jasnikkolfiveharry requested this one and I'm so sorry it took so long to come out

TW: SA, NEGATIVE REACTIONS TO SA AND SLIGHT DESCRIPTIONS OF SA - CONSENT AND LACK THEREOF IS A THEME THROUGHOUT

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/want-to-talk/

https://www.rainn.org/about-national-sexual-assault-telephone-hotline

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/sexual-health/help-after-rape-and-sexual-assault/

please read with caution if you are likely to be triggered by this, protect your peace and if you find anything topics have been handled improperly or there are parts you find are offensive, let me know and I will change them

It felt like the meeting had lasted for ages, going through the same points over and over. Dick had insisted that he bring Duke, Tim, Jason and Damian into a meeting room and give them a presentation. He didn't say what it was about but he spoke with such seriousness that none of them felt inclined to kick up a fuss. That was until they'd spent twenty minutes sitting in a meeting room going over consent. They knew what consent was. High school had provided them with the basics, they'd all seen the tea video about consent, so they didn't see why Dick had been quite urgent in getting them together. Maybe when he went to high school they didn't talk about this stuff. 

To his credit, he added things about heroes as well. Supers don't have power over you, speak up about a hero even if they're popular and never be afraid to talk to someone about an experience they may not label as non-consensual but still made them uncomfortable. He spoke with nuance and they noticed he'd gone to the extent of putting citations on every slide and assured them that he would happily give them the slides if they found any information useful. He repeated over and over that he was always a safe place. If they thought they had nowhere to go, he would always be there to drop everything to help. It was like he needed them to know that even if none of the other information stuck. He needed them to know he was there. 

None of them wanted to say anything. Obviously, he was really passionate about the subject likely from seeing so many victims in his lifetime. He'd been working since nine and now nearly twenty years later, it made sense that he was afraid for his brothers but all they could think was how they didn't need to know this stuff for themselves. Sure they needed to know about consent and its nuances in terms of relationships but it didn't really apply to them, right? They were heroes. They'd been taught for years, at least a decade in some cases, on how to fight people in any situation. They could fend off supers if they wanted to. As mean as it was to think, this whole exercise was pointless.

After glancing at each other countless times and Dick telling them off for not paying attention when Jason snuck his phone out, all eyes landed on Tim to say something. Duke was probably a better option but there was no way in hell he was going to be the one to interrupt the presentation.

"Dick, this is pointless," Tim stated. "We're heroes. This sorta stuff doesn't happen to us and even if we thought it was going to, we'd just fight back. That's what Bruce trained us to do. No offence but you're wasting both our and your time." Dick looked slightly hurt at the comment, if not angry by it, but he took a deep breath and calmed himself.

"You think you know everything but you really don't. You're young and you think you're indestructible but you're not. You're not immediately ruled out because of your night job and how many times you've trained. There are some things you can never plan for and being put in a vulnerable situation like the ones I'm describing is something you can never be prepared for."

"You have to admit, it's a little unlikely that it'll happen. Even statistically it's-"

"I know the statistics," Dick interrupted snappily. They were slightly taken aback by the edge in his voice especially when he'd just preached about how he was a safe place for any questions. They guessed he forgot to mention they couldn't be questions countering his message. "But the moment you discount it on statistics alone, you leave yourself in a situation that if it ever happens to you, it's all you'll think about because you'll tell yourself you could've done something and trust me that's not a road you want to go down."

"How would you know?" Jason egged on. "I've seen you basically max out the weight machine so you're not telling me if it happened you wouldn't be able to stop it." The acrobat flinched like he'd been slapped across the face and suddenly the light atmosphere Dick had tried to make whilst talking about something so serious felt like a thousand tonnes of tension. It weighed on their shoulders heavily as Dick stared in a mixture of disbelief and horror.

"You think it's my fault it happened?" he asked softly. 

"It didn't happen to you."

"How would you know?"

"You'd tell us," Jason insisted.

Now, Dick presented anger in one of two ways. The first was the obvious anger. He shouted, he screamed, he punched things or people depending on how deserving they were of his wrath. He'd gotten better at controlling it although it jumped out thanks to particular triggers usually because his family was at stake. This way was the preferred way.

The second way was sardonic and glib. Like he was bordering on both breaking out into manic laughter and bursting into uncontrollable tears. His smile would turn uncanny and his eyes seemed to shift from an inviting blue to a piercing storm. This was the unpreferred way. He spoke too much like the villains they put in Arkham and it reminded them a little too much of the fact he, at nine years old, was deemed so determined to murder Tony Zucco that Bruce had to make him Robin and train him despite everyone else's advice to stop him.

Their comments had spurred the second reaction. His eye twitched, bordering on the first reaction before wheeling back to the uncomfortable one. He tilted his head to the side as though Jason were a child who said something silly.

"Why would I tell you I was raped when you'd think it'd be my fault?" he asked and they felt frozen. "I should've fought back, right?  I "must've wanted it otherwise it wouldn't happen" or is it because I sleep with more people than you kill? Was I asking for it then? I completely forgot the mass email I sent out saying it was totally okay because I sleep around or the follow-up email asking people to try it."

"We would never say that- That's not what any of us meant. We just thought it wouldn't happen to us, therefore, we don't need to sit here any longer talking about it. Plus we already learned about consent and stuff," Duke was quick to butt in with hopes of smoothing this over. He failed. Miserably.

"I would've said the same thing before I ended up on that roof unable to move whilst she did it. I was still in my suit. I said no. I tried to fight. I was raped because it doesn't fucking matter how much you lift, how hard you fight or who you are," he explained simply. "And since my scenarios were so devoid of reality, let's give you some hard truths. See how you like that."

