Chapter Text
It starts with a news report running in the background of a greasy little diner.
Bruce has his back to the TV, tuning it out in favor of listening to his son and concentrating on his burger, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing the way the blood drains from Jason’s face, his expression falling slack in horror. There’s a clunk of metal against porcelain as the fork he was holding drops from his hand.
“Jason, what’s wrong?” He launches immediately into action, mind whirring. Has he been poisoned? Is he having some sort of allergic reaction? Is someone here? Are they under attack?
“Nightwing,” Jason mumbles, voice barely more than a breath. His eyes are locked somewhere behind and above Bruce’s head and Bruce whirls around to try and spot the origin of his son’s distress.
He barely catches the bold words before the screen changes but what he does spot is more than enough to plunge him in solid ice.
Nightwing Found Dead!
Right there, on a slightly-grainy diner TV screen, is a black and blue body, laying in a puddle of blood and surrounded by crime scene tape and milling CSIs. No one has touched the mask, but it doesn’t matter. That’s Dick, Bruce would recognize him anywhere.
Dick is dead.
Bruce is on his feet before he registers moving, thighs banging painfully against the edge of the table. Jason hasn’t moved, hasn’t taken his eyes off of the screen. A tear rolls down his cheek, and that’s what manages to snap Bruce out of it.
He moves quickly around the table to crouch beside his son, doing his best to block Jason’s view of the TV. He can’t find his voice to try and comfort him, but it turns out he doesn’t need to. Jason leans against him, clinging with white knuckles to his suit jacket.
“It’s fake, right?” Jason mumbles. “It can’t really be him. Right?” His voice is pitching higher and higher, desperation coloring every word.
Bruce doesn’t answer, just wraps an arm around his youngest. “We need to go,” he chokes out. They can’t stay here in this diner. Bruce doesn’t even know where he’s supposed to go, what he’s supposed to do now, but he knows they can’t stay here.
Oh god. Alfred. Someone has to tell Alfred.
Bruce rummages through his jacket pocket, somehow without extracting himself from Jason’s hold, pulls out his wallet and slaps an indeterminate amount of cash onto the table. It should be more than enough to cover the bill, and Bruce couldn’t care less about the change.
“Come on,” he murmurs against the crown of Jason’s head.
Jason goes without complaint, tucked against Bruce’s side. He’s silent and pale as Bruce gets him into the car, face almost completely blank as he stares emptily, although his eyes are shining. He buckles his seatbelt robotically, and Bruce understands the feeling. There’s a numbness crawling uncomfortably across his skin, masking but not erasing the cold terror in his chest and throat.
They’re pulling into the driveway when Bruce’s phone rings. The sound startles Jason and stabs like a white-hot dagger at Bruce’s head.
“Who the fuck is calling right now,” Jason snaps, and Bruce ignores the language in favor of staring at the name on the screen. There’s no one he wants to speak to right now—well that’s not true, there’s one voice on this planet that Bruce wants to hear right now above anything else, but it’s highly unlikely that Dick would be calling him anyway.
“Jim,” Bruce answers, unable to keep his voice from cracking.
“Bruce,” Gordon sounds exhausted. Miserable. Bruce can definitely relate. “I—” He clears his throat. “Before I start, have you seen the news?”
Bruce had an inkling that Gordon has known their identities for a while now—he’s a smart man, a detective himself, and has been close with both Dick and Bruce from the start—so the realization settles bluntly in his gut. Unless Dick’s identity has been exposed to the public? It’s a possibility, one that Bruce can’t find much energy to be horrified about.
“Yes,” he replies. He’s seen it. He’s still seeing it, every time he blinks it’s burned onto the back of his eyelids.
Gordon sighs. “I am so sorry. I got a call from Bludhaven PD when they discovered the body. I’ve managed to keep the mask on, but someone will need to come down and ID the body.”
Bruce stares out the window, looking up at the Manor. Nine years ago he was pulling into this same driveway, a tiny Dick in the backseat, so small that his feet didn’t touch the floor. He’s ached for those early days for so long—remembering when Dick was his whole world, and he was Dick’s. When they were Batman and Robin, invincible. He has never yearned to get those moments back more.
“Bruce?”
