The night had been trouble the moment Dick had headed out for patrol. He had woken up feeling an odd sense of disruption and unease, something in him that told him staying home was for the best. Yet his sense of duty had sent him out anyway. Blüdhaven needed Nightwing.

It had gotten even worse when his patrol was interrupted by agents from The Court of Owls attempting to rob a high-class museum. He had been attempting to capture you, the highest ranking and most powerful of the agents, all night, and he could slowly feel his chest growing tighter and tighter, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. He was coming undone.

It wasn’t your fault. All you seemed to be doing was try to avoid him, not to hurt him, but it seemed as if the world and everything that had ever pained him was coming down on him at once.

It all came to ahead when you turned to escape, seemingly in a rush as Dick moved swiftly after you from rooftop to rooftop. He was taking deep breaths between leaps, trying to calm down the pain bubbling in his stomach. But then you ran across one particular rooftop. One he recognized. One he knew very well. It was the one he had been pressed down into the night Tarantula had ignored his many no’s and had left him feeling dirty. His entire body went cold as ice.

As you attempted to leap from that rooftop to a new one, Dick grabbed you almost violently from behind, causing you both to fall down into an alleyway between the buildings.

Your back slammed harshly against the metal lid of a dumpster, Dick’s body pinning you down as he gripped your wrists and held them tightly. He had caught you. Yet, as you opened your mouth to scream, you felt a warm tear trickle down and land on your cheek.

He was shaking violently, his eyes watery with tears as he gripped your wrists harshly, desperately attempting not to fall apart even more, to cling to the confident air of Nightwing. But he had come undone.