Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“No.”

“Tim,” Superman says. And he sounds so sincere, so kind, so completely devastated. He is the perfect person for the Justice League to have sent with this message, because Superman is so goddamn caring that Tim is sure his heart would sound like it was breaking even if he did not know them personally. That Superman, the Man of Steel, sounds tragic and sorrowful each time he has to repeat this exact same string of words, like he is saying them for the first time instead of just reading off a script which Tim is positive has been worked re-worked until it conveys just the right amount of emotion. Reporter Clark Kent is practically famous for the emotions he is able to convey in his articles, after all.

He is positive that each time Superman has to deliver a message like this he sounds just as devastated as he does right now.

Tim kind of hates him for it.

But more than that though, he knows that Superman, that paragon of truth and justice, is lying. He has to be lying. 

Because if he is telling the truth, then that means that Dick is dead. The first Robin, Nightwing, who was always ready with a quip or a flip. Dead. His heart, the heart which had made Dick a hero, which had always been so big, stopped.

It means that the person who was always so quick to ruffle Tim’s hair in a casual show of affection, who was always so bright and warm, who had his own sort of gravity so that even when you were mad at him he pulled you in, was cold and gone and dead. It means that Tim is never going to be able to have any of the conversations Tim had been hoping to have but putting off until a more convenient time, a time that fit better.

If Dick is dead, that means that Tim has already heard the last words that Dick will ever say to him, and he cannot even remember what they were. That they have already spent their last night out as vigilantes together, their last quiet morning just enjoying each other’s company after a full night’s work, told their last joke together, had their last hug. All of the things Tim thought he would have more of, now made the last by virtue of hindsight.

But only if Dick is dead.

And Tim knows he is not dead. Tim knows that Superman is lying. There is no other choice, no other option.

Superman has continued to talk, to say things about what a great hero Dick was, how much he will be missed and that the world is a darker place without him. Tim has tuned it all out, because there is no point in listening to him. He knows Superman is lying to him.

And maybe if Tim was feeling generous, he might be willing to allow that Superman might not know he is lying. Tim might allow that Superman could genuinely believe the words that he is saying. He might have allowed Bruce or Selina or hell, maybe even Lex Luthor although why Superman would believe Lex Luthor on this is a mystery to Tim, to convince him that Dick is dead when he is not and that as soon as Tim makes his way to the Batcave, he will find out the truth of the matter. But Superman is trying to convince Tim that the person who is his big brother in all but name is dead, and Tim is not feeling particularly generous.

“Can I go now?” Tim snaps, interrupting whatever carefully curated speech Superman is halfway through.

“Tim,” Superman says, and this time he sounds disappointed, like he expected more from Tim.

Good.

Tim had always thought Superman was a good person, that he would not perpetuate a lie like this. And yet here they are. With Superman causing him pain, insisting that Dick is dead even when Tim knows the truth is otherwise. Intentional or not, the assurance still cuts him to the quick.

At least this way they are both disappointed in the other.

“I want to see Batman,” Tim says, because he knows that Bruce will sort this all out, he will pull Tim aside and tell him the truth, he will tell Tim what is really going on and where Dick is and what actually happened as well as loop him in on what their play is going to be. He is a little upset that Bruce did not make it to him first, but, well, Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a train, and able to leap a tall building in a single bound. It is entirely possible that he got here before Bruce did, because why would he not assume that the job that has always been his would remain his.

“Tim,” Superman says, and he sounds so patient, so kind.

“Batman,” Tim snaps over whatever it is that Superman is trying to tell him, cutting him off with little hesitation with his demand to see the person who is going to tell him what exactly is going on. And Tim knows in some distant way that he is being incredibly rude, that under other circumstances he would be kind of embarrassed by how he is behaving. But he does not have time for this.

He does not want to just stand around waiting for the truth to filter its way towards him after he has been cornered by everyone who has ever met Dick and who will want to offer their condolences. He does not want to have to accept their meaningless platitudes that are all variations of being sorry for his loss.

He wants to know what is going on, and why Superman is so convinced that Dick is dead when Tim knows he is not.

Because there is no way that Dick is dead. He cannot be dead because Tim would know. There would be some intrinsic part of him, deep down, that would have known, down to the second, if Dick had crossed over the line between life and death. He has an almost innate sense now, after so many people who are so important have left him. And Dick, the first Robin, the one who had first shown Tim that it was possible for people to fly, he is so important, one of the most important people to him.

Tim would have absolutely known it if Dick had died. But Tim had not felt it, so it was not true.

And he needs Bruce to confirm it for him. He needs Bruce to reassure him that Superman is lying, or at least is ignorant if the way his continued insistence in wearing that stupid look, like Tim kicked his puppy right after he had told Tim that he was entrusting him with the responsibility, both sad and disapproving disappointment. Like not only has he been expecting more from Tim, he also expected better of Tim.

Tim kind of wants to claw that look right off his face.

If he needs to be rude to get to what he wants, if he needs to be rude to get to the truth of the matter, to have what he knows to be true be confirmed and any fear or concern that he might be wrong that has started to seep in like water making its way up through the floorboards be soothed away, then Tim will be as rude as necessary. Because he refuses to blindly accept what Superman is telling him when so much of him is insisting that it is not true. That it cannot be true.

That he would know if it were true.

“Tim, Bruce is with Dick.” Superman says, and then softer, as if he is trying to cushion a blow, “With his body.”

That means that Bruce is still putting together whatever lie they are about to tell the whole world. It means that Tim will still have an opportunity to tell Dick goodbye before he goes on whatever thing has Superman lying to Tim about Dick being dead.

It means that Tim can lay eyes on his brother and confirm that he is healthy and hale and whole, without needing someone else to pass the message along for him.

He just has to get there.

Everything will start to make sense again as long as Tim can talk to Bruce, he and Dick both will make sense of this situation. Tim knows they will.

“He’ll need me there, I’m his partner,” Tim says, grasping for the first excuse that comes to his mind and seems plausible enough to get him to Bruce and Dick. Because even if Bruce is being obstinate, Dick will want to say goodbye, he will want to explain to Tim and he will want to make sure that Tim knows he is okay, especially when he figures out that Superman has been telling people that he is dead. All Tim has to do is get there.

If he has to leverage his position as a Robin, even if Damian still technically holds that role, then Tim will. He will leverage everything and anything he needs to.

“Selena is with him right now Tim,” Superman says. Which will complicate matters, but Selena will understand, she will side with Tim, she will know why he has to make sure that Dick is all right, except- “and both of them asked me to make sure you and your brothers know.”

“Who else have you told?” Tim asks, his throat tight. Because maybe he is not the first person that Superman has told this story to, maybe the others have already beaten Tim there.

And it is not a competition, Dick will still make sure that he singles Tim out for at least a few precious moments, no matter how chaotic. But at the same time, if others have already made it to Dick, then Tim will not have those few precious moments alone with Dick. Where Dick is focused on him alone rather than sparing a few moments for Tim while the others are fighting for more of their own time.

“You’re the first I found, I was hoping you’d be there with me to tell the others, to help them,” Superman says. There is some sense in it, Tim supposes, if there was any way to convince everyone that Dick is dead, having one of the Bats there will certainly sell it. But Tim cannot help but shoot Superman a nasty look, hoping it conveys everything he feels about that half baked plan. Tim gets along fairly well with some people that Superman is likely to want him to help with, but certainly not all of them. Not to mention that he will not be used to pedal whatever story he is supposed to be selling as he talks to everyone else without knowing what the real story is.

He does not want to have to tell people who will mourn Dick that he is dead when Tim knows it is not true but does not know what is really going on either. It will mess with his head too much, will make it hard to keep everything straight, will make it difficult to keep firm in his mind the fact that he knows Dick is still alive when he is saying over and over again that he is not. Especially when he has to watch each person grieve Dick in real time.

When he will have to deal with the people who want to reach out to him in their grief, to share in it and to make a community of it, to try and make it easier to bear as a group instead of individually.

“Tim, I know this is difficult, and I wish more than anything that I didn’t have to tell you this, but buddy, I need you to work with me here, just a bit,” Superman says. And for the first time in the whole conversation, there is something in Superman’s voice that draws Tim up short.

Because there is something different about his tone now, something tinged with desperation and sadness. Like a person in the middle of the ocean grasping frantically at a life raft that continues to remain just out of their grip, a person who knows if they do not grab onto a floatation device soon, their head will slip beneath the waves. Like Tim is a red and white liferaft and Superman has made several attempts to grab onto it.

Like for the first time in the whole conversation, a little bit of Clark Kent has slipped through.

And Clark Kent is grieving.

Tim knows it because he is so intimately acquainted with what it sounds like when someone is trying to hold a mask in place because it is necessary, while also collapsing inside from the way the world irrevocably shifts. Tim knows how the words can taste like ash on the tongue even as they are forced up the throat and out the mouth. Tim knows how exactly a spine needs to be held so that it remains straight even as it wants to curl forward and fold into the black pit that opens up and creates its own gravity, a miniature and personalized black hole.

He knows all of the small details that slip through with just that small crack in the facade that is Superman.

Tim feels a cold, creeping dread start to worm its way through his certainty. What was initially just a small puddle in the middle of his floorboards, easily ignorable and deniable, is quickly becoming a large pool, suggesting significant structural instability. The ground underneath him is suddenly not as sure and steady as he initially thought.

Because he was sure that Superman was lying to him, but Clark Kent is the man who watched Dick Grayson grow up alongside Bruce, who cared for Dick, who was called Uncle because as poorly as it fit at least it denoted him as family, and who loved him, because it was impossible to know Dick and not to love him at least a little. And he is grieving.

It makes Tim scared, to know that simple fact.

“How do you know?” Tim asks past the lump that has started to work its way up the back of his throat, lodging halfway up and blocking most everything except those breathless words. Clark hears him always, though Tim clarifies, as if there needed to be any clarification, “That Dick is dead, how do you know for certain? And not just in a, a death-like trance, or lost, or something?”

Because Tim has to cling onto something, he has to believe that this is not a permanent state of being, that it was a mistake. That Dick has not taken his last breath, said his last words, flipped his last flip, smiled his last smile. Until all hope is lost, Tim will not give up on Dick, just as he did not give up on Bruce when Bruce was lost in the timestream. Tim will follow every single last thread he needs to, as long as he has hope.

He can withstand any blow Clark is about to deliver him as long as he can see his way through.

That does not mean that the blow will not hurt though. And Tim knows that this blow is going to be devastating.

“I saw his body, Tim, I’m so sorry, I confirmed it for myself, Dick is dead.”

Chapter Text

Bruce stares at the screen, at the reflection of himself that he can see staring back at him now that the call, the video message really, was finished with. A part of him wants that video message back, to go back to those moments before his screen had lit up from a person who should have never had access to his systems. To reclaim and exist solely in the blissful moments of ignorance that had been his just previously.

Only he cannot do that, he must instead keep moving forward. Like a shark.

Even still, he sits there for a moment, his brain trying to process things, to fit them together in an order that makes sense, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle he has been handed and told make a complete picture with. Only he continues to come up with a piece that does not fit the rest of the puzzle, a part that does not fit into the whole of the machine.

Dick is dead.

That is what the messenger from Spyral just told him.

It is the piece that does not fit, that Bruce cannot make fit.

Dick died while on the mission with Spyral.

He got one call home to notify someone not attached to the agency that he had passed, and obviously he had chosen Bruce because everyone else in his life already believes him to be dead. Even still.

Bruce had chosen Dick for this mission because the opportunity had presented itself to them, opportunity had come knocking, as his father used to say. And Bruce knew better than to let the moment slip by, had known how precious the opportunity was. 

He had never pictured this moment though, in all the plans he had laid out, all his contingencies in which he would need to perform a swift extraction, he had never thought that he might end up here, not really.

It had of course been a possibility, but one so distant that it had not merited much consideration.

Bruce had planned for it though, it was part of the reason why only he was allowed to know that Dick had not died, not only did it minimize the risk that Dick’s cover would be blown, now the others will not have to grieve him a second time, they will not have to mourn him twice.

That is, if the spy organization he sent Dick to is telling him the truth of course. There is always the possibility that they are not.

He needs to consider every possibility equally.

Take into account all the branching pathways, so he minimizes the possibility of walking down the wrong one. Pick the safest route, the one that ends with the least number of people injured or in pain.

Bruce has trained for this, he knows how to do this. First, make a broad dichotomy, an either-or scenario. He can branch out from there, but two choices is always a good way to start.

Option one, Dick is dead, just as the message from Spyral would indicate.

In order to believe this, he must believe that Spyral or the individual who claimed to be working for them were being truthful when they told him that Dick had unfortunately died in the field and that they sent their deepest regards and regrets. He had been a good agent.

Option two, Dick is not dead, Spyral lied to Bruce with their message.

In order to believe this, he must believe that Spyral or the individual who claimed to be working for them lied when they indicated that Dick had died in the field. The spy organization that Bruce would call paranoid, were attempting to obfuscate the fact of Dick’s continued existence, likely for the sake of the mission. After all, Bruce had sent Dick to Spyral in the first place because they had been presented with the perfect opportunity with his death and swift resurrection.

It would make sense that if Spyral had discovered the fact that Bruce knew Dick was alive, that they had been regularly communicating with each other, that they would take steps to eliminate that connection by whatever means necessary. Telling Bruce that Dick is dead, leading him to believe what the rest of the world already thinks to be true, would be an easy, simple, and clean solution.

Two options in front of him, a forking road that will branch off into more decisions no matter which road Bruce takes.

But if he takes the first road, if he chooses to believe that, if he accepts what he has been told as truth, if he believes that Dick is dead when he is not, Bruce does not know what he would do. He is supposed to be Dick’s exfiltration strategy, his emergency exit. If Bruce walks away from him now believing that Dick is dead, if he abandons Dick to Spyral, he does not think he would ever be able to forgive himself.

He knows that everyone else who has ever loved or cared for Dick will certainly not forgive him if they find out that Bruce walked away from Dick, that he chose to believe Spyral over Dick’s own abilities. The very abilities that had made him successful first as Robin and then as Nightwing, Bruce’s partner and then a hero in his own right.

Every single one of them will be hurt if they find out that Bruce abandoned Dick.

If he takes the first road, if he chooses to believe that Dick is still alive and that Spyral is lying to him, and then later it turns out that Dick is dead, then only he is hurt. It does not change the facts of the matter for anyone else.

Logically considered, taking into consideration the potential harm of both paths, it makes sense to believe that Dick is still alive. That Spyral discovered the fact that Bruce was communicating with Dick, maybe even found the communication device itself and put together the clues. And then they took steps to ensure that Dick could not continue to reach out to Bruce, that Bruce would be unavailable if he tried.

