The break-up was... messy. Dick's not proud of that. He said some stuff he shouldn't have. Stuff he knew would hurt you. Stuff that did hurt you. And yeah, he can claim you gave as good as you got, but... that doesn't make it okay. Doesn't make him feel any better about the whole thing.

So is it any wonder he'd been avoiding you the last couple months? To say things were 'awkward' was the understatement of the century. He'd had no idea how to act around you or what he might even say, so he'd just... not been around you, and that had been fine. Well... okay maybe not 'fine'. But it had worked. He'd told himself it worked. He'd told himself that everything was working just fine and he wasn't feeling any particularly strong feelings about any of it.

And then a villain got ahold of you, and all that just flew right out the damn window, didn't it?

Dick had been frantic. Panicked. But he'd had something to focus on, right? He'd had a rescue op. And if Dick had learned anything growing up with Bruce, it was (probably unhealthy levels of) compartmentalizing. He'd pushed aside the feelings, and focused on just solving the problem and getting you back.

But now, here, knelt on the dirty concrete in some grungy warehouse, holding you in his arms? He's not compartmentalizing so well anymore. He's feeling quite a lot of feelings, actually.

"It's okay... it's okay, you're gonna be okay." If he says it enough times, it's gotta be true, right? "I'm gonna get you home and we're gonna get you patched up and you're going to be okay."