"You don't have to," Damian said although he didn't know if he was saying that for his benefit or the acrobat's. 

"Oh, but I do. It's the only way you'll listen so you realise this isn't something to write off," he replied. "I met a woman training to be a vigilante. I saw potential and I also saw that she was going to get herself or others killed without guidance so I took her on. We were friendly, we flirted but never put a label on things. Blockbuster had just found out who I was, I was terrified. He threatened everyone I held dear. She convinced me that I needed to cut off all of you to keep you safe and of course, I agreed." 

It had to be solely anger that drove him to speak because his hands shook and flexed anxiously. His body told them he was rattling with stress but his face told them he was using everything he learned to calm himself down so he didn't end up screaming at them.

Tim vaguely remembered what happened with Blockbuster. He remembered seeing everyone worry about Dick falling off the face of the planet but not going out of their way to help him. He made it clear he didn't want them in his city and they thought that was it. Tim would've never let it go if he knew what was happening. 

"We track him down one night. I want him arrested, I wanted to talk it out like B tells us to do. She shot him in the head and he died right there in front of us. See, this woman was my responsibility. Everything she did was a reflection of me so I felt that I was responsible for the murder. I ran to the roof, tried to breathe and all I could think was how I helped her kill a man. It was raining."

His eyes stopped their flicking between the brothers and settled on the table.

"She came out after me. She told me to calm down and turned me on my back. I thought she was going to help with the panic attack. Make me feel better. Help me in a way I couldn't help myself. She started kissing me, I said no, but she didn't listen. She raped me after murdering a man in front of me. Then we went home and she raped me again. I don't remember it well, I think I was catatonic, but I remember enough. I remember watching the sky and wishing someone would save me. I remember feeling dirty and I spent hours in the shower scrubbing my skin until I had welts."

"Dick-"

"That wasn't even the first time either. The first time Mirage shapeshifted into Kori, she had sex with me and after I found out who she was I felt sick. I felt dirty. The best part was the Titans agreeing that I cheated on Kori. My own girlfriend called me a slut. Of course, now we're older they've said sorry. Said they understood. But they were never in those showers. They were never scrubbing so hard that their skin bled. They were never raped and then blamed for it. They will never feel how I felt that day or when Tarantula did it to me twice."

His eyes darted up.

"That's why I wanted to do this for you. I still feel dirty, I still feel like it's my fault and if I can save you from your first thoughts being that you're dirty and that you should've done more, then I'll do it. I'll fucking make sure that you don't sit there in your room unable to move because the music she put on in the background came on the radio. Maybe it's selfish but it's not pointless."

"I worked with her," Tim whispered, feeling like he was going to throw up. "She talked about you but never- I would've never worked with her if I knew that."

"Because people like that don't have an M.O. you can point out from a mile away. They can be friends, they can be family, they can be fellow heroes or they can be someone you've never known." Dick stood straight and folded his arms not in the confident way he usually held himself. "I won't have the thoughts shared here today follow you for the rest of your life. I won't let you live what I have to live."

A moment of silence fell on the room and Dick returned to his seat, not letting go of his arms and maintaining the tight grip he had.

"Who else knows?" Damian found himself asking. He didn't know why. Maybe he was hoping that there was someone who knew and had helped him but from the way he spoke, there wasn't. 

"About Mirage? Titans and you. About Tarantula? You." That held so much weight and yet, it also brought shame. Shame that they hadn't been told this with confidence. They hadn't been told this because Dick trusted them with this information and wanted to share it so it was off his chest. He told them this with the sole intent of getting them to understand they weren't exempt. He told them to protect them not himself.

"I'm sorry," Duke said.

"What for?"

"For it happening. For making you tell us," he answered. Dick blew out a long breath and they noticed how his nails began to dig into his skin leaving crescent indents.

"It's... I wanna say it's fine but it's not. I didn't- I wanted to do this today so I didn't feel so useless but here I am being useless because I can't even teach you properly."

"You're not useless. You tried and we weren't receptive, that's on us," Tim assured him. He got out of his seat and gently pried off his fingers so he didn't end up with ten-odd cuts on his arms. He took his hands and began squeezing the pressure points there. "You should never have to go through what you did. You never should've gone through it alone either."

"I didn't want to just trauma dump on you. I never wanted anyone to know, I just needed to make sure if it ever did happen to any of you, you'd know you could turn to someone."

"We know that," Jason confirmed confidently. 

"Thanks for taking the time to do it," Duke added. 

"Your actions are commendable and you've succeeded but at a detriment to yourself which we are to blame for. I suggest we make up for it," Damian concluded.

"I'm fine."

"You're far from it and that's okay," Tim replied. "You looked out for us, let us look out for you. Duke, get some water. Jason, find that one movie Dick watches every week. The one with the singing competition-"

"-Pitch Perfect," Dick supplied.

"-Pitch Perfect. Damian, call reinforcements. Don't tell them details, say Dick needs some family time right now. I'll bring him up when he's ready. Got that?" They all nodded and went about doing their tasks. 

"Thanks, Tim."

"Don't thank me when I caused it," he answered sorrowfully. "If...if you ever wanted to say something to the others, they would understand. We all would and we all do." He made sure that Dick was looking right at him when he spoke. "You don't have to deal with it alone even if you've somewhat managed it for this long."

"Maybe I'll say something one day but not today. I can't do it again."

"That's okay. We'll be ready when you do, alright?"

"Alright."