If Dick is still alive, then there is so much Bruce will have to plan for, to set up. He will have to get Dick a new communication device, a better device. He will have to establish new extraction contingencies for Dick, make sure that they are better, that they account for the way Spyral discovered Dick, to prevent future discoveries. Or at least to put something in place so that if Dick is discovered again, he has the opportunity to call for help, that he can contact Bruce, that Bruce can get him out if necessary.

There are so many things he needs to consider.

However, if Dick is dead, there is not much Bruce will need to plan for. The funeral has already occurred, the people who love Dick have already been notified and their mourning has already begun and is well on its way. Healing from the wound that is the loss of Dick Grayson is already in progress for everyone else.

All Bruce will have to do is accept the facts of the matter and move on, hold the grief for Dick inside him, right where he holds the grief for his parents, for Jason and Stephanie, for Damian. For all the people who have considered him kindly and who he has managed to lose anyways.

The process itself might be difficult, but it is not like Bruce has not walked this path before, walked it too many times. Bruce will walk it again if it becomes necessary.

But while there are still options available to him, Bruce will explore them. He will not give up on Dick, because Dick has never once given up on Bruce. Because giving up, letting go without a fight, is not something Bruce can do when it comes to the people he loves most.

Spyral can tell him that Dick is dead all they like, every day until they are all blue in the face for all Bruce could care. He does not, cannot, believe that Dick is dead until there are no other options left to him but to believe.

“Shall I have your dinner prepared for you, Master Bruce?” Alfred asks him, voice blandly polite in a way that means that Alfred is upset with him, but is unwilling to push the issue. Just as he has been since shortly after Dick’s funeral, when Alfred had made the decision that Bruce’s behavior was unacceptable. 

It had been a popular feeling.

Most people are willing to work with him again at least, tolerating his presence in the way one might an unpleasant but ultimately necessary coworker. Alfred had never stopped, he has been the one constant, as he has always been throughout Bruce’s life. But he has made his displeasure known in other ways.

Bruce does not mind though, he always expected this. It was a possibility he expected and planned for when Dick had first gone undercover with Spyral. With the rest of the world, Bruce is an excellent liar, most do not even realize that he is lying and the ones who do inadvertently discover that fact, find themselves faced with one of his premade cover stories rather than the truth. Alfred has never been a member of the rest of the world to Bruce though, not when his parents were alive and certainly not after either.

Alfred was always going to be able to see right through Bruce, and all Bruce could offer was a simple magician trick in exchange. He had not been able to lie to Alfred the way Dick had needed him to to keep the secret of his mission safe, to keep Dick safe. So instead he had flashed shiny things in Alfred’s face near constantly, keeping him distracted with the flash and the sparkle of new problems to consider, new tasks to conquer. Busy work.

He had always known that Alfred would know exactly what Bruce was doing, that Bruce was lying to him about something and attempting to keep him from finding out what. He had been successful of course. The fact of Dick’s mission with Spyral had remained safe with Bruce, where he could be sure that no one would leak any details that might put Dick at risk.

But he still mourns the facts of what he had to sacrifice. Alfred being one of those necessary sacrifices.

“Yes, thank you, Alfred,” Bruce says, just as formal.

This is how they talk to each other now. Because Alfred will not soften until he knows the truth, until Bruce has stopped telling him the lie, and Bruce does not know how to stop lying to Alfred without endangering Dick, something he refuses to do.

Of course, he will stop lying to Alfred if the fact of Dick’s death becomes true, but until that is confirmed, he cannot act as if it is. Because if he acts like it is, then he investigates like it is. Which means that he might miss crucial evidence that proves that it is not.

“Will you be taking it in the Cave?” Alfred asks, half turning away from Bruce to busy himself with some menial task that probably does not need his attention right at this exact moment, but Bruce knows it for what it is. He knows it for the polite snub that he has been on the receiving end of far too often throughout his life to not know exactly what Alfred is doing. It still stings a little bit, but it is a sting that Bruce has long since become accustomed to. He knows how to bear its weight amongst all the other hurts he collects.

“Yes please, thank you Alfred,” Bruce says. Because he takes most of his meals down in the Cave when provided the option, and it is not like many people he cares about are clamoring to spend extended casual time with him.

“Very well Master Bruce,” Alfred says, dismissing Bruce.

Bruce lets out a soundless puff of air as he takes the dismissal and walks away from Alfred, his one casual, if stilted, interaction complete for the day. He is sure that other conversations will occur throughout the day, but Alfred is the one person Bruce still seeks out. Everyone else has made it abundantly clear that he should interact with them only when strictly necessary. A wish Bruce has done his best to honor.

It is better this way anyways, this distance that has grown between Bruce and the people Dick tied him to. It is easier to ignore, to willfully not know how much pain they are in thinking that Dick is dead, if he does not have to interact with them, if he does not have to look them in the eye with all his secrets locked behind his teeth while they look at him and see the person who was not a good enough hero to keep Dick safe. Especially now, when the possibility of Dick being dead feels so much more present than it did before.

When it haunts his footsteps and every move he makes.

The possibility of it being true is a dark shadow that clings to him as easily as his cape does, even as its invisible weight drags him down into darker waters than he has ever been in before. Each loss has dragged him deeper and deeper really, and for some reason Bruce keeps thinking that he has hit rock bottom, only to discover more water underneath him. He can still swim up out of these waters though, he knows that he can.

All he needs to do is prove that the secretive spy agency that he was only able to have Dick infiltrate because the rest of the world believed that he was dead, is lying to Bruce.

Tracking Dick’s movements through Spyral is difficult to say the least, there is a reason why Dick was able to infiltrate it only once the world believed he was dead. It is hard, even for Bruce, to piece together the actions of a man with no face.

Bruce knows his son though. He knows the little boy whose brow he had wiped of sweat when he was sick, whose hand he had held in his each time he was laid up in the cave after being injured, whose laughter had made the Manor seem more alive than it had been in every single memory Bruce has of it. He knows the grown man who had been strong enough to rebuild himself after Bruce had hurt him in a desperate bid to keep him safe, who had allowed Bruce back into his life time after time when Bruce had fucked up again and agin, who had given Bruce connection after connection and people to care about throughout it all.

His first partner who had taught Bruce what it meant to fall down and get back up again.

And so that is what Bruce does. He fell over when he got the message from Spyral, but he will get back up. Part of that process involves investigating the possibilities, determining if Dick is still alive, and if so, how to reestablish contact with him, let Dick know about the tricks Spyral is trying to pull. So that they can plan for it, account for it, put safeties in place so that Bruce does not ever have to feel that moment of unexpected freefall while knowing that he does not have a parachute or way to catch himself the way he did when he first heard that agent tell him that Dick had died.

First though, he has to find Dick. A task that he throws himself into without abandon.

It is easy to keep it from the others, the things he does while not out on patrol, while not in the cape and cowl that have become so synonymous with Batman. They do not care to spend time with him and so they do not look into what he is doing.

He spends days, weeks nearly all by himself as he throws himself into investigating. Following the barely there hints, the shadows that even Bruce has difficulty tracking. But he does find them, the whispers of people without faces, and within those whispers, Bruce finds Dick.

On a train, in Leicester, Malaysia, at a boarding school for girls for some reason. Bruce finds rumors and whispers and out of the corner of the eye glances that to anyone else would mean nothing. But not to Bruce. Never to Bruce.

To Bruce, each clue he finds, each incident where Spyral stepped in and became engaged in a situation, where Dick became engaged, where Bruce can see the fingerprints of his son left on each mission he was involved with, only strengthens his conviction that Dick is still alive.

Because Dick was the first child hero for a reason. For all that Bruce was, and still is, called all kinds of names and insults for the fact that he was the first to take a young protege under his wing and attempt to guide their footsteps. Dick had survived, he had been the first, the guiding torch in the night for so many others, and he had refused to let anything snuff him out. Bruce would be doing him a disservice to believe anything less of him now.

More than that though, there is the fact that with each clue he finds, all Bruce uncovers is Dick being unquestionably, gloriously alive. Even as his investigation hurtles him closer and closer to the moment when he received a call that told him otherwise.

And he just cannot manage, no matter how many times he turns over those moments at the Batcomputer, the moments when Dick was in the Murder Machine, when he had to face the possibility of a world without Dick in it were closer to the surface than they ever have been before, to make sense of the fact that Dick could be so brilliantly alive one moment, and then not the next. He just cannot make the facts fit into an orderly sense.

Dick is alive. He has to be.

Nothing else makes sense with all the facts considered.

Until Bruce finds evidence of the last mission.

The mission right before he got a call from a Spyral agent telling him that Dick had unfortunately passed away in service to the agency, that he would never come home again. That Bruce would never get to hold his son again. Would not even be able to bury him properly in a grave that he could go visit and sit beside.

Buce finds evidence of that mission, and his investigation comes to a screeching halt.

All records, every single shred of evidence that Bruce can find, points to the fact that someone died. Someone from Spyral.

Bruce is not sure who from Spyral of course, there is nothing that gives him the identity of the person who died, and so his two options still exist, the branch of his tree that needs investigating is still there. Spyral could have taken an opportunity, just as Bruce did with the Murder Machine. Dick could still very much be alive because there is nothing concrete yet that indicates he is not and Bruce cannot look that possibility in the face unless it is the only one left to him.

It still makes him jittery however.

That the possibility exists.

Jittery enough that he decides that he needs to go investigate in person. Not just gather intelligence and information from a distance like he has mostly been doing throughout his investigation so far, too concerned that if he leaves Gotham for too long, others will start to take an interest in what he is doing that has him so consumed.

This new break demands his full and complete and undivided attention. He cannot afford to get this wrong. Cannot afford to pick the wrong path to walk along just because it was inconvenient to walk it at the time.

Bruce has to make an in person visit.

He owes Dick nothing less.

Bruce stands on the field where his investigation led him and he knows. All of his investigating, all of his clues and fact finding. They had all led him here, to this moment. There are no more branching paths to consider, no more contingencies that he can put in place.

There is no one else here with him, to stand by his side on this plain, empty, unremarkable field in the middle of nowhere. That is by design of course. Bruce needed to be alone for this, not just for himself, but because that is what Dick’s mission required of Bruce. For him to be the only one who knew what was really happening, to keep a potential leak from being devastating to the mission, and to Dick.

Because who knew what steps Spyral would take if they discovered that Dick had infiltrated their ranks on Bruce’s orders, who knew what they would do if they discovered that Dick was leaking information.

Who knew what lengths they would go to in order to eliminate a rat.

It had been safer this way, with Bruce being the only point of contact. He was the one with all the contingencies in place, all the redundancies. He was the one who knew Dick best and knew exactly what Dick was capable of. He knew that out of anyone Bruce could have chosen to send to Spyral, Dick would be the safest.

None of that matters now of course, because Bruce is standing all alone in a half dead field and he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, who died in the Spyral mission, the one right before he got a call from Spyral telling him that Dick had unfortunately been caught in some crossfire protecting someone else, his partner, because for all that Spyral was a spy agency that did not trust anyone, they paired their agents up for missions, and that he had passed away on site, with no chance to revive him. All of Bruce’s carefully laid plans, his contingencies, the escape plans and extraction plans, none of it matters anymore.

Because in the end, none of what he did protected Dick. The secrecy and the plans and every single branching path he considered, every eventuality he planned for. All of them are meaningless.

All of them end here, a dead end. Something Bruce had planned for, but that if he is being honest with himself, he never really thought he would have to engage with.

There is no getting around it now though, Bruce confirmed the facts himself, beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Dick is dead.

Chapter Text

Jason walks into one of his safehouses, he is not sure which one, it does not really matter. He walks into a building that he knows every single inch of. And as he walks into the building, he rips off one of the modifications he made when he adapted this into a safe house that is supposed to alert him if someone breaks in.

He rips it off the wall, and without even pausing to think, he chucks it across the room, watching it break and shatter apart upon impact.

Simpler than trying to disarm it anyways.

His helmet gets thrown in a different direction, Jason hears it bounce against the floor,  probably breaking too, with at least one part of it intact to roll away as well, but he does not care enough to actually check. There is nothing else within an immediate grabbing range that he can throw.

Jason whips the door closed behind him, hearing the way it rattles in its frame with the slam as he stalks further into the safehouse, his anger rolling off him in waves that he can practically see they are so thick. And a part of him, a small, rational part of him tries to whisper that he should calm down, that a safehouse stocked to the brim with explosives and firearms is not the place to lose his temper like this, like he is an explosion unto himself.

He tells himself that he cannot afford to lose his cool. No matter how much he wants to. This needs to be a marathon, not a race. It has to be. Jason halts his progress in the middle of his safehouse and tries to take a few deep breaths to cool his head, to slow his rising temper.

It only partially works.

His hands curl into fists, the leather of his gloves creaking as the cardstock he is holding crumples in his fist, his jaw clenching until his teeth ache.

Jason’s whole body is singing him a siren song, every single molecule in his body is aching to respond to it, to allow himself to be carried off by the promises it makes.

He wants to hit something.

Jason wants to hit something, again and again, until whatever he is hitting cannot get back up again, until all this anger that he can feel bubbling and roiling just under his skin, is gone, until he feels cool, calm, and collected again. Because he is familiar with this anger, with the way it makes him stupid, reckless, and impatient. This anger is as familiar to him as a second skin at this point.

And Jason knows exactly how to excise it from his body.

He knows that he could go out and take his anger out on the fucking low-lives of Gotham, the real shitheads of Crime Alley. But it will not be as satisfying as making the people who killed Dick pay for it with their own blood, their own screams, their own pain. With some interest taken for all the suffering that came after too.

They are the reason why Jason is holding a crumpled, thin, white, cardstock, printed with an elegant script that tells him exactly when and where he should be to attend the funeral of Dick Grayson, Jason’s onetime brother.

The Robin who got to survive into adulthood and then some. The golden child. The one the whole goddamn caped community adored.

And those bastards who had killed him had not had to face a single fucking consequences. Much less one that fit the crime of murdering Nightwing. Instead, the cowards all had nice comfortable cells where they got to stare at the wall and plot their escapes. 

Where they all had the pleasure of continuing to live.

Like they were not fucking monsters.

Jason would love to have just a few minutes alone with them, to show them how much of a fucking monster he has been made into. But he knows that no one from the goody two-shoes Justice League is going to let him get anywhere close to any of those fuckers anytime soon.

Besides, Jason wants to make sure that he has more than enough time with them to really make them feel each single second. He cannot rush with them, no matter how much the anger singing under his skin croons at him that watching them all bleed would be so very satisfying.