“I’ll be there,” he says, then abruptly ends the call. He allows himself to slump, tipping forward to rest his forehead against the steering wheel.
This, he thinks, is hell.
It’s not hell. It’s not. Hell is peeling off his first son’s mask to reveal sightless dull eyes. Hell is seeing his child so pale, so still, so empty.
Hell is knowing now, for sure, that there is no later. There is no second, third, fourth chance to make up with his son, to solve their problems and put an end to the disagreements. There is no opportunity to apologize.
He will never speak with Dick again, will never hear his voice. He will never wrap an arm around his son’s shoulders and tug him in, will never hear his laugh as Bruce ruffles his hair. So many never s that Bruce had been naive to believe would never be.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce whispers, shaking voice falling on deaf ears. “I’m sorry, chum, I’m so sorry.”
He grips Dick’s hand, bends to press his forehead to his son’s, closing his eyes to block out the sight of his lifeless expression. He’d been stabbed, not necessarily a fatal injury if treated properly, but there had been poison on the blade, and that had ultimately been what killed him, although not after over an hour of slow agony. He’d died early in the evening, towards the start of a fairly early patrol, while Bruce and Jason headed toward the diner, blissfully unaware, in good spirits as they discussed Jason’s audition for the school play.
“Why didn’t you call for backup?” he asks. “Why didn’t you call, Dickie? I would have come. I would have come running. Why didn’t you call?”
It feels weird to say his name while in the Batsuit, even with the cowl yanked down, but that’s who this is. It’s not some paranoid, abstract fear or blurry image on a screen. It’s not hypothetical anymore. This is real. Dick Grayson is dead. Bruce’s son is dead. There’s a pain in his chest that rivals every broken rib he’s ever had, every knife scar and gunshot wound. It’s even worse than his parents, worse than anything he’s ever felt.
“I’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry.”
He closes Dick’s eyes for the last time, and something inside of him shatters.
Bruce jolts awake to the feeling of someone jumping on his bed.
“Wake up, you big lug! Up and at ‘em!”
He’s panicked in a way he rarely is, mind whirring. “Dick,” he gasps, yesterday’s events crashing down on him. His son is dead. His son is dead. Dick is dead.
“Try again!” Jason says, flopping down half on top of Bruce. There’s laughter in his voice, and it sounds so foreign and wrong considering the circumstances. “Getting senile on me, old man?”
Bruce stares at his youngest, at the wide grin on his face. He’s still in his pajamas, bedhead making his curls extra unruly. He can’t make heads or tails of what is happening. He distinctly remembers coming back from Bludhaven last night to find Jason curled up asleep on Dick’s bed, tear tracks on his cheeks. Bruce himself had only managed to drift off with the help of whatever Alfred had put in his tea. Last night there had been nothing but grief, so Bruce doesn’t understand why Jason is here bouncing on his bed as though nothing is wrong.
“You okay, B?” Jason asks. “Hello? Earth to Bruce?” He frowns. “Did you hit your head last night?”
“No, I didn’t get hit. I—” He shakes his head, trying to clear the fog.
Jason frowns. “Alfie sent me to wake you up. He’s made breakfast, we have an hour before you have to take me to auditions.”
Auditions. Jason’s audition was yesterday. The day Dick died.
Except, this happened yesterday too. Jason woke him up, Bruce took him to the school for the auditions, and they went out to a celebratory dinner at that greasy, gross diner that Jason insists he loves.
Bruce scrambles get a good look at the clock on his bedside table. Saturday. The clock says it’s Saturday. Dick died on Saturday.
It’s supposed to be Sunday.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jason asks, peering at him oddly.
It’s supposed to be Sunday, but if it’s not, if it’s Saturday, that means Dick isn’t dead. That means Bruce just had the most vivid nightmare of his life that wasn’t fear gas-induced.
“Yeah, son. I’m fine.” He ruffles Jason’s hair, a million pounds lifted from his shoulders.
He resolves to put the nightmare behind him—breakfast is waiting.
“Bruce,” Clark says, and he really should not be saying Bruce’s name while in costume. “Bruce, you need to come to the Tower.”
Clark looks devastated, so far beyond the kicked-puppy look he could get sometimes.
