Hey there! Here's finally the sequel I promised you so long ago! This piece is the third and final installation of what I call the 'lines- Universe. I'm very sorry that it took longer again, but this time my lateness has a really good reason: the most talented Xenitha has offered to write an 'epilogue' to the second installment! Check it out! The series' order now is:

Lifelines -interline- ('interline: Spotted Lines' by Xenitha) - and Faultlines.

I highly recommend reading the prequels first, for there will by many allusions to Lifelines and interline. If you don't want to read them but follow this piece, drop me a line and I tell you everything you need to know!

This work is betaed by Callypse again. If you see any mistakes, you can be sure that I overlooked one of her corrections. Mea culpa, always.

FAULTLINES

Prologue

-two weeks later-

"Clark and Wallace's numbers are by the counter and in the bat computer."

"I know, Master Bruce."

"Harper's too, if there is a more... psychological emergency."

"I am not sure Mister Harper will dare to come close to the young Master again after your last meeting." Alfred's tone was light, and that irritated Bruce. This was an important matter.

"We might be gone for days, Alfred. This is serious!"

Alfred didn't bother answering, but the look he sent Bruce was explanation enough. Of course he took this matter seriously. Bruce sighed and ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm down. He had the worrisome suspicion that he was overreacting again, a tendency he had grown used to since Dick's hospitalisation months ago, which he tried to get rid of without success.

"You will still be in touch, Master Bruce, and I may remind you that Dick has been progressing well lately."

Yes, he had. Since the chicken pox he contracted from Lian or her teddy had vanished without any consequences, Dick was doing fine. He was still sleeping most of the time and had unannounced bouts of fever, but no serious infection had come up and his physiotherapy was going well. When Bruce told him about the covert operation he was planning with Tim and Damian, Dick assured him he would be fine alone with Alfred.

Still, Bruce didn't like leaving for a longer time. The last fever bout had left Dick too exhausted to walk up the stairs into his room, and Bruce had to carry him – true, Dick had had enough energy to struggle and complain all the way up, and Bruce heavily suspected that he simply didn't want to walk up the stairs... But even if that were true, it had other complications he didn't like any better; a Richard Grayson who didn't want to move was more worrisome than a Richard Grayson who couldn't move.

"Don't let him down into the cave," he advised Alfred therefore, even though he knew that that rule was set in stone and the butler would never forget it. "He won't make it upstairs again."

"Yes, Master Bruce."

"And don't let him outside. It's still too cold and -"

"- and he's not yet acclimated. Yes, Master Bruce."

"Woah, is there also an emergency plan for alien abduction?"

Bruce and Alfred turned around to see Dick standing in the kitchen threshold, a sarcastic smile on his lips and raised eyebrows. It was an expression he was carrying a lot these days, and Bruce didn't like it one bit. When Dick saw that he wouldn't get an answer, he walked into the room, past Bruce.

"Seriously, I worry about that. Now that all I can do is flutter my eyelashes..."

"You're not supposed to be up," Bruce interrupted him, not in the mood for more of Dick's newly adopted cynicism.

Dick was only dressed in his PJs, he noticed with displeasure, not even wrapped in a blanket. He looked fine, though, no sudden pallor or fever-induced flush, and the circles under his eyes had receded over the weeks.

"I'm just putting my meds back into the fridge. Relax, Bruce." As to prove a point, Dick rattled with the orange pill bottle Bruce hadn't seen earlier and opened the fridge. "They're not supposed to be out for long."

"You could have called."

Alfred looked guiltily at Bruce. "I should have thought of them. My apologies."

Dick had closed the fridge and leaned against it with his back, arms crossed as he observed the scene in front of him. He rolled his eyes when he picked up the ongoing conversation Bruce and Alfred were having via glances and glares. "And I'm sure you would have thought of it if Bruce hadn't distracted you. You need to calm down, both of you. It's fine. I'm fine!"

As if to state his opinion to that fact, Alfred pushed one of the kitchen chairs into Dick's direction. With an exasperated sigh, the young man sat down. "Happy?" he asked gloomily.

"You shouldn't be up," Bruce scolded, reaching over the table to press his hands against his son's forehead to check his temperature.

Dick leaned back, evading. "Stop doing that, it's annoying."

"As soon as you manage one whole week without a fever attack." Alfred had sneaked up behind him and quickly brushed his hands over Dick's brow, who wasn't quick enough to slap it away.