He knows, that as bitter as the thought is, that they will have to wait for their day. And perhaps what makes that thought even more bitter is the knowledge that they will not even know that their days are numbered, they will not know to count the minutes until Jason shows up.

In a way, it is almost poetic because Dick did not know to count the minutes he had left either.

But Jason still wishes that he could make them feel scared. It is always better for your enemy to be scared, to know that you are coming, to perhaps put up a futile resistance, and then to fail anyways. The League of Assassins had taught him that. And it had proved a very effective lesson.

The Crime Syndicate fuckers would not be scared, unless Jason could make them scared, could alert them to the fact that he was coming for them, and that there was nothing they could do to stop him. It was an idea to consider at the very least.

It does not solve for his immediate problem though, the way he wants to rip and tear and claw at something, anything, to soothe the seething sea of anger, of pure, white hot rage. Knowing that he will, eventually, get revenge for Dick, that he will be able to do at least that one thing for the man who had called Jason a brother at one point in time and may have even put flowers on his grave. That he will be able to see complete the one thing that no one had been willing or able to do for Jason when he had been ripped away from life at the uncaring and unfeeling hands of a monster, does not make his current feelings any less potent.

Because at the end of the day, he is still holding onto the fucking funeral announcement. And those fuckers are still breathing.

Jason has known for years now that the world is unfair, might have even come into this world knowing that fact, but it does not make it any easier, having that fact shoved in his face again. Because if the world was at all fair, Jason would not have died trying to save his mother from the Joker, and Dick would not have died at the hands of people who looked like the people he trusted for so much of his life.

He lets out a scream, because there is nowhere else for the anger to go. It just exists inside of him and if he does not vent it somehow it is going to explode from the inside out. The scream only seems to feed it though, to make the swirling mass inside him stronger.

Jason whips around, ready to throw himself blindly down the hallway that leads to his gun room, because if he is going to be angry he might as well be productively angry, might as well make sure that every single firearm in this god forsaken safehouse is cleaned thoroughly, in better than working condition for when he needs them. Fiddling with all the parts of the guns and anything else he can get to come apart under his fingertips promises to at least distract him for a little bit.

At least until the molten core of him is too hot to resist any more.

That is his half-baked plan until the moment he catches sight of Roy, half lounging in the opening that would lead him to his firearms, blocking Jason’s intended path forward as he says, “Well, at least I don’t have to ask how you’re handling things.”

“Get the fuck out,” Jason snarls.

Roy just looks at him for a long, silent moment, neither of them willing to back down. Jason can feel the way the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle with each second their little contest continues on for. He will not be the first to break though, Jason learned stubbornness at the knee of the Bat.

“What are you doing, Jason?” Roy finally asks, breaking their little standoff with a sigh.

There is pity in his eyes, he looks at Jason like Jason is someone to be pitied. Jason hates being pitied, hates being looked at like he is still that snot-nosed brat who got picked up off the street for trying to lift the Batman’s tires because they would sell for a bit more money and Jason was desperate enough to be ballsy about it.

Only, that kid died.

He died desperate and broken and all alone. Just like Dick had.

“What the fuck does it look like I’m fucking doing?” Jason snaps, angry. So very angry. It is like his anger is all he is, the only thing he can feel.

He cannot stop thinking about the fact that Dick is dead, and that if there was any justice in the world he would not be, but of course, there is no justice. If there were justice in this world, kids would not die in brightly colored costumes, half convinced they were invincible right up until the moment the bomb went off.

“Grieving,” Roy says after another pregnant pause where the silence only serves to fuel Jason’s anger

“I am not fucking grieving for that shithead,” Jason snaps.

He is not grieving Dick Fucking Grayson. There is nothing there to mourn.

Because even after he died, Jason got to come back. He got to open his eyes and face the reality that he had never really mattered in the grand scheme of things. Another kid had come along and Bruce had shoved him into a costume that had last been worn by a corpse that had barely finished cooling before everyone had moved on. Every single thing Jason had accomplished as Robin, the effort he had put into being the Boy Wonder, into being magic, had been handed off to someone else with only a single, torn and bloody costume locked up in a glass cage to remember him by.

No one really cared which traffic light colored kid was handing them their ass after all, all they knew was that it was Robin. No one had cared that Jason had died, that Robin had died, not really, they just found the next convenient blue-eyed, black haired innocent and made him drink the kool-aid.

And even after he had come crawling back from the dead, even after he had made a name for himself, made himself mean something. It had not been good enough for the Bats, because Jason had never been good enough for the Bats. Never done things the way the Bats preached, sticking to the straight and narrow and never setting even a single toe out of line.

He had always been the fuckup, and how could he ever hope to compare to the precious fucking golden child? Much less expect the dickhead to care about him. 

Jason cannot stop being angry about it all.

It is eating him up inside, until the anger is the only thing there.

“Jason,” Roy starts, probably intent on making some heartfelt speech about all the virtues of Dick Grayson and how now, in this moment, Jason should step up, be the man that Dick Grayson would want him to be.

The only problem is that Jason spent most of his childhood years living in the shadow of Dick Grayson, first as a kid from Crime Alley who could not help but look up to Robin and hold onto a foolish hope that he would see Jason one day and know that he was in need of rescuing, and then as the second Robin who could never live up to the standard set by the original. And then he died and came back and he realized that Dick Grayson’s shadow was so much bigger than the actual person, big enough that even in his death, Jason cannot quite escape it fully.

He wants to though, he wants to be free of the specter of Dick Fucking Grayson.

“No, fuck you and whatever bullshit you’re trying to spout at me. I’m not your bitch and you can’t make me swallow. Everyone is acting like one self-rightious asshole biting the bullet is a fucking tragedy, like he did something fucking special when his heart stopped,” Jason snarls, firing off each word like they are bullets from a gun, hoping to hit something tender, something weak.

Hoping to hit something that makes Roy hurt.

And it works, at least partially, because Jasosn sees the way Roy tenses, the angry set to his mouth as he tries to interrupt with a snapped, “I’m not-”

Jason is on a roll though, he is a boulder flying down the hill, a fire that jumped the stopgap and is blazing out of control, and he refuses to be stopped.

“You’re all holding memorials and talking about how great of a fucking person he was, like this isn’t an expected outcome-”

“Jason, enough-”

“- for someone who put on a cape when he was nine and called himself a hero and got praised for it by daddy dearest and all you other fuckers who were supposed to know better, just cause he could do a few cool tricks!”

“You don’t-”

“But of course, he got to be an exception to the fucking rules because he shat rainbows and sparkles and he happened to get lucky once or twice! Like he didn’t tell kids that they could be heroes too and kept marching merrily on when they got themselves killed in his example while the rest of the world fucking clapped!”

“Stop!”

“But the truth is, Dick was an asshole who got what he deserved, and you all might as well have pulled the trigger yourselves. You’re just mad you can’t hold him up anymore as the perfect example against all those fucking graves.”

There is a moment of dead silence between the two of them, where Jason is at least distantly aware of the fact that he is breathing raggedly, like he ran a race while Roy stands supernaturally still, his face completely blank. And Jason cannot help but feel a vicious kind of satisfaction.

Because now Roy is mad too.

“You’re an asshole, and Dick deserved better than you,” Roy says, his voice cold.

“Say hi to Lian for me when you go see Dick,” Jason says, lashing out right where he knows Roy is the most vulnerable. “Since you got a one stop shop now.”

“Fuck you, I wish it had been you who died!”

It hits Jason like a train. Knocking all the wind out of his sails and his feet out from under him.

He forgot that Roy was a marksman long before he was.

They look at each other for a moment, neither one of them taking back anything that they have said. The tension and the words exchanged hanging in the air around them like a noxious gas. Like barbs that are slowly dripping poison.

Then, a match to gasoline, the whole thing explodes as Jason lunges forward.

Roy blocks his first punch, and the kick he follows up with, but Jason gets him solidly across his face with the next strike. He takes a fist to the stomach for his efforts, but it is worth it. They trade blows, hard and fast, but Jason’s blood is singing in his veins and everything finally seems in perfect harmony, he knows each step before he takes it, each breath before he breathes it.

Because finally, he has a vent for all the anger that has been building up inside him.

Until Roy pushes him back sharply, the move catching Jason off guard enough that he is unprepared for the solid strike across his jaw that sends him staggering back another few steps.

“Stay away from me until I say otherwise,” Roy tells him with the moment his punch has bought him.

Then he is gone, before Jason can get another swing in, leaving the way he presumably got in.

Not like Jason cares. He has things he needs to be doing, plans that need rough drafts and then second drafts and perfecting. He had never asked for someone to try and comfort him, to be a fucking beacon in the night or whatever the fuck Roy thought he was doing by coming here. Jason was perfectly content all by himself before Roy showed up, that fact has not changed after a few punches and slung insults.

It might have made the anger worse, feeding it a little bit of fuel, giving into what it wanted. It feels almost other than him, like the anger is not fully his own.

Which makes sense in a way. Jason might not be mourning Dick Grayson, but he sure as hell is angry that he is dead, because Jason had been one of those stupid kids who had fallen for the promise of Robin, once upon a time. And he had believed in the lie, even after he had died for it, because Dick was still alive.

Until he was not anymore.

Jason supposes that Dick would have been angry, having his lie revealed like this. So it makes sense that the anger he is feeling right now is Dick’s anger too in part. Jason is just the only person who can express it for him. He just hopes that making sure that justice, true and real and lasting justice is done, will be enough to satiate it.

Because deep down, a part of Jason is tired of feeling this angry.

Chapter Text

Nothing changes.

Bruce leaves the field where Dick died behind, unremarked upon. He returns to Gotham, to his city and the people he swore to protect long before he would have ever been able to properly understand what he was swearing. Picks back up the routine that has defined most of his life.

Dick Grayson dies, and nothing changes.

Of course nothing changes. Dick Grayson has been dead for a long time now for the rest of the world, long enough that they have begun to heal from it, to recover from it. Bruce is the one who needs to catch up. No one else is even aware of the transition.

Which is exactly how Bruce had intended it. No one else needs to start the mourning process fresh, having had the possibility of Dick returning safe, whole, alive firmly removed from possibility. He is the only one affected by this new piece of information. He is the only one hurt anew.

Bruce goes back to Gotham, and nothing around him changes.

Rationally, this should be a good thing. His contingency is playing out the way it should, with the fewest people hurt. Dick’s cover was never compromised, so Bruce does not have to question any of the intel that Dick smuggled out to him. He will not have to communicate the fact of Dick’s most recent death to anyone, will not have to face them and watch their world crumple all over again while he keeps impassive, the Bat instead of Bruce Wayne, because each of them would have expected to be approached by the cold and rational vigilante rather than the grieving father.

He does not have to deal with people trying to lean on him in their grief whilst he is still in the midst of his own, drowning without any water.

Even so.

Even so, Bruce cannot help but feel like something in the world should have changed. Something should have been irrevocably altered the second Dick’s heart stopped beating. Bruce should not have had to find out from a fucking phone call from someone who barely even knew Dick, who had nothing more to say to Bruce about Dick than that he had been killed in action and that they were sure he would be missed. That his son had been so dedicated to the cause that Bruce had foisted off onto him, that he had been halfway across the world when he had died, Bruce must be so proud, that the little boy whose tears he had attempted to dry on more than one occasion had been so loyal, he had followed Bruce’s orders into the grave.

The whole world should have been altered by the death of Dick Grayson.

But it was not.

Dick dies and nothing changes. 

Nothing changes at all.

Even Bruce, who now knows a fact that everyone else has believed to be true for much longer than he has, cannot afford to change. As much as he wants too, Gotham will not allow him the space or opportunity to change with this news. His city needs him to be the Batman, more than he needs to change with the death of his first partner.

The others who loved and mourned Dick will not allow him to change, not when he has been as steady and strong as a rock while they were all lost in the eddies of the river that had swept everything away with the flatline that had stopped the Murder Machine. They need him to be strong, more than he needs to change with the death of his first child.

And Dick will not allow him to change, the ghost of him that haunts Bruce’s memories, not when the last thing he did was attempt to ensure the safety of all the people he loved best in the world. Dick needs him to be the same, to not change, because any variability at all might put everything Dick sought to protect with his last breath at risk. Bruce refuses to do that to Dick, he refuses to retroactively make the last thing that Dick did with his life worthless.

So nothing changes.

The world keeps on spinning, the days keep on dawning. Bruce keeps up his work as Batman.

Everything continues on just as it always has.

And a part of Bruce quietly seethes with the knowledge of it.

“Is something wrong, Bruce?” Superman asks him, his voice hesitant. Like he is wearing those thick glasses that seem to physically weigh him down, like he is the regular human he pretends to be rather than a founding member of the Justice League, the Man of Steel, Superman. As if he is still desperately trying to separate himself from Ultraman, from the actions of a man who wore his face.

It has been driving Batman up a wall recently.

Batman knows that to be irritated by it now is nearly irrational, it is not like Superman’s behavior has really changed. Even before the Crime Syndicate had invaded their world, before Ultraman had worn Superman’s face and insisted that the world belonged to him and his cronies, Superman had acted like this. Like he had to shrink down into himself so that people would forget how terrifying he could be.

Of course, Batman never forgot, could never forget just how easily Superman could step into his power, could end a life, like snapping his fingers.

Dick had forgotten, had forgotten that most murders, most acts of violence, were committed by the people closest to the victim and that Dick knew a wider range of people who had a greater capacity for violence than most, and he had paid the price for it. He had died.

He had died because he had forgotten lessons that Batman is sure he taught him, lessons that he cannot seem to ever forget.

So Superman’s behavior, despite the fact that intellectually, he knows has not really altered, still manages to scrape against all his sensibilities in the most grating way. Because he knows what Superman is capable of, and a part of him protests the idea that Superman attempts to disguise them even now, when everything has changed.

“Bruce,” Superman starts, clearly exasperated by his continued silence. It is not like Batman is just ignoring him though, there are a myriad of tasks that need to be seen to on the Watchtower to ensure it maintains its optimal conditions, and it is not like any of the other members of the Justice League ever see to them. They allow the tasks to fall to the wayside, if Batman does not see to them on a regular basis.

It becomes his responsibility, and with that knowledge, it does not make sense to simply wait to become involved, he might as well be proactive.

“Superman,” Batman says, because Superman does seem to be expecting some kind of response from him.

“Bruce, come on,” Superman says. Pleading with Batman about something, although Batman has no idea what.

“If you have a point, Superman?” Batman asks, an edge to his voice as he stops what he is doing. He does not turn around to face Superman though, he wants to be able to resume his tasks as soon as he has heard whatever it is that Superman is trying to communicate to him in the most roundabout way possible.

