Saving Grace: a Batman fanfiction

Chapter 16

**AN: I feel like this story kind of shifted gears to being much less angsty than it was in the beginning. And though I hope that my writing has improved since I started this fic, I kind of liked the dramatic, angsty feel from the beginning! So… LOTS of angst coming in later chapters. Remember to vote, and comment with your thoughts on the story! I love hearing what y’all have to say <3 Jace

    Dick only picked up the phone because it was Tim calling.

    He’d stopped picking up Jason’s calls when Grace left because Jason was only calling to chew him out for his part in her departure.

    Grace.

    “It’s not your fault, Dick,” Bruce had said once, around two weeks after she’d gone back to the group home. (She’d chosen a group home. Over Wayne Manor. Over all of them.) “It’s mine.” And as much as Dick wanted to say ‘I know it’s not my fault,’ or even, ‘yeah, it IS your fault,’ he couldn’t bring himself to voice either. Logically, he had done nothing wrong.

    He loved Barbara.

    He wanted to marry Barbara and buy a house with Barbara and have kids with Barbara-- and Grace was too young for him. Too little. Too immature. She was for all intensive purposes his little sister. She was. (God damn, she slept with a teddy bear. A teddy bear named fucking TED.)

    And that’s what he told Jason the first few times he’d called to yell angrily. It’s what he kept saying, until Jason had spat angrily, “Who are you really trying to convince, Dick?”

    Then he’d stopped repeating himself. Jason still called after that, but Dick didn’t pick up. He saw Bruce often enough that he didn’t call, and Damian didn’t use his phone often.

    So when Tim called, Dick picked up.

    “What’s up, Timmy?”

    “Bruce and Jason are fighting,” Tim responded, and alas, Dick heard faint yelling in the background. “Bruce saw Grace last night and didn’t tell anyone. Bruce saved Grace from getting attacked by thugs in the Narrows.”

    Dick was up in an instant, pushing himself off of his small bed in his small Bludhaven apartment.

    “Is she okay?” His voice was desperate, almost frantic. He almost didn’t recognize himself. “She’s okay, right?”

    “She’s okay,” Tim reassured him hastily. “Well, she has a pretty bad concussion, a busted lip, and a few nasty bruises. But she’ll be okay. I just thought you’d want to know.”

    “I’m coming over,” said Dick, already halfway out his window.

    And he was planning on it, really. He was planning on booking it to the Manor and assailing Bruce about Grace’s condition. He wanted details and pictures and he wanted to know the perps so that he could go beat them halfway to hell-- but not quite all the way, heh, Bruce. He wanted to rally the troops; to call Jason and Damian and Bruce and Tim into a room and make a concrete plan of how they were going to ensure that she was watched twenty-four seven, like they were her guardian angels that wouldn’t ever let something like this happen again! That’s what he was going to do.

    But then Barbara called.

    He picked up the phone for Barbara, too.

    “Dick,” she said, her voice bursting with excitement, “I just wrapped up my case! I put Killer Croc away again!”

    Killer Croc, Dick thought listlessly. His thoughts immediately raced back to a conversation with Grace-- where were they? Right. His room.

    She was sprawled out across the foot of his bed, reading a book, but not her usual Jane Austen. She was completely enraptured by a book about aquatic animals.

    “What, do you like them or something?” Dick had asked, perplexed.

    “No,” Grace had responded after a minute, eyes wide as they met Dick’s. “I’m sc-- they’re so creepy.” I’m scared of them, she hadn’t said. She was always bad when it came to confessing her fears. He’d read between the lines, so when he asked casually who her least favorite Gotham terrorizer was, and when she’d replied Killer Croc with a shudder, he wasn’t surprised at all.

    “Dick?”

    It was Barbara’s voice that snapped him back to the present. She was perplexed, a little annoyed, he could tell, at his lack of response.

    “Babs, that’s amazing,” he gushed, straddling his windowsill, half in, half out. Half going, for Grace. And half staying, for Barbara. (The love of his life. She was THE love. Of his LIFE.) “You’ll have to tell me all about it-- God, Babe. You’re incredible.”

    He could picture her smiling into the phone, her mahogany hair tucked behind an ear. Proud of herself for her accomplishments. And taking down Killer Croc by yourself was a huge accomplishment-- it usually took at least two or three of them working together.

    “Thanks,” she said happily, “I’ll tell you all about it when I get to your place. Movie night to celebrate?”

    Dick cast a gaze out over the city of Bludhaven, and somewhere on the horizon, Gotham.

    “Do you want to meet at the Manor?” he asked, still straddling the windowsill. Barbara laughed, voice suggestive when she responded,

    “I was thinking we could have some… alone time. To really celebrate, you know? Just you and me. Together. Alone. In your apartment.”

    Yeah, and that was pretty much all it took for Dick to swing his legs back inside of his apartment and say back in a husky voice,

    “Sounds good, I’ll make you something to eat-- you must be starving after all that excitement.” He would make her favorite meal to surprise her, steak burgers with sausage on the side. (God, vegetarian Grace would hate that.)

    Dick hung up the call and braced his arms against his window sill, squinting out at the horizon. At Gotham. Grace was fine, he told himself. She was fine and she didn’t need him. He prioritized Babs. He always had.

    So when Barbara showed up ten minutes later, rosy-cheeked and eyes twinkling as she recounted her victory over Killer Croc, Dick reminded himself that he made the right choice and forced himself to stop glancing at the window so much.

    When Barbara pulled him over to the couch and put on a movie about a group of superheroes saving the Earth from aliens, he wrapped an arm around her and tucked her into his side. He was happy here, he thought. This was where he should be.

*****

    This was NOT where she should be.

    Grace woke up stuffed in a trunk, head aching, sight blurry.

    Whoever was driving the car slammed down on the breaks, sending her slamming into the door of the trunk.

    “Hey!” she cried. “Hey!” Nobody responded. The car sped up. She was reminded, briefly, of Bruce locking her in her room. Grace began to hyperventilate, fingers roaming the surfaces around her, struggling to find a crack of light in the inky black darkness of the trunk. A small tear, a little hole, something to rip open, something to climb out of, a latch to unlock-- but there was nothing.

    Grace was faced with the familiar lurch of her stomach, the racing of her heart. Constricting of her lungs. The thing she hated most and yet could never escape.

    Fear.

*OOOH, CLIFFHANGER!! Updating on Saturday :).

Well, well, well… Dick doesn’t like Grace… RIGHT? Hahahah. How do you guys feel about Dick in this story? Dick and Grace? Who would you like Grace to end up with… assuming that she ends up with anyone?

Finally, sorry this chapter was on the shorter side! Next one will be longer and full of drama.