They got another roll of the eyes for that. Bruce had stopped counting how often that happened a day after he tried to talk with Dick about last week. His initial purpose was to gently show Dick how edgy he was being, but even if Dick had gotten the hint, nothing had changed.

Bruce knew that things were hard for his son. Now at home, there weren't nurses or urinary bags, wheelchairs or emergency buttons to help him master the days. Even though Dick had always hated being dependent, he had broadly accepted it in the hospital, realizing that he simply couldn't do without them. At the Manor, there were still people around him, helping and assisting, but that was a different thing; Dick was a grown man and didn't want to depend on Alfred or on his little brothers to get him to the bathroom. Bruce could relate, really. He himself was annoyed when people kept asking him if he was all right after an injury – Dick was getting the short end of the full-blown mother hen mode of not only Alfred and Bruce, but also of Babs, Jason (via phone), Tim and Damian (in his own, special way). He also understood how annoying it must be when people constantly tried to touch your forehead. Between Alfred and Bruce, it had become almost a habit to first check temperature before choosing how to proceed.

For Dick, the situation was downright frustrating – that was to be expected and didn't worry Bruce so much as Dick's way of expressing this frustration. There were basically two moods prevalent in Dick's behaviour, depending on how he felt: when he wasn't feeling good – as in extremely sick, tired, weak or depressed, since 'feeling good' was a phrase that lead to confusion –, he was sad and sullen, passive and generally avoided moving at all. That was the mood Bruce and the family could relate with, since it was understandable, and it was a lot better than the cynicism Dick was sporting when he was feeling 'better'.

When he had recovered from the chicken pox and was allowed and able to leave his room again, Dick had been confronted with how much things had changed. It was one thing to be weak in a hospital room, and another to be weak and dependent in surroundings that are familiar and connected to a certain lifestyle – the Manor had always been a place for Batman, vigilantism or swinging from the chandelier.

Dick's illness had changed the situation and Dick himself. Bruce was only beginning to see the little differences that in a whole pointed to a character development he didn't know what to think of. Some changes were understandable: Every time Dick was combing his new curls, he absent-mindedly shook the comb afterwards as if to get rid of loose hair, a sign that he still hadn't completely worked through not being sick any more. It explained why he avoided food, especially the heavy food he should be eating now to get some strength back. Alfred tried not to be too hard on him, but he and Bruce had begun to notice other changes as well, changes that seemed more permanent.

Dick got nauseous when he smelled patchouli*, so bad that he had to throw up. He had developed a deadly cynicism when confronted with his lack of energy, and the only family member who could deal with this so unfitting sort of humour for Dick was Alfred with a heavy dose of British sarcasm. Just last week they had found out that Dick was now apparently allergic to hazelnuts, which required a new change in Dick's medical file, right next to his changed blood group. He didn't eat cereal anymore, announcing that the thought alone made him sick to the stomach.

Dick didn't like cereal anymore.

That was wrong on so many levels, Bruce didn't even know where to begin, and he feared that those changes were just the tip of the iceberg. Nonetheless, it was necessary to confront Dick with what had to be done. He was still sick, weak, and if he collapsed somewhere in the Manor after walking off on his own, it would only throw him back again.

"Seriously Dick, you're in no condition to be walking around unsupervised," Bruce said therefore, bringing the topic up for the third time but swallowing down the 'and you wouldn't even get out of bed yesterday' he wanted to add.

Dick, still sitting opposite of him and glaring at Alfred sulkily, finally answered. "If I'm allowed to walk to the bathroom alone, I can also walk to the kitchen."

"You're having enough trouble walking to the bathroom."

"Yeah, but today's a good day," Dick shrugged carelessly. "Aren't you always trying to make me move?"

Well, he had a point with that. Even though Bruce had an easier time with the exhausted, non-cynical Dick, he was still trying to get him to do anything but watching TV. He couldn't really put his finger on it, but a passive I'm-an-acrobat-Dick was freaking him out.

"You should be wearing a sweater or something."

"It's fine."

"You're shivering."

"It's cold in here!"

It wasn't. Actually it was a very nice, lukewarm day of spring. Bruce raised a skeptical eyebrow and motioned at the window, through which warm rays of sun were falling.

"I was just standing in front of the fridge?" Visibly, Dick tried so hard not to roll his eyes, it was making them both smile a little bit. "The medication makes me tremble? Are you going to accept anything else but your opinion?"