“A point? Bruce!” Superman snaps at him, his patience seemingly reaching the breaking point. Good, it means that he will get to the point faster, and then Bruce can go back to the important tasks no one but him ever seems to want to handle. “You were completely out of line with Barry.”

“He got people killed,” Bruce says, hard. Because it is the truth, three people are dead now because of Flash, because he seemed unable to follow a simple plan to completion.

“He made a mistake, Bruce, one he was already upset about,” Superman says,

“I am positive the people who lost their loved ones because of his ‘mistake’ will feel comforted knowing that The Flash feels bad,” Batman says, still refusing to turn around and look at Superman, to watch his words impact. 

“I have always known you to be a just man, Batman,” Wonder Woman says from somewhere beyond Superman, probably standing in the doorway if Batman had to guess, likely having heard his last statement, but impossible to tell how much more she had, “One who is dedicated to his cause, and whose determination and intelligence has led him to inspiring many others that I respect, one I was confident enough in to align myself with. I did not think you to be cruel.”

She says it calmly, like she is delivering facts, rather than just opinions.

Batman has had enough of it.

Something ugly rises up inside him, dark and sticky as tar as it coats the back of his throat, filling his lungs until everything he breathes is coated in it, until he knows, before he even opens his mouth, that every word he speaks will be dripping with it, born from it. And he does not care.

Because both of them are so concerned with Flash’s feelings, with correcting the way Batman spoke to him apparently, that they do not seem to remember that people are dead. There are people who will go to sleep tonight knowing that they cannot hold their children close, will never again get the opportunity to be forgiven for a mistake, must continue on into a world that no longer holds light the same way as it did before because parents should not have to bury their children.

They seem to have forgotten these facts, or at least to have dismissed them as unimportant in the face of Flash feeling bad.

No matter, Batman is happy to remind them.

“People died!” Batman snaps as he whirls on them, finally facing the both of them, starting with the most important fact, the one that none of them can be allowed to flinch from, “Innocent people with families are dead because of his decisions!”

“He made a mistake!” Superman snaps back, his own voice rising in answer to Batman’s.

“He didn’t listen!” Batman says, because that is also true. He had told Flash what to do, had communicated it clearly with him, and then Flash had deviated and because of that deviation, people were dead who should not be.

“Your plan wasn’t working, Batman, and Flash made a necessary call in the moment,” Wonder Woman says, her voice cool and impassive as she looks at him, distant. Detached.

“The plan would have worked if Flash had followed it,” he says, trying to regain some of his composure, to pull himself back under control. Because he knows it would have, he had planned for every accountability and the plan covered for them all. The plan had been solid, until Flash had deviated from it.

“It wasn’t working, and Flash saved the people he could,” Wonder Woman says. Meeting his gaze head on.

“If he had followed my orders, he would have been able to save all of them, not just some of them.”

“Bruce,” Superman starts.

Wonder Woman cuts over whatever it was that Superman was gearing up to say in that irritatingly soft voice of his with a challenge, “So you assume.”

“Diana,” Superman tries again.

“I know,” Batman grinds out from between his teeth.

“Stop! Just stop!” Superman says, inserting himself into the conversation and finally bringing some of his power to bear, shedding a bit of Clark Kent, farm boy, and putting on Kal-El like he is putting on a new coat. “Both of you! Arguing about the plan now is pointless!”

Superman turns to Wonder Woman and tells her, “Bruce is right, people died, we can’t ignore that fact, but Bruce,” and here Superman turns back to Batman, something indecipherable in his eyes as he says, “Barry already knew that. He was already beating himself up about it, before you came in.”

“I ensured he knew not to make the same mistake twice,” Batman tells Superman, looking into those eyes that look almost human, that most people would assume are human, but still manage to be unsettling if you look at them too long, an optical illusion. He does not look away.

He refuses to look away.

Because he refuses to be cowed, to let the optical illusion of Superman, Kal-El, and Clark Kent, all of them layered on top of one another to create the image of a person, intimidate him into backing down.

“You told him it was his fault, in front of everyone,” Superman says quietly. “You blamed him for their deaths, in front of everyone.”

“We’re the Justice League, we don’t get to make mistakes like he did and brush off the deaths of people who died on our watch. Flash needed to understand the consequences of his actions,” Batman says, resolute.

“What happened Bruce? What changed?” Superman asks, searching for something in Batman’s eyes through the lenses of his cowl. Batman knows what he is doing, can feel the subtle difference between Superman looking at his cowl, and looking at him. “We’re your friends, we’ll help you with whatever you need, just tell us. Please.”

“My ‘problem’, Superman, is that there are people dead who should not be, and that their deaths were avoidable. We should have avoided them.”

Superman closes his eyes, a look almost like pain crossing his face. Only Batman knows that it cannot be pain, because there is no Kryptonite here in the Watchtower right now, and if there is no Kryptonite, then Superman will not feel pain, cannot feel pain. Then he lets out a breath of air that seems to come from somewhere deep inside him as he steps slightly away from Batman and quietly says, “This isn’t working.”

“Something we can agree on,” Batman says, watching him go, watching Wonder Woman move forward to stand at his side. A united front against him.

A few moments of silence persist between the three of them where Batman observes them, Wonder Woman watching him in return while Superman keeps his eyes closed. Batman knows better than to assume that Superman is not paying attention to him though, even with his eyes closed, Batman can feel the weight of Superman’s attention on him.

Finally, by some unspoken signal, Superman’s eyes open and Wonder Woman steps slightly forward to say, “Go back to Gotham, Batman. We will keep things running for now.”

“What?” Batman says, the single word hard and fast, a whip cracking in the space between them. And he knows what they mean, he knows exactly what they are trying to tell him without actually telling him, but if they want to banish him from the Watchtower because he had rightfully called out a mistake that had cost parents their children, then they will have to say it outright. He will not allow them to hide their intentions behind half-statements and leading assumptions.

“Go home, Bruce, take some time away from the Justice League. Come back when you’ve had some time to recenter yourself or you’ve dealt with whatever is going on that you won’t talk about,” Superman says. His eyes are distant as he meets Batman’s gaze, and that gaze is as removed as if Superman were floating over the top of the city and Batman were down in the depths, slogging through the mire while looking up at a shining beacon.

As if he is better than Batman. As if he has any right to act this righteous while making this call, removing Batman from the Justice League as if he were not a founding member.

As if Batman is not right to be furious at the fact that lives had been lost when they should not have been.

“If you think-” Batman starts, drawing himself up to his full height, ready to do battle against people he once considered his closest comrades.

“It has already been decided, Batman, do not try and argue otherwise,” Wonder Woman interrupts, cutting across his protest.

Batman looks at them both, Superman and Wonder Woman, and he feels something hot twist in his gut, burning him from the inside out. Because both of them look impassive as they deliver this verdict, and Batman knows, without having to know, that they are not making this decision in a vacuum. They are just the mouthpieces for the rest of the Justice League.

There is a wildfire licking away at his insides, consuming him. Or at least it is trying to.

Batman has had years of experience controlling himself, of locking down his first instinct until he can assess the situation and make the right move. This situation is no different than any other. 

Clearly Superman and Wonder Woman walked into this interaction with more knowledge than he had. It is likely that the vote was held recently, they would not have wanted Batman lingering if the Justice League had already decided he was no longer fit to remain in their ranks. More than likely, this is a result of Batman ensuring that Flash knew the weight of his actions.

The best thing for Batman to do in this situation is to remove himself with as much dignity intact as he can.

“Let’s bring this charade to a close then,” Batman says, turning back around to exit out of all the applications he had pulled up, all the small, menial tasks that have fallen to him throughout the years. If they want him gone, then he will leave.

“It wasn’t a charade, Bruce!”

“Superman had convinced the rest of the Justice League to give him the opportunity to talk to you.”

“I’m sure,” Batman tells them. He is positive that Superman did indeed talk to the Justice League, it most likely would not have been hard either, considering the weight that Superman’s words carry amongst the others. If the Justice League had already voted on his removal however, then this indeed was a sham. No matter what they might claim to attempt to make themselves feel better.

“Bruce-” Superman starts, clearly intending to say something, offer some kind of salvation or repentance that Batman can strive towards so that he might work his way back into the graces of the Justice League. And if he had any desire whatsoever to rejoin their ranks, he is sure that he would have jumped at the opportunity, much like other heroes have throughout the years, determined to prove themselves worthy of being members of the Justice League.

Only Batman can see that his values and those of the rest of the Justice League clearly no longer align, if they ever did.

Instead of allowing Superman to carry on with his sanctimonious bullshit, Batman pushes past both him and Wonder Woman without a single word, more than done with this whole conversation. He does not care to be here any longer than he needs to be.

Or at least, he attempts to push past them, Superman does move out of his way at least, and the knowledge that Superman is moving out of his way does rankle but Batman is long since used to the way that knowledge gets under his skin. Wonder Woman does not move for him, instead, she grabs his arm in an iron grip, one that Batman knows better than to try and fight off.

“Dick would be ashamed of how you are behaving, Bruce,” she says quietly. Like it is a given fact. Like she has any right whatsoever to tell Batman anything about his son.

Heat rushes up the back of Batman’s spine, winding its way through his veins and into his bones, like with her words, Wonder Woman has held a match to kindling inside him and he has gone up in flames.

“Diana!” Superman says, reproachful and more than a little stern.

It does not matter though, it does not matter that Superman is aghast. Because Batman is on fire.

“Do not ever, mention that name to me again,” he tells her, mentally gripping his self-control with as much of his strength as he can muster with the part of him that is not seeing pure red and rage even though it feels like each word that makes its way up his throat seems as if it could be on fire, scorching his vocal chords, burning his trachea. All he wants to do is to let out the flames that have suddenly made themselves very apparent in the core of his being, consuming everything else about him, until they are all that is left.

He wants to burn everything else around him to the ground, because at least then he might be able to save himself from the fire.

“Bruce,” Superman starts, Batman tears his arm out of Wonder Woman’s grip, and he knows that she is letting him go, but the knowledge that he needs to get out of here, needs to try to escape the flames before he scorches the earth all around him is suddenly all-encompassing.

Neither of them follow him as he makes his way away from them, as he makes his way out of the Watchtower, back to Gotham.

As he moves, not escaping because he is not running away, but returning to the place that he has always belonged to, he hears the whispers of others following him out. He knew they would, Batman being removed from the Justice League is something he is sure will be talked about around the watercooler more often than it should be, certainly it will eclipse the fact that Flash is responsible for the deaths of three separate people.

Because he is a founding member of the Justice League, he is The Batman from Gotham, he is the one with a contingency for everyone and every situation. And they voted him out.

“I heard he totally freaked out.”

“Yeah, Supes was the deciding vote.”

“He’s been acting weird for a while now.”

“We thought he’d been getting better since Robin came back, he wasn’t even this bad when Nightwing died.”

He knows that he will be utilized as a warning for future individuals who wish to join the Justice League, the junior members as well, do not end up like Batman or else. Do not hold people accountable past the point the Justice League determines is appropriate. Because god forbid someone understand the full extent to which they have impacted countless lives with their carelessness.

Good riddance to them. Batman hopes they flounder without him.

There is a criminal in front of him, Batman does not really care to notate who, after a while they all start to blur together anyway. All that matters is that they are hurting people, that they are making the decision to hurt innocent people who have families who care about them, families that will miss them when they are gone.

Batman was created to ensure that people like this would not feel safe to walk the streets at night, that they would know the fear that they were so eager to inspire in others.

At one time, he thinks he might have hoped to be more than that, but not any longer. Batman was created to stalk the shadows, it is high time he returns to that, leave others to shine light. He knows what he is.

He is the vengeance of Gotham for her people.

If he needs to remind criminals of that fact, then he is happy to do so.

One fist at a time, blow after blow if need be. He will blaze his way through Gotham’s underground and remind them as many times as it takes, until the lesson sticks. Until there is no one who has to go home with the blood of their loved ones on their shirt and splashed across their face, or receive a phone call that completely turns their life upside down.

Batman has a purpose, one he intends to see through properly.

The criminal goes down, as Batman knew he would. And he does not get up again either, which is also an expected outcome.

But Batman wishes he would. He wants the criminal to get back up and continue to fight him. Or at least to have presented more of a challenge to him than he did. Because at least when he is fighting something he knows that he is doing something useful for the people of Gotham who wish just to get home to their families each night.

At least then it does not feel like he is burning alive from the inside out.

“Batman,” someone calls from behind him. He whirls around, ready to throw himself into another fight. Instead of another fight however, he just meets the unimpressed stare of Batgirl’s mask as she looks down at him from the rooftop she is standing on. “You finished for the night or are you intent on beating up more low-level nobodies?”

He takes the opportunity to grapple away from the alleyway, because the criminal is down, and the victim must have taken the first opportunity to escape the alleyway because they are no longer in the area, which Batman considers for the best all things considered. They made a strategic retreat when possible, it was a smart play that kept them from any potential crosshairs or friendly fire. Without a partner there to assist, civilians should know that they must take responsibility for their own safety while Batman handles the criminals.

Once his feet are on solid ground and he can talk to her without needing to shout, he says, “Batgirl, you were supposed to be with Red Robin tonight.”

Because she is supposed to be with Red Robin tonight while Spoiler is with Black Bat and Robin. Each of them have their own sections of Gotham to patrol and watch over tonight, sections of Gotham that do not intersect with his.

“Yeah, but Black Bat wanted to patrol with him, and I remembered that you don’t actually get to dictate what I do, so, here I am,” she tells him, a challenge in her eyes.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Batman asks, because he knows there is a reason. There has to be a reason.

Batgirl would not be here, calling out to him, if there was not a reason for her to be here, she would be with one of the others, or up in her Clocktower, or even running her own patrol if she really wanted to be out and about that badly. Because he has known Batgirl almost as long as he knew Dick, and he knows she has just as much of a stubborn streak as Dick did, maybe even more on certain things. He learned that the hard way when she had first started following him and Dick around, back when she was young enough that he had seriously considered alerting her father to the fact that she was putting on a homemade costume and following in the footsteps of him and Dick. Then again when Joker had shot her and she had rebuilt herself from the ground up as Oracle and refusing to let the actions of another define who or what she could be. And then recently once again when she stepped back onto the streets as Batgirl and reclaiming the moniker that she had made her own.

So she absolutely has a reason she is here instead of anywhere else, because this is the first time anyone has deliberately made a point to engage him on patrol in a significant amount of time unless absolutely necessary, and even those interactions were stiff and stilted. He just does not know what that reason could possibly be.

“I’ve been hearing things around town, Batman, about you,” she tells him.

Batman waits for her to say more, but she does not. Instead she just watches him, as if she is expecting him to already know what she has heard about him.