“I’m busy,” Bruce growls. “This had better be important.” This had better not be what he thinks it is, the worst case scenario that his paranoid brain immediately latched onto. The ground feels like it’s rocking beneath his feet, dread curling in his stomach. He grips the arm of his chair to fight through the nonexistent seasickness.
“Bruce… It’s Dick.”
No. It’s not Dick. It can’t be Dick. Dick is fine.
After his dreadful nightmare last night, Bruce had taken it upon himself to call Nightwing in on a League mission to get him out of Bludhaven for the day. He knows it was just his paranoia getting the best of him, but it made him feel so much better to make sure that Dick was not poisoned and bleeding out in Bludhaven.
A diplomatic mission with the League, with multiple super powered individuals who respected Nightwing but were also fully prepared to be his backup should he need it. He wasn’t alone. He would be fine.
He was supposed to be fine.
“What,” he grits out, swallowing bile.
“The mission went south… Can you please come to the Tower? I—I need to talk to you in person. I can’t…” Superman’s voice cracks, and the ground under Bruce’s feet goes with it.
“I’ll be there,” he says, unsure of how he even managed to get the words out with how numb his lips are.
He doesn’t need to ID this body. Even if Nightwing’s death hadn’t been witnessed by five different League members, Clark would have no trouble identifying the boy he’s known nearly as long as Bruce has. Uncle Clark, Dick had called him, squealing and laughing and demanding that he take him flying or shouting “Catch me!” as he hurled himself from the rafters.
The sight before him is strikingly similar to the one from his nightmare, and Bruce dimly remarks to himself how accurate his psyche managed to conjure up the way Dick looks in death. This time it isn’t a stab wound to his side, but a gaping, charred hole in the middle of his chest, nothing that could have been made by any weapon from Earth. It burned straight through his heart in a single shot.
“We weren’t ready,” Clark says. “One minute he was speaking to the delegation, the next he was down.”
Bruce swallows. Nods. He wants to scream and rage and demand to know why no one saved him, why it had been his vulnerable, human son who was the one to die. But he holds his tongue, knows below all the pain that Clark would have thrown himself in front of Dick in a heartbeat, bulletproof skin or no.
“It was painless,” Clark adds, as if it’s any consolation. “He didn’t suffer.” Clark can’t possibly know that, not really. Bruce knows that pain makes the seconds stretch into minutes, into hours. Dick may have been dead before his body hit the ground, but who knows how long that fall felt to him.
“Leave us,” Bruce rasps.
Mercifully, Clark just nods, casting one achingly sad look at Dick’s body before sweeping out of the room.
Bruce studies the body, unable to keep himself from documenting every similarity and difference between this moment and his nightmare last night.
“How is this possible? You were supposed to be safe.” He reaches out to take Dick’s hand, squeezing tight. “I thought I was saving you, chum, I swear. You were supposed to be safe. I—I don’t understand. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Something is going on, something is deeply wrong, but Bruce can’t even begin to distinguish it from his grief. He’d thought he was so good at compartmentalizing and holding the mission at the forefront of his mind even when emotionally compromised. But not this. He can’t just compartmentalize his dead son. It’s all-consuming agony that is eating him alive.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers again. This is the worst, most nauseating sense of deja vu he’s ever experienced. “I’m sorry, chum. I’m so sorry.”
He presses a kiss to his son’s forehead and lets himself fall apart.
Bruce’s first thought when he feels a small body jumping onto his bed is that something is definitely wrong.
“Wake up, you big lug! Up and at ‘em! Alfie sent me to wake you up. He’s made breakfast, we have an hour before you have to take me to auditions.” Jason grins above him, same bed head, same pajamas, same grief-free smile. Exactly the same as yesterday. Or—Bruce glances at the clock—what used to be yesterday. It’s Saturday. Again.
This is his third Saturday in a row now, and so far they’ve all started with Jason bouncing on his bed to wake him up. So far they’ve all ended with Dick dead.
Twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern, and Bruce fully intends to keep Dick dying from becoming a pattern.
“You good, B-man?” Jason asks, amusement in his voice. Bruce blinks to clear his vision, groggy and confused from both the early hour and the repetition of events. “Wow. I knew you weren’t a morning person, but this is a whole nother level. Did you hit your head last night?”