"No," Bruce answered and was glad for the slight break in tension. "Though the trembling was a good one. Haven't heard that one before."

"I'm bored over there. There's just crap on the TV and I'll get a headache when I try to read."

Bruce smiled at him sympathetically. Dick was right in that phase of recovery when he was mentally fit enough to finally commit to advanced activities, but too exhausted physically. He felt bad that he wasn't able to present Dick with more distraction, but Bruce had neglected Wayne Enterprises during the critical months and needed to do some damage control now. Tim was spending his days in the library to study, Damian was in school, and Jason still didn't visit (at least not through the front door). Dick was on the phone most of the time and Babs came around as often as she could, but Bruce knew that Dick was tired of patient visits. He wanted a very specific kind of distraction that was challenging and had nothing whatsoever to do with hospitals and health. Too bad Bruce had made the rest of the family swear not to tell him much about crime fighting and Gotham.

"When will you be leaving tonight?" Dick asked just then, predictably.

Bruce swallowed and went through the case again; it wasn't tied to the photos or Freeze, so there wasn't any apparent reason not to tell Dick. Bruce just didn't like to, because he worried that it might trouble and thus overexert the boy, or that he would start to talk about it under drug or fever influence when other people were around.

But Dick was looking at him with big eyes, so desperate for a distraction that Bruce decided to make an exception and tell the reduced story. Dick knew the broad outline anyway, and Bruce would just give him a few more details. "We'll leave around eleven, Tim in civvies and me and Damian in costume. Tim sets the group up and will officially join them tonight, while me and Damian will keep an eye on him."

"Why today? You know where they'll be in three days, why risk Timmy's involvement?"

Bruce had already told him that they were going on a stake out for various days. They had a plan, knew the criminal group's plans for the next week, and already planned a team up with the Red Hood in a few days to arrest them. What Dick didn't know was that the group they were chasing was actually a top organized human trafficking ring that had slipped through the fingers of the police many times because of their decentralized structure. If anything seemed suspicious, the group dissolved into many small subgroups and vanished – the police managed to catch a few members, but those never carried enough evidence with them to be arrested for long or find the others.

Tim was going in undercover as an intermediary of a drug dealer ring that offered a new knock-out drug, hoping to get insider information about the inner structure of the group. There had to be a criminal mastermind somewhere, as well hidden and discreet as he was. If anything happened during the three days until the planned bust, Tim might have gathered enough information to still get rid of them. Bruce hoped that he might even be part of the disbanding and stay with the main group, while both Batman and Robin could always split up and continue their surveillance of the smaller subgroup separated.

All things he surely wouldn't tell Dick, even if the irony of the missing criminal mastermind was tempting. Bruce glanced at his son carefully, wondering how he had managed to fool them for months into searching for a non-existent puppet master. Babs had told them a few tricks, but they had decided to better let Dick tell that story – sadly, Dick didn't seem to feel the least need to bring the topic up. Bruce wondered if he had even realized that his master plan wasn't a secret any longer.. but then again, Bruce didn't even know how well Dick remembered the weeks preceding his relapse. He wasn't talking about it at all.

"They'll have other valuable information Tim might get out of them."

"But what if they'll go into hiding and Tim won't make it out in time for his exams? What if you'll have technical difficulties? What about the rest of Gotham while you'll watching them?"

Bruce shot Dick a stern look. "You don't have to worry about all that."

"But what about Harvey Dent? He managed to get out of that psychiatry ward!"

Bruce growled with displeasure. Damn the media for showing important news exactly when they shouldn't. He looked pointedly at Alfred, still leaning against the kitchen sink behind Dick, who shrugged with his shoulders as if saying 'what the hell am I supposed to do about the news?'.

"You won't tell me, will you?" Dick sighed sulkily. "I don't get it. It's not like I could run into the cave and grab a bike."

Bruce ignored the jab about the changed password to the cave and checked the clock, realizing he was running late for work again. He pushed his empty plate away and stood up, offering a hand to Dick, who sighed unhappily again.

"Come on, Bruce..."

"Dick," Bruce prompted with more urgency, and his stubborn son finally pushed himself up.

Bruce was watching closely for any signs of weakness or dizziness, but Dick seemed as fine as could be expected. He shot a longing, heartrending look into Alfred's direction, but moved next to Bruce when he saw that he wouldn't get any help from the butler.