He has no doubt that some of what she has heard about Batman comes from her father, so likely whatever it is that she believes he already knows about comes from some law enforcement officers that she has interacted with recently, either as a civilian, or as Batgirl, or maybe a combination of both. And it makes sense that she is half expecting Batman to have some kind of idea of what she is talking around, because typically Gordon would have communicated something to Batman directly.

Except Batman has not met Gordon recently.

Not since he decided it was better if he patrolled alone so that he did not have to worry about watching the back of a partner.

When he does not answer, she rolls her eyes at him and says, “I’ve heard word that you’re about to be persona non grata in Gotham if you don’t cut your shit and start acting like you’re a person again instead of this monster of the night, lone-wolf bullshit you’ve been pulling recently.”

“Excuse me?” Batman asks her, daring her to continue as he pulls himself up to his full height.  Batgirl might be stubborn, and Batman might have been forced on more than one occasion to respect just how stubborn she can be, but there is a line that Batgirl is dancing back and forth along, testing his limits in the most mundane of ways. And Batman is in no mood to be tested, by her or anyone else.

“You heard me, it’s not quite there yet, but you keep pulling shit like that,” She gestures towards the alleyway behind him with a broad sweep of her arm, “and we’re all gonna be feeling the squeeze.”

“I’m fulfilling my duty to the citizens of Gotham,” Batman tells her, because no matter what else might be said about him, he knows that he is effective. Has been even more effective recently. Like he has been carving a path through Gotham’s criminal element, like he is finally making a difference in Gotham.

“You’re destroying everything you worked so hard to build here in the first place. The people trust you less than ever and cops who have tolerated us until now as a necessary evil are gonna stop wanting to look the other way. You’re trashing all the goodwill we have in this city, and the rest of us aren’t gonna be able to offset that for much longer.”

She says it without breaking eye contact with him, her spine straight as an arrow. Her posture is both a challenge and a call to arms at once. Demanding that Batman be better.

Or at least, insisting that Batman be closer to her idea of better.

The version of better that existed once upon a time, when there was still a light that flew by his side. Before that light was snuffed out, over and over again by the deliberate actions of others. Before the option of ‘better’ was stolen from him, piece by piece.

Before the version of him that had ‘being better’ as an option got buried six feet deep in coffins that have either become empty or were empty all along.

“Go back to your route, Batgirl,” Batman tells her. Ready for this conversation to be over and done with. Ready to resume his own route, to find the next criminal who is attempting to snuff out someone else’s light, and ensure that they cannot, because this is Gotham, and there is always someone on the edge of taking what is not theirs to take.

“Batman! You’re being ridiculous!” She tells him, moving to grab him. “This isn’t going to affect just you!”

“Then leave,” Batman tells her.

“You cannot be serious.”

“You have just told me that you do not feel that protecting Gotham from those who would harm her people is worth the hassle of some negative attention,” Batman starts.

“That is not at all what I’m saying here and you know that,” Batgirl says, advancing on him. But Batman knows what he heard.

He knows how this song and dance goes, the only problem for Batgirl is that he refuses to dance with her, refuses to allow her to make him dance.

“Being Batman has always been a thankless task, I thought you knew that when I allowed you to continue on as Batgirl.”

“I’m sorry, you allowed?”

“Clearly you have forgotten that fact though. Because what we do has never been easy, but we do it anyway because we have the ability to do so and because the citizens of Gotham require us to continue to get back up again. If you are not up to that challenge, no matter the ‘bad press’ that might crop up in the pursuit of that goal-”

“That is not my problem here and you know it.”

“-then you do not deserve to operate in my city.”

“Your city?”

“Yes, my city, Batgirl. And if you are not willing to do what it takes to keep my city safe then maybe it is time you give up that moniker.”

“Batgirl is mine, Batman, and if you think for a single second I’m giving her up because you told me to, then you’ve clearly lost your mind. And if you push, I’ll make sure that everyone else you try and kick to the curb will be able to keep operating too while I make sure you’re too busy chasing phantom leads and missing information and rooting out viruses and anything else I can come up with every second of the day to keep up with us.”

“Do not make an enemy of me, Batgirl,” Batman growls, moving into her space. Because he knows that Batgirl does not make idle threats. If she is determined to make herself a problem, then Batman is certain that she will become a problem, one that he might be able to overcome, but certainly not easily.

“Don’t make yourself my enemy, Batman, because Gotham isn’t just yours anymore. Neither is Batman for that matter, and I’m not going to just stand back and watch you destroy all the hard work Dick put into that legacy while we all thought you were dead just because you’ve got some complex going on.”

“Dick has nothing to do with this,” Batman growls, deep within his chest. An instinctual denial that he does not have time to think about before it is out of his mouth.

“He does and we both know it,” Batgirl says, then seems to realize what she just said and Batman realizes the depth of his mistake as her eyes narrow and she repeats, “Dick has something to do with all of this, doesn’t he? That’s why you’ve been acting like this, something happened with Dick?”

“Batgirl,” Batman warns.

She presses on, headless of his warning, “But Dick died months ago, so why now? What happened?”

“Nothing happened, and you need to get back to your patrol route because this conversation is finished,” Batman tells her. He has a job to do and he will not be distracted from it any further. The people of Gotham need him.

“If you’re hiding something from me Bruce, I will find out about it,” Batgirl says. She does not make idle threats, Batman knows that fact more than most. This is not even a threat though, it is a promise.

A promise that threatens to bring everything crashing down on top of his head.

Bruce paces the Batcave.

Walking the length of it back and forth. Trying to figure out what he is going to do.

Barbara is going to start looking into everything and anything she can think of to try and ferret out any mention of Dick. And Bruce is positive that he took every possible precaution when Dick first went undercover, but this most recent challenge has him on edge, has him second guessing himself. Wondering if there is some backdoor he forgot to cover up.

He knows that Barbara is better than him at exploiting even the slightest weakness in technology. But up until now, there had been no reason to suspect that she would even go looking for anything, and so he had buried the Birdwatcher files as best he could, under layers and layers of protection. Enough to disguise their existence if someone happened to breeze past them once or twice.

Now he would have to figure out a way to ensure their security past the point where even Barbara would be able to find them.

It is ridiculous that Dick’s mission is being put at risk even past the point where Dick is no longer alive to see it through, that Bruce has to consider such measures to keep the secrets that Dick died to protect. If Dick had been better, had been the hero that Bruce thought he had raised and partnered with all this time, maybe he would have been.

But clearly, Bruce had put his faith and his trust in the wrong person.

It had been a mistake to trust Dick with such a mission, he can see that now.

Dick had just returned from a failure, Bruce had offered him an opportunity to claw himself back from that incident, a way to erase it from the history books. And Dick had squandered it by dying again. By allowing himself to be killed.

Bruce had planned for the eventuality, but it was not supposed to be one of the roads walked down. Because Dick was supposed to return home at the end of his mission. He was supposed to be there, to make this whole ordeal more bearable.

Now Bruce will have to figure out how to fix this, how to keep Barbara and the others in the dark and keep Dick’s secrets. Bruce is the one responsible, again. He is always the one responsible, the rock that needs to ensure the path is maintained, the shot clean and straight.

He is not allowed to put so much as a toe out of line because the moment he does, the whole thing starts to wobble like a shoddily crafted tower of bricks, threatening to topple over and bury everyone.

It makes him so angry.

Because Dick is the one who is dead, the one who was sloppy enough to get himself killed halfway across the world, even after Bruce had told him that it was his responsibility to get back up again. Dick was the one who had left them all behind without another word or a smile or any parting thoughts at all.

Dick is the one who is not here anymore.

Who left Bruce to pick up the pieces.

Dick died. He died and he left Bruce. And Bruce is so angry with him for leaving, for unmooring Bruce, like a puppet with all its strings cut. Bruce is so angry at Dick for not coming back, because it has left Bruce in the middle of this mess and each time he thinks about it, it hurts, like a white-hot poker shoved directly through his chest.

And if Dick had just managed to stay alive, to do the one thing that Bruce trained him to do, the one thing he had managed to do for so long before he decided that he was going to fail at it repeatedly, then Bruce would not have to deal with any of this. It would be business as usual.

Bruce is so angry at him. But Dick is dead.

He is dead and as often as Bruce has gotten lucky with their loved ones returning, he knows better than to expect it. He knows better than to hope for it. Because as soon as he starts hoping for it, desperately praying for it from whatever deity might be listening, he knows that he is setting himself up for failure.

So he is left with only his anger. Because hope hurts too much to even consider at this point.

But Dick is dead. Bruce can be as angry with him all he wants, it does not change anything. His anger just sits there, simmering inside him. Eating him up from the inside out. Corroding him, burning him out.

Bruce does not know how to stop being angry though. He does not know how to put it out. Because Dick is dead, he is gone.

And Bruce is so tired.

Chapter Text

“I promise I’ll be better,” Steph whispers to herself as she sits in the pew, looking at a coffin that holds the one person that had seemed as invulnerable as Superman once upon a time. It is not the first time she has made a similar promise, offering something up to be given something back in exchange. But maybe saying it directly will make an important difference.

When nothing happens, she switches her tactics to another attempted offer, “I won’t even be mad.”

Just to be safe, to reassure Dick in case he can hear her. Because if he comes out and reveals himself now, tells the whole room that this has all been some elaborate ruse that he cooked up, she will not be mad, the relief would overwhelm everything else. She knows it, and it is important that Dick knows it too, just in case that is what is keeping him from announcing himself.

There are other people filtering into the room, she can hear them all around her, can see them out of the corner of her eye. But the entirety of her gaze is locked on the closed casket that holds the body of her onetime Batman. It draws the whole of her attention, like a black hole, pulling everything around it into it, impossible to escape.

It does not feel real, existing in this room with the casket. And yet, for maybe the first time since she was told that Dick had died, it feels all too real. Inescapable.

Steph really is the last of their little trio still standing.

Dick and Damian, her Batman and Robin, are both really dead.

“Please,” she tells the coffin, the word barely more than a whisper that makes its way past her lips before it dies, fading out of existence as if she never spoke it out loud. It is all she can manage though. The only plea that feels appropriate.

And she knows it is stupid, to be wishing on a miracle like this, to beg the world at large or any god who might be willing to lend an ear to her barely uttered pleas. She knows that she is only human, that she is nothing special in the grand scheme of things, and that there are people far more important than she is who have also made their requests of the universe to bring Dick back, requests that have gone unnoticed or unremarked upon. Steph cannot compete, it is just a fact of life. Her asking for her Batman back means nothing in the face of Superman asking for Dick back.

But she still cannot help but ask, cannot help but wish with everything she has, offer any compromise or deal, to change what happened. For Dick to announce that it was some kind of joke, for him to reach out to her privately and let her know that he is okay, that he just needed a break or something.

For the ability to rewrite Dick’s ending, to give him just a little bit more time.

She would not even ask for more time for herself, she knows she is not important enough to warrant that, but if she could give anything to allow Dick a bit more time with his family, smaller now than ever, she would make the trade in a heartbeat. She would not even have to think about what she might be asked to give away.

A body slides into the pew next to her, but she does not pay attention to who they are until they say, “Do you want to sit with me, Bruce, and Alfred?”

Tim does not look good. He has always been a bit pale, Steph used to joke that he could be the ghost of a Victorian child for Halloween with very little effort, but now he looks like he has one foot in the grave himself. Like he is one really bad night away from joining Dick, and Damian, and his mom and dad, and everyone else they have ever known who died too early. The ones who never came back.

He is also not looking at her.

And for a brief moment, Steph considers the possibility that he is talking to someone else and Steph just happens to be here, a total coincidence. But he is staring straight ahead, and Steph can feel the magnetic pull of what he is looking at too, can feel the way her head wants to turn, the way her eyes want to find the object at the center of the room.

It is impossible to ignore.

So she does not ignore it. Steph allows her head to follow the magnetic pull, for her eyes to find the casket. And she keeps looking at it, because it is impossible to not look at it. There is a part of her that is positive that even if she were to be halfway across the world, she would be able to point anyone who asked towards the casket without even having to think about it first. It is like the casket has become her true north and she is a compass needle.

Distantly, she remembers that Tim asked her a question, one she should at least attempt to answer, it must have been important if he had managed to ask. But she knows that it is going to be difficult to give him an answer when she does not remember what he asked her. And she would not put money on him remembering either.

Steph also kind of doubts that Tim is even really aware that she is still there, sitting next to him. And not even in the way that Steph is kind of aware that he is there, the way that she has been kind of aware that she has not been alone in this room even despite the fact that she cannot tear her attention away from the casket. Steph is almost positive that Tim would not even know that anyone else is in the room with him even if they stood on their head and burst into flames while bellowing the lyrics to the theme song of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Which suits her just fine, because Steph feels like she is all alone in the middle of the ocean, nothing but waves all around her. Just her and a casket and some half baked hope that maybe if she strings together the right words, the right promises, Dick might come back.

Like there is still a chance that this is all some fucked up training exercise or something and if Steph can put together the clues, can find a way to connect all the dots in a way that makes sense, fit together the pieces of the puzzle, she will be rewarded with the knowledge that the casket is empty. That it never held the body of Dick Grayson in the first place.

“Please, please, please,” she tells the casket quietly, into the space that exists between her and it.

“Steph?” Tim asks, reminding her that he asked her a question. One he does, apparently, expect an answer to.

It takes her a moment of searching her recent memory to recall what the question was. Then it takes another moment to decide on if she wants to abandon the pew that has been so solid underneath her, holding her up from the moment she nearly collapsed into it because her legs were about to give out from under her and she needed to sit down or else she was going to faceplant in the middle of Dick’s funeral.

And then yet another moment for her to find where her voice has gone since she went searching for her memories before she can say, “Yeah, okay.”

“Yeah?” Tim asks, and she can tell that he is finally looking at her, so she manages to tear her own gaze from the casket to meet his own.

“Yeah, I’ll sit with you,” she tells him. Clarifying because he seems a little confused underneath the careful blankness of his expression and the sadness that Steph knows is just below the surface. Maybe he forgot the specifics of the question.

“Oh yeah, okay,” Tim says, his gaze tracking back towards the casket for a long moment before he stands up and starts making his way closer to the front.

Steph follows him after a few seconds reconnecting her legs to her brain and getting them to work. People move out of Tim’s way as he walks, he barely seems to notice, and Steph really only takes notice of it because she is trailing in his wake. She can see the way people step aside for him, the way they look at her.

It makes her skin crawl, knowing they are looking at her, knowing that they are mentally connecting her and Tim together when she knows they should not be. Tim lost his brother, she lost her Batman, they are not at all the same thing.