“I didn’t get hit,” he assures, because saying “I’m okay” would be a lie. “Go on down to breakfast. I’ll join you in just a minute.”
“Alright,” Jason says after giving him one last scrutinizing look. “But I’m not saving you any potatoes, so you better hurry up!”
Bruce takes a few moments to try and collect his thoughts and work through his situation strategically. Maybe he’s dreaming or trapped in some sort of hallucination—perhaps Scarecrow's work? Although usually it is much more difficult to recognize the effects of Scarecrow’s drugs once trapped inside the visions; nightmares aren’t really nightmares if you’re aware that what’s happening around you is a dream.
The other possibility is much more worrying. Bruce has dealt with space-time anomalies in the past, but nothing like this. He doesn’t have a contingency plan for this. The only thing he can think to do is try and make sure that Dick makes it through the night. If he survives, then the day might not reset. And even if it does, Bruce won’t have to close his son’s sightless eyes for a third time, and that’s an experience he most certainly wants to avoid.
After he takes Jason to auditions, he decides, he’ll go over to Dick’s apartment. Hopefully an in-person conversation will convince an ever-independent Dick to take a night off.
“Bruce!” Jason calls from downstairs. Bruce would be surprised that sound could even travel that far across the sprawling Manor, but Dick had lived here from ages nine to eighteen, and Bruce has more than enough experience with squeals and screams and laughs echoing through the halls. Kids are loud, and the Manor walls are surprisingly good at carrying that sound, even after years of neglect. “Hurry your butt up! I’m eating all the potatoes as we speak!”
“Dick?” Bruce calls, rapping at Dick’s door. He’s not at work; the gym where Dick teaches tumbling only offers Saturday classes in the early morning, and it’s now just after 3:00 pm, so he should be back by now. He should be home. Bruce sent him some League case files that needed to be gone over ASAP to keep him from going out. He should be home. “Dick, can I come in?”
There’s no answer, so Bruce decides to stop waiting, pulling a lockpick from his pocket and letting himself in. He’s starting to worry, the image of both of Dick’s dead bodies flickering at the forefront of his mind.
The door swings open as Bruce tries to convince himself that Dick just isn’t home to open the door, or maybe he just doesn’t want to open the door for Bruce. That’s fine, as much as it hurts—so long as he’s alive to avoid Bruce then he can deal with that. He’s been dealing with it for about two years now.
But the scene that awaits him when he rounds the corner into Dick’s apartment is one that will haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. It’s not Dick, still and pale on a hospital gurney, looking as though he just might be asleep were it not for the stitched and cleaned wounds and stillness of his chest. It’s blood, everywhere, splattered and smeared across every surface of Dick’s living room. The coppery scent flood’s Bruce’s nostrils, choking him and making it impossible to breathe as he scrambles towards Dick, dropping at his side. The rug he kneels on is soaked dark red and it quickly soaks through the material of Bruce’s slacks.
“No, no, no.” Not again. “Dick!”
He shakes his shoulder, other hand fumbling to find a pulse. There’s nothing, not that any logical person would expect there to be. There appears to be more blood outside of Dick than in.
“Why is this happening?” he mumbles to himself. “Why?”
Gently, he cradles Dick’s head between his hands, cupping his cheeks and wiping at some of the blood with his thumb. Bruce pulls him into his chest, holding him there and rocking him gently as the tears fall silently into dark hair.
“I’m going to fix this, alright chum? I’m going to fix this. I swear to you, I will fix this.”
He just has to go to sleep, that’s all. He has to sleep, and when he wakes up, Dick will be alive again. The day will restart and this time Bruce will save him. Just sleep.
He presses a desperate kiss to the back of Dick’s head before laying him back down reverently. “I’m fixing this,” he whispers as he brushes Dick’s bangs out of his eyes. His fingers catch in the blood-matted curls. “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I am going to fix this, okay?”
He just needs to sleep. If he just goes to sleep, he will wake up with two living sons.
Bruce grabs a blanket from where it’s hanging over the back of Dick’s couch and after some careful repositioning of Dick’s body, drapes it over his still form. It does nothing to disguise the fact that his son is lying dead on the floor of his own apartment, a place where he was supposed to be safe.
