Chapter Text
The trial of Carl Powers was almost as traumatizing for Dick as being the man’s captive had been. As the only survivor of the Gotham Harbor Garrotter's reign of terror it was crucial for him to testify. The woman who had been in a relationship with him prior to his murderous spree had declined to add her own testimony to the prosecution, saying that she was too afraid of Powers coming after her in revenge. Dick was afraid of that too; he had only been held prisoner for a couple of days but that had still been enough time for the creep to get under his skin. It didn’t help matters that Dick had had to see ligature marks around his neck and wrists for weeks after he had been rescued, and the emotional marks had lasted far longer.
Sessions with Dinah had helped, they had saved his life actually. He had fallen into a downward spiral of self deprecating thoughts; blaming himself for having been foolish enough to get caught, and weak to be rattled when he had been through far worse as Nightwing. But as Dinah had pointed out he hadn’t actually been through worse before. Sure there had been some bad guys that had gotten a bit handsy while they had had him in their grasp, but none of them had actually tried to rape him. Not like any of them had ever been truly given a chance, his family or teammates had always managed to save him just in time. And he supposed that that was true in this instance as well; Jim Gordon had been his hero when he needed one most. But as Dinah had pointed out that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what he had or hadn’t gone through in the past, it didn’t matter how far Powers had been able to get, nor did it matter the length of time he had been captive for.
What did matter, and this was the part that Dick still continued to struggle with, was that it had happened at all. Dick understood that a person doesn’t get to decide which events their brain found more traumatizing than others, but what he didn’t understand was why his brain had chosen this event. And he had a hard time believing Dinah when she told him that it was okay to consider himself a victim, because by all definitions he was one, and that the word ‘victim’ wasn’t dirty or wrong. She had told him that some people have to acknowledge that word in order to get to another one; ‘survivor’. But acknowledging either of those words would mean acknowledging what had happened, and even as he told his story in front of a crowded courtroom he hadn’t wanted to do that.
Dick firmly believed that he wouldn’t have been able to get through the trial at all if it hadn’t been for his family and friends sitting front and center the entire time. His loudest supporter had been his brother Jason, who sent a constant stream of dirty looks at the defense attorney every time he tried to trip Dick up in his testimony. He had seen his father have to physically hold Jason back when the attorney had tried to get Dick to admit that the entire situation between him and Powers had been consensual and that Dick was just embarrassed to admit that he liked having rough sex. When the prosecutor had gotten the judge to call for a break after that because Dick was one wrong word away from a mental breakdown, Jason had rushed to his side and barred anyone from entering the men’s bathroom they had gone into until Dick stopped throwing up. And the rest of his family had taken turns having sleepovers with him so that when he eventually woke up screaming in the middle of the night he wouldn’t have to do so alone.
All of that had been months ago. Carl Powers had been sentenced to multiple counts of ‘life imprisonment with no chance of parole’ for the over a dozen charges of ‘first degree murder’, ‘rape’, ‘abuse of a corpse’, ‘unlawful imprisonment’, ‘assault with a deadly weapon’, ‘attempted murder’, ‘seexual assualt’, and ‘attempted rape’. Dick was free of him, even though it took forever for him to stop seeing demons in the shadows and nighttime noises. He was slowly but surely putting his life back together; he had gone back to work both as a police officer and as Nightwing. He still had meetings with Dinah, but they were becoming less and less frequent. Dick was starting to genuinely feel hopeful again, but he still couldn’t help but fear that there was still some boogeyman out there, waiting to jump out from the darkness and drag him down into its depths.