Not even close.

Tim, for his part, leads Steph to the front row where Bruce and Alfred are sitting. Neither of them look at her as Tim takes a seat next to Bruce, and then Steph next to Tim after a moment of hesitation.

Alfred looks worn down, tired around his eyes, his skin so pale Steph is a little surprised that she cannot see his veins through it. Of course, there is not a hair out of place, and he is sitting ramrod straight, but she can tell, even if no one outside of Gotham will be able to see, Alfred is in a rough spot.

Bruce looks blank.

Perfectly composed.

It throws Steph for a loop to see him looking perfectly put together. Like he is not attending the funeral of his first Robin, someone he has referred to as his son on more than one occasion. Steph is not sure why it sends such a chill up the back of her neck, seeing him so composed, he is the Batman afterall, the original Gotham vigilante, the boogieman who haunts all the nightmares of criminals, and he is also Bruce Wayne, the boy who saw his parents die right in front of him. He has buried so many people at this point, he might be used to this kind of thing, might know exactly how to hold his face so that nothing is given away.

Still, it is offputting, to see no hint of any kind of emotion on him. To not be able to see any feeling despite the fact that they are attending Dick’s funeral, one she knows he had to have had at least some part in putting together.

It makes the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

The whole tableau of them, sitting in a row, is like a slap to the face with the way it makes it abundantly clear how necessary Dick was. Not only because none of them would look like this if Dick was still here, but also because as it stands right now, each of them is physically isolated from the next and Dick would have connected them. He would have been able to make them a unit instead of disparate parts.

Steph knows that she cannot do what Dick did, that she will never even come close. She has made her peace with that fact. But still, she can do her best to fill a gap where she spots one.

Tim’s hand is cold in hers as she reaches out and grips it. He startles when she touches him, his head whipping around so that he can look at her with maybe the most deer in headlights look she has ever been on the receiving end of. But he does not pull away from her.

Instead, after a moment of hesitation, he flips his hand in hers so that he can grip onto her tightly. Like he has been drowning at sea and she has just thrown him a lifeline.

Steph grips him back just as hard.

Because maybe what Dick needs to see is that his family is taken care of. Maybe if he knows that someone is at least trying to keep them all afloat, he will not feel pressured to come back, and will instead choose to come back, knowing that his load is a bit lighter. Maybe there is some perfect combination of factors, of showing Dick both how much he is missed, how much they need him, as well as proving that he will not have to shoulder as much, that he can breathe a bit easier, that will reveal this all to be some kind of terrible, awful dream that she has been walking around in. Like a test of who a person is, in all those books Steph read when she was younger.

There is a pregnant pause after Steph takes Tim’s hand, after she tightens her own grip on him, where she wishes. Despite knowing how desperate it is, she hopes with as much as she can that she finally figured out the combination, pushed the right number of buttons and pulled the right lever, to get the result she wants.

Nothing happens though. The casket stays exactly where it is, completely unchanged, the people attending are all still there, wearing their black mourning clothes. Dick does not appear with a smile on his face.

And it was a stupid, childish hope. Steph knew that even before she hoped for it, she knew that it was like believing that if you held onto a stuffed animal just a bit tighter at night that it would prove a guardian against the things you were trying to hide from. But she had not been able to stop herself from hoping anyways, from wishing.

From trying to find the magic combination that undoes all of this, unwrites it out of existence so that Steph or Tim or Bruce or someone could be right where they need to be to save Dick. To save everyone this pain, of knowing what a world without him in it feels like.

Next to her, Steph feels someone else slip into the pew and sit down next to her. Steph half expects to see Cass sitting next to her when she turns to see who it is, somehow pulling off a miracle and getting to Gotham in time for the funeral. In time to sit next to Steph and be here with them. Because maybe if Cass is here, they can figure out what they are going to do, together.

It is not Cass though. It is Babs.

Which is not all that surprising, if Steph had taken even a moment to consider it before blindly hoping for Cass. Babs looks at Steph, making eye contact and seeing Steph in a way no one else has done all day long, as her dad, Commissioner Gordon, slips into the seat next to Babs, filling their pew up. And he looks at Steph too, he looks at her and he sees her, a different way than how Babs is seeing her, but still seeing her.

Commissioner Gordon gives her a slight nod after a moment while Babs whispers, “I’m glad to see you here.”

“Yeah, me too,” Steph says. Because she does not know what else to say exactly and also because at least part of her knows that this is where she should be. Where she needs to be.

Babs gives her a slight nod as well, then Commissioner Gordon and Babs turn their attention to the casket in front of all of them as there is a final rustling of people while someone who looks like a priest steps forward, making himself known. For her part, Steph returns her attention to the casket, not to the priest looking guy, she does not think she is going to be able to pay proper attention to anything that is going on around her while she is in the room with it. Might as well admit that to herself now, before the ceremony begins and she feels bad about missing it entirely.

She does startle a little when she feels someone touch her open hand, but she knows it is Babs without having to check.

And so without tearing her gaze away from Dick’s casket, she flips her hand around so that she can grip Bab’s hand back in her own, just like Tim had done to hers, connecting the three of them together as a unit. Uniting them.

It is not much, but Steph hopes that it is enough for them to get through what is coming for them. She hopes that it is enough to show the grief that they are a united front. She does not know what else she can do. Not when every last second since Dick has died has been leading them to this moment. Not when each silent wish has been met with nothing but more silence.

So Steph holds on to the people she can still hold onto, and she asks the universe, asks anyone who might be listening, that they make it through this and what must come after. There is nothing else she can do.

Chapter Text

The first step is to ensure that all of his files regarding Dick’s mission into Spyral and the reports of his death have remained hidden from prying eyes. Everything else fails if those are discovered.

Of course, he cannot just check them. That would leave a digital trail a mile long for someone as adept with computers as Bruce knows Barbara to be, one he is sure she will follow without hesitation. Checking them would be like handing Barbara a neon sign to follow.

He needs to check on them without actually checking on them.

Bruce decides the easiest way to do that is to perform routine maintenance on the Batcomputer and the files it holds. It is a task that he does on a bi-annual basis, which means that he is starting it a bit earlier than he typically would. But he is confident that it raises the least questions, the least red flags. It is a plan that opens him, and Dick, up to the least amount of scrutiny and risk.

Opening up to the least amount of questions does not mean that there will be no questions of course. So it does not surprise him when, shortly after he has begun the process, he is interrupted by Alfred entering the Batcave.

“Starting case maintenance early are we, sir?” Alfred asks as he places a tray of food next to Bruce at the Batcomputer.

“Yes,” Bruce says, pointedly not looking at him, instead keeping his gaze fixed on the computer screen. He knows exactly where Dick’s mission files are stored for safekeeping. He knows exactly how to check if they have been accessed as part of the maintenance process. But while Alfred is here, he does not dare even look in that direction. He cannot risk the potential that Alfred will recognize they do not belong where Bruce has stored them and decide to investigate himself.

He planned for this though, to be looked in on by any number of those who still have access to the Batcave.

“Is there a particular reason why you have decided you should get a head start on this particular activity, Master Bruce?” Alfred asks as he steps away from Bruce, assuming a position just behind Bruce’s shoulder, the position Alfred always seems to slip into. And for a moment, knowing that Alfred is right behind him, feeling the comforting presence of him, Bruce allows himself to believe that everything is normal, that in a moment, he will be joined by the others and they will begin to prepare for their nightly patrol. He allows himself to wish, for just a moment, that he has been transported to a moment in time where Dick will walk down the stairs with any of the others and will crack a joke at Bruce’s expense to make the others smile.

But he only allows himself to believe it for a moment and no longer. Anything longer could be dangerous, might lead to him making a mistake he cannot afford, that the memory of Dick, and the mission he gave his life for, cannot afford.

“Tim was the last one to run maintenance,” Bruce says, beginning the maintenance process, as far away from the Spyral files as he can get, “I wanted to take some time and ensure that the process is done properly this time.”

Alfred hums as if considering what Bruce has said, but there is a disapproving note to it as he says, “I am sure Master Tim did as thorough a job as he always does when it is his turn to run maintenance.”

“We’ll see,” Bruce says.

Under typical circumstances, Bruce would not have dared to tell Alfred such a blatant lie, there is no way he would not be caught out immediately. These are not typical circumstances however, and sacrifices must be made. Bruce can only hope that the knowledge that until relatively recently he had been concealing something significant from Alfred, and that even when the facts of what he was concealing changed, he did not reveal to Alfred the details and has therefore been lying to Alfred for longer than he ever has before, will work in his favor. He can only hope that Alfred does not question this small lie in the face of the larger lies he has been telling all along.

He knows that Tim did not miss anything, Bruce has programs that check to make sure that nothing was missed. And backup programs for those programs as well. But he also knows that this is the reasoning that will keep others from looking too deeply at what he is doing. That they will not be interested in any potential discrepancies if Bruce has already introduced the idea of looking for them, and already given a plausible reason for them being there.

“Very well, Master Bruce, if that will be all?” Alfred asks. But they both already know that the conversation has ended. This is just a formality on Alfred’s part.

“Yes, thank you Alfred,” Bruce says.

He does not wait for Alfred to walk away before he continues on with his task. It is only after Alfred has left that Bruce allows himself to start working towards his true goal. He knows that ensuring that the records have not been breached will still take some time of course, he cannot jump right to them no matter how much he may wish to, he might not have a shadow lingering over his shoulder at the moment but that does not mean he can act erratically and expect his true intentions to remain concealed.

Still, he feels something settle inside him, knowing that he can start making forward progress. Because at least now he is doing something, at least if nothing else, he can ensure that Dick’s last mission remains uncompromised.

Once he has confirmed that any and all documents related to Spyral and Dick’s mission have been uncompromised, Bruce moves onto the next step. He has to give Barbara something that will confirm her suspicions, while ensuring the truth remains completely obscured. 

Thankfully, after some consideration, Bruce is positive that he has the perfect misdirection to dangle in front of Barbara and convince her that she has the answer she is looking for. This will ensure that she does not dig deeper and discover something Bruce cannot allow her to discover, with the risks associated with even one other person knowing, of the mission being compromised by the actions of one other person, too significant.

Damian has recently been returned to them after all, after significant effort on Bruce’s part.

It is entirely feasible that Bruce would look for ways to revive Dick as well.

Of course, if he had Dick’s body, he would have been searching for feasible methods long before this, but the fact that it was never returned to him by Spyral, makes any potential revivals difficult, if not near impossible.

Barbara does not know that Bruce does not have Dick’s body however. Bruce is positive that if he makes it appear as if he has been researching potential ways to revive Dick, she will have no reason to dig further. Any and all of his behaviors that might have put her on edge, might have led to her conclusion regarding Dick being the cause for a supposed shift in Bruce’s behavior should be easily explained away.

All that is left is to begin his research, backdating it as he goes so that it appears as if Bruce has been researching this prior to Barbara’s confrontation on the rooftop. To do the work that will provide the evidence to give Barbara the proof she needs.

It is fairly simple when it is laid out like that.

Of course, if he is going to give Barbara proof, then he needs to make it believable. And the simplest way to do that is to actually look into methods that might revive Dick. He is not naive enough to believe that he might be lucky enough to stumble into another Chaos Shard, he doubts that there is another one for him to take advantage of.

Still, there must be other avenues he can explore. Other possibilities that he can look into that might fit the criteria.

There must be other solutions he can look for.

After all, it seems like everyone in the caped community knows someone who returned against all odds or returned themselves at this point. It is not out of the realm of possibility that Bruce would look into it, would consider the odds, the outside chance. That he would look for ways to return Dick to those who miss him.

He will have to be careful to ensure that nothing he discovers will actually prove fruitful of course. It would make little sense to Barbara if Bruce were to have discovered a potential avenue that seems promising and elected not to take it. 

Bruce has also known Barbara long enough that he knows that if she believes that there is a path forward, she will take it herself without a second thought, positive that she is on the right path. As sure that she is on the right path as she did when she decided to forage herself into Oracle. He is also aware of the fact that he would not be able to keep her suspicions from others at that point as she would ensure they all knew what she was doing and why and who was responsible. Which would ultimately only serve in ringing all of Bruce’s carefully laid plans crashing down around his ears.

He still does not have Dick’s body after all, and that makes any attempts to actually revive him a failure to launch right from the start.

Bruce will have to walk a careful line. Connecting dots to a conclusion that has already been reached, a story whose last line has already been written. He has walked difficult paths alone before however, so he is positive that he will be able to walk this one now.

He does not have any other choice but to walk it.

Dick is dead. There is no possibility to bring him back, no matter how much Bruce looks into it.

Bruce must keep that in mind while researching, it is the only way he will manage to walk this tightrope, will manage to keep his center while precariously balanced over nothing, only empty air and disaster to catch him if he falls or fails.

He will not allow himself to consider the potential of Dick coming back, of what it would feel like to hold his son again, to know that there is a heart beating in the chest of the boy who reintroduced light to Bruce’s world. 

Not unless he can get the body back from Spyral.

Matches Malone stands on one of the many street corners of Gotham that is poorly lit at night and watches the people who pass him by, mostly on the other side of the street, but he pays special attention to the ones who do not cross the street to walk past. None of them are the people he is here to see of course, but it never hurts to be cautious in Gotham’s Alley.

Luckily, he remains unbothered on his corner.

Small mercies he supposes.

About five minutes after the designated time, Matches hears the rock hit the bucket that he had set up halfway down the alleyway when he got there. He drops the two rocks he had been keeping in his pocket, first one, then the other, the answering signal.

Then, he steps sideways and back into the shadows of the alleyway, as if he was never there in the first place.

“Hear you’ve been nosin’ this way and that way, Matches,” Joey says as he joins Matches in his particular shadow. “And your brand a’ nosin’ round recently has got me and some of the boys kinda nervous.”

“Only nosin’ till ya get your answers,” Matches tells Joey, lifting his match up and sticking it in his mouth as he punctuates his point with a lift of his eyebrows. Joey would not have told Matches where and when to be if he did not have information for him.

And he would not have come alone if he intended to fight.

“The people you lookin’ for, Matches, they’re dangerous, too much for you to chew on,” Joey says.

“I think I’d be better ‘n you at judging’ that, Joey.”

“I’m serious. The Bat might keep all the Gotham crazy contained, but they’re slipperier than him even.”

“What’d’ya find?” Matches asks, suddenly even more positive than ever that Joey has something for him, because there is an almost hunted look in his eyes, like he is talking about the boogie man, as if just mentioning the name is enough to draw attention. And it does not glint in his eyes when he is talking about The Bat.

“Matches,” Joey starts, trailing off after that one word, a warning in and of itself. Matches knows what he wants though. What he needs.