“I’m going to fix this,” he says to the lump under the blanket. Blood is already starting to stain the fabric, but that’s okay. Come morning, Bruce will wake up and Dick will be alive again and this time… this time he will save Dick. He has to.
He doesn’t know how long he kneels beside Dick. Long enough that his legs go numb, feet asleep and prickling with pins and needles. He wishes he could just fall asleep now. He wants to stop existing in a world where his eldest son is dead. But he can’t fall asleep now, not with Dick’s blood staining his hands and his pants, drying under his nails and sticking the fabric of his shirt to the skin underneath.
He is eventually pulled out of his shock by the sound of someone knocking rapidly on Dick’s door. He’s on his feet in an instant. Maybe Dick’s visitor will have some clue as to what is happening. Bruce will force them to tell him everything they do know. He will not let his son die again.
He hurls the door open, prepared for an interrogation, not caring for once that he’s not wearing his cowl.
“What did you—Jay.” His other son stands out in the hallway, his arms folded over his chest, a violent glare pulling on his features. “Jason. You’re supposed to be at your audition.”
“My audition ended two hours ago,” Jason growls, fury on his face. “What the hell? What are you doing here? Is that blood —” He leans to the side, twisting to look around Bruce and into the apartment.
“Jay…”
“You never came to pick me up so I tracked your phone and—” Jason’s eyes widen and Bruce lurches immediately, wrapping Jason up and trying everything in his power to block his view of the bloody living room.
“Hey, hey. No,” he says gently, tucking Jason’s head back down from where he tries to peer around Bruce’s shoulder. “You don’t need to see that.”
“Dick,” Jason chokes. “What— Is he—”
“It’s going to be okay,” Bruce says, tucking his head back down.
“How the fuck—”
“Hey.” He grabs Jason’s shoulders, squeezing. “I know this is scary, okay? But I am going to fix everything.”
“Dad,” Jason sounds so young, so scared. His eyes are wide and terrified. That’s his big brother’s apartment that’s covered in blood. That’s his big brother’s body that’s growing cold under a quilt. Bruce understands this terror viscerally. “What’s going on?” His voice trembles. Jason has never been this soft spoken in the entire time Bruce has known him.
Bruce hugs him tighter to his chest, keeping his hand planted firmly on the back of Jason’s head to keep him from looking. He presses his face into Jason’s soft hair, breathing in the scent of his son. His still living, breathing son.
“Something’s happening to me,” he explains, wishing beyond belief that he had more to go off other than a guess and a prayer, “and to Dick, but I will find a way to fix it.”
“But what is it? Dick is dead, Bruce.” Bruce ignores the way his voice cracks on the word dead. He knows this isn’t the end, that he will find some way to save Dick, but the grief is still threatening to crack him apart anyway. This is Jason’s big brother, and as much drama as this family has, he knows Jason and Dick love each other. And to see him murdered so brutally—Bruce’s heart is breaking for his second son as well.
“I’m not entirely sure what’s happening,” he admits. “But I know that when I wake up in the morning, everything will reset. And next time I’ll find a way to save Dick. Trust me, okay?”
“I do,” Jason says. “I trust you.” Bruce knows he only agrees so easily because he’s just as desperate as Bruce is for this to not be real.
Bruce presses a long kiss to the top of his head. “Then let’s go home, okay? Trust me. We just need to go home.”
“We can’t just leave him,” Jason’s voice cracks.
“There’s no sense in bringing him,” Bruce argues, although he has to agree that it feels wrong to just leave Dick here. “Come tomorrow, none of this will matter. It will be like it never even happened at all.” Except in Bruce’s mind. There, it will surely live on forever.
“You keep saying that,” Jason says. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing you need to worry about, okay? Just… everything will be okay. I will fix this. ”
Jason pulls back, studying him carefully. There are tears on his cheeks and his eyes are puffy and red. Finally he nods, face determined. “Alright. Okay. I believe you. You’ll fix this. You have to.”
He has to.
“Come on then, Jay-lad. We’re going home.”
Jason casts one last look back at Dick’s apartment before he lets Bruce wrap an arm around his shoulders and lead him away.
Everything will be okay, Dick.