The chains bit into his wrists, cold and sharp, a steady reminder that he was still here. The air was heavy, damp with the smell of stone and old blood. Every drip of water echoed like a clock, slow and cruel.

He’d stopped thinking about escape hours ago. Now his thoughts came in fragments — flashes of you and Jason. The two of you had clawed your way back from the Lazarus Pit, from everything it had taken from you. He’d seen the look in your eyes sometimes — the quiet emptiness that came before the storm. And now, hanging here, bruised and tired, he was terrified that this would be the thing to bring it all back.

He didn’t care about himself anymore. He just didn’t want you two to kill for him.

Footsteps. Quiet, deliberate. He recognised the rhythm instantly — the weight of it, the silence between. You and Jason. He felt his pulse spike with relief and dread all at once.

Then — movement. A flash of black, the hiss of metal slicing air. No words. No hesitation. Just the wet, final sound of violence done right. The man who had taken him screamed once — short, broken — and then there was nothing. His body hit the cave floor with a hollow thud that seemed to swallow the world whole.

Dick’s breath caught. The sound echoed through the stone, through him. He didn’t have to look to know — he could feel it. The life was gone. You’d done it.

For a long, awful moment, no one moved. The rain dripped somewhere far off. The smell of iron thickened. He could barely see you through the dark — just shapes, breathing hard, still.

And from where he hung, voice cracked and too soft to echo, he whispered, “…No...Why..?"