He needs the answers Joey has to the questions he has been whispering in Gotham’s underworld and beyond, pumping the one source that might be able to track down a spy agency. The spy agency that has the body of his son.

His son who first brought light into his life, who brought him so many others. And he has a chance to fix it, to right the wrong that was his death. To put back into place the plan that he had constructed to reintroduce Dick as alive prior to his death while in Spyral.

If only he has the body.

That has to come later though. He is Matches right now, and Matches has no personal investment in spy agencies other than asking around about some potential movement in Gotham he might have heard about from someone else, movement that might be bad for his business.

Or at least, that is the story he is peddling around as he asks.

Joey sighs, clearly coming to the, correct, conclusion that Matches is not going to be dissuaded from his current path. His whole body seems to slump into the defeat as he says, “I haven’t heard of no movement in Gotham from those people you’re looking into, but I did hear they might have had a brush or two with the Bat. And I hear they’ve been dealing in body parts recently, but not just any body parts, they’re looking for cape body parts.”

Matches knew that.

Of course Matches knew that already, it was part of the reason why Dick had been the perfect person to go undercover with them. There was no chance that he would turn traitor and reveal the identities of superheroes, he knew them all already and had been keeping them secret for more than half of his life. He knew how and when to step in and protect the civilian names of heroes who just wanted to be able to live normal lives outside of the mask and cape. He knew what information needed to be protected at all costs and what information could be sacrificed and how to make those tough decisions in the blink of an eye while under pressure.

He had also recently been unmasked himself. Which meant that there was no risk to his secret identity as he tracked down the body parts of Paragon to keep them out of the hands of people who would have used them to make the world a darker place.

Even still, with all that information at his fingertips, hearing that Spyral is dealing in the body parts of superheroes, while knowing that they have Dick’s body, unsettles something inside him.

But Matches does not care about that. Matches is only relieved that Spyral is not making moves in Gotham. Is maybe a bit weirded out that they seem to have a preoccupation with the body parts of supers, but nothing other than that. He is not allowed to be anything other than weirded out. Matches has no personal connection to any bodies that Spyral might possess.

“Bodies of capes? Anyone we know?” Matches asks, being sure to add just the right amount of incredulousness to his tone, as if he does not quite believe what Joey is telling him. Everyone knows you do not mess with the caped community afterall, not unless you wanted the full brunt of every single cape bearing down on you.

Especially if you are dealing in cape bodies, capes tend to be precious, and protective, in regards to their dead. Messing with them is just asking for unwanted trouble.

“I don’t know Matches, all I know is that when people started talking about cape bodies, I got the hell outta dodge, I don’t need that kind of mess knockin’ at my doorstep,” Joey says, seemingly irritated by Matches’ continual questioning past the bombshell.

“Maybe they’ll go after The Bat next, make our lives a whole hell of a lot easier if they do,” Matches says, throwing out a line that should soothe over any ruffled feathers. No one in their line of work likes the interference of The Bat.

“Maybe, but I don’t know if the guys like you an’ me would come outta that conflict smelling like roses if they did,” Joey says.

He looks squirrely as he says it, like a prey animal who knows that a predator is hunting right around the corner and is looking for the quickest way out to prevent any potential impending disasters. Like he can feel the threat of a fight between Spyral and The Bat breathing down his neck and is concerned that anything that involves either one of them spells disaster.

To be fair to Joey, he is probably not wrong, Matches knows enough to know that any confrontation between The Bat and Spyral right now would probably be disastrous. For both parties involved, and he is not sure who would come out on top. Because winning the fight does not just mean keeping Spyral out of Gotham.

“Well, if ya hear anythin’ new, you know how ta reach me,” Matches says, because he can tell that Joey is ready to be out of this alleyway, has been for almost this entire conversation. And he knows that even on the off chance that Joey does know more information, he certainly is not sharing it with Matches, that will have to be something that Matches draws out of him, a bit at a time.

“Yeah, sure, see you around Malone,” Joey says as he steps back, eager to be gone.

Maybe his next informant will have more information for him on Spyral’s movements and where they might keep the bodies of superheroes and former superheroes.

Bruce wants his son back, and he is willing to move mountains to do so.

Nothing is working.

Every route Bruce tries, every potential path he looks into to get Dick back, to fix this whole situation, setting it back onto the path it always should have been on, ends in a dead end. It all leads him right back to where he started.

Bruce is no closer to getting Dick’s body back from Spyral than he was when he first started looking into the possibility. Every criminal connection he could possibly look into, any individual with even the slightest, tenuous, thread to the seedier side of things, is too scared to involve themselves in Spyral. They all get shifty-eyed anytime he tries to find any kind of information about them, and the information they do have proves to be useless, because it is either something he already knows, or completely made up.

And even if he was able to locate Dick’s body, none of the methods that have been utilized in the past to bring people back to life are viable options for him in this situation. They are either unreplicable or a complete mystery. Like the universe just shrugged and decided to bring someone back to life without rhyme or reason. It is infuriating.

So Bruce does what he has always done when he finds himself running into walls over and over again. He goes back to the beginning, to his foundations for this mission, to see where the cracks began and how he could have fixed them before they became issues.

Because maybe if he understands how everything went so terribly wrong, he can figure out how to keep things from going that wrong again.

He knows after thinking about the case practically non-stop recently, that he selected the correct person for the mission, Dick was not just a convenient choice, he was the best choice for the mission. Even if Bruce had the luxury of handpicking who to send into Spyral, he would have sent Dick. There is no one else he would have even considered.

That is not a decision Bruce questions, even now, with so much time and knowledge between him and that choice. Dick is not a choice he regrets.

Which means that something went wrong after that choice. If that rock is solid, it means that somewhere else, Bruce went wrong. There is something else that led to Dick’s death, to this situation in which Bruce has found himself. He just has to identify what.

So he begins to look at the contingency plans. The generalized branching paths that he and Dick had worked out over the years for scenarios one might find themselves in while undercover, as well as the more specific plans that they had put together for Spyral. They should have covered for most situations Dick would have found himself in, and for the unprecedented situations that might have cropped up, Dick should have been able to figure it out, he should have known enough about his capabilities and the situation he was in to get himself out safely.

Clearly they had not however. 

Bruce just needs to figure out which one failed, and under what circumstances, so that he can correct it, can ensure that it does not go wrong again. He needs to make sure that he does not lose anyone else to his faulty planning.

And maybe once he is aware of the faults, maybe then he can figure out the path forward to getting Dick back.

He is so engrossed in his contingency plans, that he does not realize that someone has entered the Cave and is standing behind him until they practically announce their presence.

“Father,” Damian says. Bruce does not startle, and it is only because of his years of training that he does not show any outward signs of the way his heart kicks a bit faster before he regains control of it and forces it back into a steady rhythm.

Once he has his heartbeat back under control, he responds, “Yes Damian?"

A part of him desperately wants to wipe the screen of all evidence of what he was just doing, remove it from Damain’s view, as if in removing it from the screen, he can just as easily wipe it from his mind. Bruce knows better however. He has no way of telling how long Damian has been standing there, watching him, observing what Bruce has been doing. So he does not exit out of the detailed contingency plans, the documentation that he had created that could be easily pulled up and reviewed in the event that Dick called for help while Bruce was indisposed.

In part because he is sure that it would prove pointless, that Damian will have already observed what Bruce was working on and studied it long before he addressed Bruce, who had clearly become too comfortable with the thought that no one would walk into the Batcave without his knowledge or forewarning. He is also well enough aware of the fact that closing them out will only draw more attention to what he is doing. Will only call to attention that what Bruce is working on is something worth of note.

He has made a significant error in allowing Damian to observe anything to do with Dick’s mission. But there must still be a way to salvage this. There has to be. Bruce just needs to find it.

Bruce must make his review of these contingency plans seem routine, uninteresting. He needs to guide the conversation, suggest to Damian that these are old files, old plans that no longer bear mentioning other than Bruce reviewing out of date information for something that might prove useful but had ultimately decided to move on from.

Then, once he is sure that Damian’s curiosity has been satisfied, Bruce will have to go back through and make them look exactly like what he will tell Damian they are. Old plans. Out of date and completely useless to anything they do now.

It pains him a bit, to know that he will be destroying the plans he made to keep Dick safe, but sacrifices must be made. And with Dick dead and gone, with no plan to revive him, the plans are worthless anyways. None of them were able to save his son, there is no purpose in Bruce keeping them around other than ensuring that he does not make the same mistakes again.

Bruce is positive that even without the documents in front of him to study, to pour over, he will not repeat any of the mistakes he has identified in his review. Because those mistakes are burned into his brain. Like someone took a branding iron and seared each letter into his bones. Because those mistakes, that neither he nor Dick caught when they were crafting the plans, had ultimately led him here.

“What are you doing?” Damian asks. Bruce chances a look at his youngest son, the child most recently returned to him, and even though he knew without having to look that Damian would be looking at the screen, it still manages to make something irrational in his brain panic seeing it.

He takes a deep breath, reminding himself that he is in control of this situation, that he has all the tools he needs to ensure a successful interaction at his disposal.

“I’m reviewing old contingency plans,” Bruce says. Because there is no use in pretending that he is not, the evidence of what he was doing is all over the screen. Damian would not even have to have done more than glance at the screen to know that is what Bruce is looking at. 

“For Richard?” Damian asks, his brow furrowing slightly as he scans the screen, as if he is checking to be sure that he did read right despite the fact that ‘Nightwing’ is written everywhere on Bruce’s plans. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Bruce has been so stupid. So careless.

“Yes,” Bruce says. And a part of him is hoping that his short answer will be enough. That it will discourage further questioning.

He should have known better than to hope for such a thing. All of his children are detectives, and they would be poor detectives if they did not ask follow-up questions, did not dig for more information than just what has been provided on the surface. He wish they would not question him as much, but that just seems par for the course at this point.

“Why are you looking at old contingency plans for Richard, he has been dead for months now.” Damian asks, an edge of suspicion in his voice, still not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Part of my maintenance,” Bruce tells him. Then he highlights part of the document, one of the sections that he did genuinely want to keep, and saves it to a separate document before deleting everything else. A part of him internally flinches at the knowledge of what he has just done, like he is giving up on ever getting Dick back, but he has to take such steps. In order to protect Dick’s last mission, he has to act as if Dick will never return, as if these plans mean nothing to him.

“You just deleted most of that page,” Damian says, sounding slightly alarmed. “Why?”

“There is no purpose in keeping it,” Bruce says, like ripping off a band-aid. Fast and sure. Damian flinches, and it is slight enough that anyone who was not Bruce himself, or maybe Dick if he were still here, would not have noticed, no one else would have known him well enough to see it. 

Bruce does see it however. And it cuts something to the quick in him to know that he is the cause, that his words are enough to make Damian flinch. He cannot take them back however, he does not even try. Because there is nothing that he could even begin to say that would make this situation more bearable for either one of them. And Bruce knows better than to try.

He knows that if he tried, he would only make the situation worse.

No matter how much he wishes for the opposite.

“He might return,” Damian says, just the slightest hint of hesitation, as if he is uncertain how this suggestion might be taken. He makes it anyway. And Bruce understands that kind of devotion, understands just how much adoration Dick inspires in people, even after his death.

“Unlikely,” Bruce says, bitter. Because that thought just reminds him how pointless this whole endeavor has been. No matter how much he digs into the situation, Dick continues to be dead, and there is nothing that Bruce can find that might change that fact.

“Father,” Damian starts. Clearly intending to protest Bruce’s conclusion that Dick is not coming back, that there is no goal that either of them, that any of them, can work towards.

Bruce does not want to have this conversation though, he does not want to walk through all the ways that he has failed. It would be too painful. So he cuts it off at the quick and says, “No, Damian.”

“You do not even know what I was going to say!” Damian protests.

“There is nothing we can do to bring Dick back.”

“You do not know that!”

Bruce refuses to have this conversation. To argue about this with Damian or anyone else. He knows the truth of the matter, and the truth is that Dick is dead, and unless there is a fluke of nature or the intervention of some deity that has never cared before, he will remain so.

So instead of engaging in Damian’s childish protests, he pulls up the document he created to distract Barbara in her investigation. It will serve a similar purpose here, he knows. Because it clearly outlines everything Bruce has done, every single potential pathway that he has researched in an attempt to identify exactly what Damian is hoping for.

He sees it as Damian scans the document, as he recognizes exactly what Bruce is showing him. As a silent hope that Damian must have been carrying inside him despite his better intentions, is silently put to rest for a final time.

It hurts. Even more than Damian’s flinch. Because Bruce had been hopeful too. He had not wanted to snuff out that particular hope because Bruce had secretly hoped for it too. But it is far past time for both of them to face the facts of the situation.

“Change into training clothes, we’re going to spar,” Bruce says after he is sure that Damian has absorbed the sheet, has fully understood what it means.

“Yes Father,” Damian says softly. He is still looking at the screen, still taking it all in. Bruce allows it for a moment longer, then powers off the Batcomputer. There are other things they need to focus on.

Dick is dead, and based on all the research that Bruce has done, that fact is not going to change anytime soon, if ever. It is time that they accepted that fact. Bruce has run out of possibilities, he was attempting to lie to himself when he thought that looking into the contingency plans might provide a path forward to reviving Dick, he was only attempting to ignore the truth that he could already feel making a home inside him.

He can admit that now, with Damian here who needs to hear the words Bruce is saying just as much as Bruce needed to hear them out loud to accept the truth of the matter. Holding onto pointless hopes only weighs them down, makes them more susceptible to making mistakes.

Bruce cannot afford to make any more mistakes. If all this research into how he might be able to bring Dick back has taught him anything, it has taught him that much. Because any mistakes he might make, that any of them make out in the field, could very well carry lethal consequences. And Bruce refuses to loose anyone else to any stupid mistakes.

Which means back to the basics. For everyone.

Clearly part of the problem is that Dick’s training was allowed to lapse, providing room for him to make mistakes. Bruce needs to eliminate that possibility, starting right now. Anyone who wants to be out in the field with him will need to prove themselves all over again.

Once that gap is closed, he will move onto the next stage. He will ensure that there are no more mistakes that should be prevented that lead to death. Of his partners, of the civilians they are meant to be protecting, of anyone.

It will not bring Dick back, but it will keep the people Bruce still has, safe.

There is nothing else he can do.

Chapter Text

Barbara stands in front of her murder board, looking at all of the pieces of evidence they have managed to collect, as she tries to fit the pieces together into a puzzle that makes sense. But there is something still missing, she knows it.

“Alfred said he was performing case maintenance after you confronted him on the rooftop,” Tim says from where he is standing next to her, clearly still half in thought as he speaks.