As the two of them walked slowly back to the living room couch, Bruce felt a pang of guilty conscience about Dick's sullen silence. He really seemed to do well today; Bruce didn't have to support or call for stops as long as they weren't hurrying.

"Don't be mad at me," he broke the silence therefore as he opened a door for Dick. "You know that you need to take it slow."

"Yeah. Also I can't possibly miss the rerun of Desperate Housewives."

For a second, Bruce didn't know if Dick was being ironic again, but then he saw that Dick was actually glancing at the clock as if to make sure he wasn't too late yet.

"God forbid it. You wouldn't be able to follow the complex plot line."

"That's not funny, I can't even remember how old I ammost of the time."

Bruce felt bad immediately. Dick hadn't taken the news about his missed 24th birthday well. He had been feverish and drowsy all day, and every time one of them had checked he had been sleeping. Bruce knew that the problem hadn't been a missed birthday party, but the realization of how much time he had lost to the leukemia. With everything going on, that had been the icing on the cake.

And Dick's mind was still clouded by medication and exhaustion; he was just covering it well. He had problems staying awake for more than ten minutes as soon as he was lying down, and being condemned to watching television all day without being able to follow plot lines must be frustrating as hell.

"I always took you for a cartoon man," he mused therefore, trying to change the topic.

"Yeah, but the Powerpuff Girls are pretty boring if you actually have three little siblings who are crime fighting."

Bruce had to laugh at that, and the tense atmosphere loosened. Even Dick cracked a smile. They had reached the living room by now and steered to the couch where Dick was spending most of his time. While Bruce reached for the remote control and flipped on the TV, Dick sunk back into the ridiculous amount of cushions and blankets. The opening theme of Desperate Housewives began, and Bruce took a moment to gaze at all the different pill bottles, empty teacups and old newspapers that littered the place.

"I know, I know, don't say anything," Dick waved at the pathetic sight dismissively. "I'll clean it up this afternoon. Alf keeps glaring at me every time he walks by."

"Do you need help? If it's too much..." Bruce trailed off when he saw how Dick's expression darkened.

"It's fine."

Bruce had to get going, but he didn't want to leave on that note. Unfortunately for him, Dick's small talk abilities were among the things he was missing since he had returned from the hospital. Bruce could understand that it took a lot of patience and nerves to strike up a small talk conversation with him; capabilities Dick didn't have at the moment. But Bruce didn't possess them either, never had, and after almost fifteen years of relying on Dick's constant talking, he really didn't know how to strike up a conversation when the roles were reversed.

An uncomfortable silence ensued therefore, only disturbed by the quiet sounds of the TV.

"Is she still hooking up with her gardener?" Bruce asked finally, when he couldn't think of anything else. Embarrassment was better than Dick's resignation.

"Huh? Gardener?" Dick stared at him confused, then followed his gaze to the TV were one of the housewives was rushing through a shoe store in a shopping spree. "Oh, Gaby?! Bruce, that was ages ago!"

"Well, I'm not exactly up-to-date," Bruce shrugged at had to chuckle at Dick's flabbergasted expression. "I got couch time-outs, too."

Dick pried his eyes away from him and shook his head with a quiet laugh. "All my respect for you evaporated in this very moment."

Bruce pushed himself up from the backrest of the couch and headed for the door. "'Evaporate' is a big word for someone who can't remember how old he is."

The cushion hurtled past him by inches and hit the wall instead. Bruce smiled when he heard the Romani curses behind him, and was glad about how very Dick-like that reaction had been.

He ignored that Dick had been able to hit his targets in his sleep just a few months ago.

-tbc-

*this is a reference to Lifelines, chapter 11.

A/N: a few things you should be aware of:

-Faultlines will deal mainly with Dick and Bruce's relationship. It's about Dick's struggle to come to terms with his new situation, and Bruce's involvement in it. Damian will be important, too. Tim, Jason, Alfred and Babs will be there, of course, but they won't be as important as they were in Lifelines.

-Faultlines won't be as heavy on medical termini anymore. There will be some (you know me by now ;) ), but nowhere near as much.

-I won't be able to update as regularly anymore. Sorry in advance. I'm writing my bachelor's thesis right now, will move next month and then start my master's degree, so there is a lot on my plate right now. I'm trying to stay ahead with chapters, but I can't guarantee that it'll work.

-no slash, no romance, but cussing and some violence.

R&R, please :)