “Sure thing Mr. Nightwing!”
“That’s Nico,” Henry tells him, shuffling further into the room to lean against the table across from the couch Dick is seated on, “I figure if he told you my name then his is fair game too.”
Dick shrugs lightly, scanning over the man, “Sure, it’s nice to meet you both.”
Henry looks back at him, a strange sort of expression on his face.
Nico returns then before Dick can think too much about it, holding a short, wide cup, “Here’s your water,” as he hands over the glass, Nico’s sleeve pulls up a little, revealing a small but recognizable tattoo on his wrist exposed.
Immediately Dick rears back, not even touching the glass. Both men seem to realize what he’s seen because they each stand straighter, sharper, looking at him warily.
“You work for the Greywood family,” he says without hesitation. It’s one of the less troublesome drug smuggling operations in Blüdhaven but by no means the smallest and he knows their symbol, “Where the hell am I?”
“Hey, hey,” Henry raises his hands slowly, “Nico was telling the truth, we’re in his apartment right now. We do work for the Greywoods, but that’s not why you’re here. We found you off-hours, our boss doesn’t know you’re here. Nobody else does but the two of us and we’re just gonna let you leave.”
Dick frowns, but doesn’t move to attack even as he tenses his body in preparation for a fight anyway, “Why would you do that?”
“Ah,” Nico swallows visibly, and Dick is curious that he seems genuinely put off by the idea of fighting, “Well, I’m sure you won’t remember this but… last year, around August, there was a kid working for the Greywoods. He was a thin wee thing, but knew how to pack a punch. He’d gotten into the whole business because his older sister was sick—”
“Thomas?” Dick blurts out the name in a flash.
Henry huffed, a faint smile curling over his lips, “You do remember then.”
“Huh, guess I underestimated you Mr. Nightwing,” Nico says with a nervous smile, clearly relieved that Dick has gone off the immediate offensive, “Well if you remember him I suppose you remember what else happened. How you helped him get out of this life, onto better things.”
Nodding slowly, Dick agreed, “I did.”
Nico’s eyes go warmer, friendlier, “We knew him,” he gestures to himself and Henry, “Tommy was a good kid, real sweet an’ all. He deserved a shot at greener pastures, and you gave it to him.”
“So, think of this as repaying the debt,” Henry interjects, shrugging lightly, “You helped a friend of ours out of this shithole, so when we saw you in the alley we couldn’t just leave you there.”
There’s a halting moment of silence, where Dick is scanning over their faces and gauging their sincerity. It takes barely a moment to know they are telling the truth, the genuine edge to their voices and expressions would be difficult to fake.
“You can just go Nightwing,” Henry repeated, “We don’t want to keep you here, or cause any trouble. Just repaying the debt.”
“No debt,” Dick said softly, “Thank you, for not leaving me out alone but… there was no debt.”
Nico shook his head, “You may not think much of our type, Mr. Nightwing, but we have our own sort of honour code. You did a good thing and so we wanted to return it.”
“Then… thank you. I probably will be going now but… thanks.” Dick slowly stood from the couch, cataloguing how heavy his limbs still felt, even though they were less outright sluggish. He’d be able to make it back to his apartment, but he’d likely be falling straight back asleep to let the rest of the sedative wear off.
Taking that as their queue, the two men walked him through the small apartment, through the door and past a tiny kitchen into a small space only holding another door and two racks, one for coats and the other for shoes. The place seemed homey, like the room he’d woken up in.
As Nico fiddled with the door, the sound of locks clicking open, Dick turned to Henry, who was watching him with quiet thoughtfulness.
“Is there anything I can do for you two? I know it’s not simple but I can offer you the same as what I did for Thomas,” he kept his voice carefully light.
As Nico glanced away from the lock, the doorhandle beginning to turn, the two shared a meaningful look.
Dick’s heart sank before he even heard Henry’s answer, “Nah, we’re alright. We know our way around trouble and, well, Tommy was an easier case because he was new. Fresh recruits go missing or leave all the time, they aren’t given much trust to break. We’ve been around the block already, people know us. It’s harder to get out the longer you stay.”
Knowing the answer he’d likely receive, he tried again, “And I can’t say anything to convince you? Or help you two with anything?”
“It’s okay,” Nico said with a small quirk of his lips, “Just keep an eye out for the other young ones, they’re easier to pull out. Some of ‘em are shitheads, but… a lot of them are just scared kids.”
“I can do that,” Dick promised.
Nico nodded seriously, “Then that’s enough.”
Dim light shone across the features of both men as they stepped aside to let Dick pass. He glanced around, finding himself in the hallway of what seemed to be an apartment complex. Streaky moonlight ran across the floor from a window at one end, a sickly yellow glow from a flickering overhead light at the other end above a staircase. It was completely empty, nobody to see Nightwing, the vigilante of Blüdhaven, conspicuously leaving an apartment.
“Thanks again,” he said, turning to face them once more.
Henry gave a nod, and Nico a smile, “Goodnight Mr. Nightwing.”
Then, Dick turned away toward the window at the end of the hall and lifted the latch. It wasn’t difficult to get out, having gone through many different windows in his time. He didn’t look back to see if Henry or Nico moved to close it before he used his grapple to hook onto the roof of the next building. It was a quick, smooth movement to swing up into the dark night sky.
He was back in his element up here, so quickly removed from the unusual warmth of Nico’s apartment.
A strange, conflicted feeling sat in his chest. A mix of heavier disappointment tempered by gratitude and happiness. He was reminded that, even if he could only do so much, there were people that benefited from kindness and an outstretched hand and, in varying, unexpected ways, kindness was often returned.
Dick knew he’d have to check himself for trackers before going back to his apartment, despite also knowing there wouldn’t be any. Bruce would never let him hear the end of it if he ever caught wind of it otherwise.
Still, he could enjoy the cool nighttime air and travel a few blocks closer to home before he did so.
Because, despite a few hiccups, it was turning out to be quite a lovely night after all.