“That could just be a coincidence, we need to be sure we aren’t seeing things that aren’t really there,” she reminds him. It is a conversation they have had more than once recently.

“We also need to be sure that we aren’t throwing out evidence that’s important,” Tim says.

Neither of them can decide on if Bruce doing case maintenance early is important. It is the one piece of information that Alfred brought them that seems to be the most out of place, but then again, this whole situation seems out of place. Maybe Bruce just decided to run case maintenance early with all the time he usually dedicates to the Justice League.

Or maybe it is a clue and they are missing what makes it seem so important to Dick or Dick’s death.

Barbara has no idea which one it is, so she cannot totally discount it, but she cannot totally include it either. It is like that with all of their evidence so far. There is nothing damning, nothing concrete. They are running off of nothing but suspicions and assumptions and while they are all good places to start, they need real, tangible evidence, proof. And they just do not have it.

She may be good, and she is absolutely better than Bruce in some areas, but it is clear that if something is going on with Dick, he has gone to significant lengths to hide it.

Which of course, there may just be nothing there to find. Dad always tells the new detectives that a gut instinct can only take you so far before the evidence needs to start backing you up, otherwise you end up chasing rumors and myths and get nowhere fast. She could have drawn an incorrect conclusion, it would not be the first time. There is always that possibility.

Barbara does not think she has though, she thinks there is something there, something that none of them are seeing. Something that Bruce is going to great lengths to conceal from all of them.

A problem in and of itself, but not the most pressing one. So she sets it aside to concentrate on her murder board again. Trying to see how all the strings connect back to Dick.

Because if Bruce is hiding something from them about Dick, it matters less to her right now than finding out what it is that he is hiding. Everything that tumbles out afterwards will come to light, as long as she can find the thread she needs to pull on to unravel it all.

If there is a thread for her to find.

“Sorry I’m late!” Steph calls as she slips into Barbara’s apartment through the window, “Bruce was being insane about training again and wouldn’t let me leave until every possible imaginary mistake he found had been corrected for in my training form.”

“He’s still on his training thing?” Tim asks, pulling himself away from the board. Barbara hears him go, but she does not follow him, she feels so close to a breakthrough. It is like it is something just out of her reach, but she knows if she strains just a bit harder, she can grab onto it.

It remains frustratingly just out of her grasp though, no matter how hard she strains.

“Yeah, I don’t know why, It’s like he threw a dart at a dart board and decided training was the thing he was gonna be anal about this week or something.”

“It’s better than his whole loner thing he was doing before.”

“Yeah? Tell me that again with a straight face when he calls you in for your mandatory session with him.”

“Brushing up on your training is important, you don’t want to make mistakes,” Barbara says, absentmindedly throwing her two cents in.

“I train with Cassandra Cain, I don’t need Bruce making up mistakes he needs to correct in my form, if she saw something, she would tell me,” Steph says, a little pointedly if Barbara is being honest. But she figures that Steph has probably more than earned that pointedness if Bruce is being as obstinate about training as he was about not having anyone patrol with him recently.

So she just hums in the back of her throat rather than fighting back.

“Is Cass joining today?” Tim asks, neatly turning the conversation away from Bruce’s most recent obsession and back to their issue at hand.

“No, she couldn’t make it,” Barbara says, finally tearing her eyes away from the board, “Alfred is out too, said he wanted to keep a closer eye on Bruce while we’re all here.”

“So what, we’re just waiting on Damian then?” Steph asks.

“Unlike you, Brown, I was here punctually,” Damian says, coming out from Barbara’s kitchen to join them all.

“Great, the gang’s all here,” Tim says, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. He had been late too, although not as late as Steph, and Damian had not come out from where he was desperately trying to keep the fish he gave Barbara alive, for Tim.

“Okay, let’s review our facts,” Barbara says, because she is really not interested in watching them snipe at each other when they could be doing something productive with their time.

“When you confronted him about the way his mean streak is impacting us, he got specifically pissy when you brought up Dick,” Steph says.

“Richard’s death was months prior to my return, however,” Damian says.

“And bringing Dick back wasn’t even a consideration when he had the Chaos Shard,” Tim adds, “Which is weird, looking back.”

“Do you have something to say, Drake?” Damian challenges.

“Not at all, Demon Brat,” Tim says, overly sweet. She can practically hear the way Damian starts to bristle in response. 

“After I talked to him on the roof, Alfred saw him starting case maintenance early,” Barbara says, sharply. They can be petty with each other on their own time. She is trying to get to the bottom of this puzzle.

“Which could be nothing,” Tim says, refocusing.

“Or could be important, if Bruce was looking for something specific in the system,” Steph says.

“But I ran a quick scan myself and nothing seems out of place from the last time Tim ran case management,” Barbara says.

“Which was right before Damian came back, so everything on there definitely predates all this current weirdness,” Tim contributes.

Pointless, this is pointless. All they are doing is running in circles, reviewing the same bits of information over and over again. 

“And then Bruce recently decided that he was gonna develop a stick up his ass about training,” Steph concludes. Which does nothing significant for the information they have already gathered.

Barbara sighs, irritated.

They need something new, some piece of information that is going to start showing them what the picture looks like, not just another tangential piece of information that gets put up on the murder board and just floats randomly, unconnected to anything else. They need something solid, not just gut feelings and speculation.

Or else they need to admit to themselves that they are seeing things that are not there, that they are stringing together meaningless details and assuming they are important. She might not want to admit that she was wrong, but unless they find something that brings everything else into clarity, makes everything start to make sense, she might just have to swallow the bitter pill and admit that her gut instinct missed this time around.

“We’re missing something,” Tim says.

“Obviously,” Steph snaps, clearly irritated by the obviousness of Tim’s comment. “Any bright ideas on what exactly we’re missing?”

They all fall into a silence, looking at the murder board. Barbara strains, trying to make everything fit into one cohesive whole.

“Father was looking at contingency plans for Richard,” Damian says, hesitant in a way that brings Barbara almost up short.

“What?” Tim asks, as thrown by Damian’s statement as Barbara is by his tone. And it takes a moment for his statement to register with her, for it to filter through her brain and make its way to where it needs to be. But once it has, she feels like a lightning rod that has just been struck.

“Do you remember anything specific about the plans Damian? Any key words or anything that seemed odd to you that I could search for specifically?” she asks as she speedwalks her way over to her computer.

This is it.

She is not sure exactly how she knows that this is the lynchpin piece of information, the one that is going to start pulling everything else into sharp relief with it. But she knows it, in the same way she knew up on that rooftop, when Bruce focused in on Dick, that whatever information Damian has for her, is going to be vital.

Damian hesitates behind her, she can feel it in the air, the way he questions himself, the way he considers walking back what he just said. She knows that he has something for her just in the way that he hesitates. And she knows that he must know it too, that he can also tell that whatever he saw was big, would lead to them unraveling the rest of this mystery.

He would not have mentioned it otherwise, would not have gone against his better instincts to keep Bruce’s secrets from them, as he has been taught to do by the League of Assassins.

“Please, Damian, this could be important,” she tells him, flipping around in her chair to look at him, to make him understand. They both know it is important, and judging by the way Tim and Steph have gathered in close as well, she knows they can tell as well.

Only Damian matters to her in this moment though, because only he has the information. He holds the key, and she needs to make sure he understands that.

All of them are here, following up on her hunch, her lead, because they can feel something off about Bruce too. All of them have been picking up their own little puzzle pieces along the way, and they all have something that is contributing to a larger picture that they are still just seeing the outline of.

They are all here because Barbara caught the stench of something rotten though, and if she has to bulldoze her way through this she will. She will loudly and obnoxiously tear up every floorboard that has ever been used to try and hide information.

Because for all that everyone in this room misses Dick, he was hers first. Everyone else had partners before they had him, even Bruce and Alfred had each other before they had Dick, but he was her first partner.

She is not going to give up on him easily if there are any other options. Especially if this is a second chance to make up for missed clues beforehand. Barbara will go after this like a dog after a bone if she needs too.

Then, something in Damian’s gaze solidifies, like he has come to a conclusion. She might not have been out in the field with him and Steph when Dick was Batman, but she has been around long enough to recognize the look of a Robin making a leap of faith for their Batman.

And she knows, deep in her gut, that she has the key to unlocking everything in the palm of her hand.

“I saw the word Birdwatcher,” he tells her.

She nods. And then Barbara gets to work.

Chapter Text

Damian looks over his shoulder, making sure that he is not being observed as he walks. Brown in particular has been more than difficult to lose recently, and Damian does not want her hovering over his shoulder for what he wants to do next. He does not need her to make sad noises at him, he does not need the pity she will look at him with for the next few weeks. Just as she had done when Damian had first been told about the loss of Richard.

He does not want her to tell him that what he is doing will not amount to anything.

Damian knows that nothing will come of looking at Richard’s file, investigating his death. He knows that if there were any way to bring Richard back, if there were any hint of suspicion in the manner or circumstances of his death, that Father at the very least would have discovered it.

So Damian is more than well aware that there is nothing he can do for Richard at this point. That there has been nothing that he could do for Richard from the moment Drake had finally broken the gag order Father had put on them all, regarding discussing Richard with Damian. When he had informed him that Richard had been dead for several months prior to Damian’s revival.

But even still, he has to check. He has to see the file with his own eyes. To be sure.

He would not be able to forgive himself if he discovered that there was something he alone could do for Richard, that there was some detail or piece of information that everyone else had missed. Because what if Damian can succeed where everyone else has failed? What if he alone holds the key?

Damian is sure that Father would have told him if there was anything, but he owes it to Richard to at least try.

As Robin, he owes his Batman a review of the file of his death at the minimum. To be certain.

In front of him, Damian spots Richard’s gravestone, a flash of gray amongst the green, and he halts as an invisible pain lances through his center mass. It pulls all the air from his lungs as he looks at the grave from a distance and struggles to maintain his composure at the reminder of what he has lost, of who has been lost to him while he was dead himself.

Damian was supposed to be Richard’s Robin, he was supposed to protect his Batman, and he had failed. It does not matter that he was dead, that he could not have done anything. Because Richard is still dead, and now Damian is not.

Damian is alive while Richard is not. Robin failed to protect Batman, to save him.

He is a Robin without his Batman. Father might be Batman now, but he is not Damian’s Batman, not like Richard was. And without his Batman, what purpose does he serve anymore? What good is he?

That stone, that stark change in color amongst all the living grass that grows over the grave of Richard’s cold and still and dead body, is a stark reminder of Damian’s failures.

More, it reminds him of that moment when he was informed that Richard was dead, that he had been dead for some time and everyone else had gotten the opportunity to attend his funeral. To say their last words in front of Richard’s coffin, to say goodbye. Damian cannot even remember what Richard’s last words to him were. He cannot recall with any clarity the last time Richard pulled him in close and gave his hair a friendly ruffle, when Damian had last felt the warmth of him that always meant home even as he insisted that Richard let go of him and to stop treating him like a child.

Everyone else got to have so many more moments with Richard than Damian got.

And all of the moments he might have had in the future have been stolen from him. Wiped away completely by the shock of unfeeling stone that disrupts the nature around it.

He considers turning around for a wild moment, making a complete about face and simply taking off in the opposite direction as fast as his feet will take him. Of removing himself from this monument to the man who had made Damian so many promises and then had broken them all in one fell swoop the moment his heart stopped beating and did not shortly resume its life sustaining pattern.

This is the closest he has managed to come to the gravesite, to where Richard’s body is. Where his own body had lain until recently, side by side with Richard’s. Maybe this is where he should have stayed, maybe that is where he belongs. Next to his partner.

Only he does not feel like he belongs here. His whole body feels as if it is rejecting the very notion of being anywhere near here. Just as it has every time Damian has thought of this place.

He has, after all, had ample opportunity to return, to pay his respects to the ground that holds the body of the man who gave Damian so much. When he was first informed, the others had certainly made overt overtures to ensure he has the time and space to return if he wished. But he has not, because each time he considered returning to this place, hale and whole without Richard beside him to guide him forward, he has felt a sensation close to what he felt moments before his own life extinguished.

It is so much worse now that he can see the gravestone.

Dying might have been the singularly worst experience Damian had in his life up until this point, but he now knows a new measure by which to compare pain. And he is struggling to think of anything that might come close to comparing.

He needs to get closer though. Because no one else comes down this way unless there is a reason to be there. Everyone avoids the area. Damian, with his pilfered file, chose this place specifically because it has the lowest chance of him being interrupted. It makes the most strategic sense for him to be closer. To give himself the most lead-up time to anyone who might be looking for him.

So he makes himself drag one foot forward. Then the next.

His whole body resisting with each step he sources out of it. Like it is being weighed down by chains and concrete, an anchor strapped across his back. As if, were someone to throw him into water, he would sink right to the bottom, and be unable to resurface before all his air left him.

Damian keeps moving though, because he must. He has no other choice. He is like a shark, he has no choice but to keep moving in order to keep from suffocating, to survive.

Eventually, he makes his way into the clearing that delineated the line between the gravesite and the rest of the property. Damian is panting like he has run a marathon despite the fact that he came to a complete standstill several times throughout the journey of half a dozen feet from where he stood previously.

But the buzzing in his ears, as if a shaken hive of bees or wasps has taken up residence in his brain, does not matter. The way it feels like the blood in his veins has become more akin to molasses rather than its usual consistency does not matter. How each breath feels like he is taking in carbon dioxide rather than oxygen does not matter.

The impact of being so close to Richard’s grave does not matter, not if he can fix it. Because a part of him is still holding out hope, that maybe he alone will be able to save Richard when the others could not. He has to keep holding onto that hope otherwise he fears that he will be lost to the sea he can feel sucking at his feet. Even as the more rational part of him, the pragmatic part of him that has seen so much death, much more than others his age typically do, much more than anyone else who operates in Gotham had seen at his age, tells him that it is not possible, that he is treading water already and this foolish hope is the thing threatening to drown him with it when it goes down. That to save himself he should recognize that he is being foolish and let go of all the now empty promises Richard made to him once upon a time. He should focus on keeping his head above water.

Damian opens the file. He is determined to at least read it, to know the contents of it and have the facts laid bare before him rather than the sanitized version of events he knows that everyone has been feeding him. Only he cannot read the words on the page.

He knows that they are there, he can see the vague outlines of markings that indicate that words have been written. But for some reason, his vision is blurry, foggy. And he cannot see clearly.

Damian cannot see the words clearly, and if he cannot see the words clearly, then he will not be able to find the missing link that only he can provide. He only has these moments that he has managed to take for himself, and there is no way to measure how long they will last.

He has to get this right, for Richard. For his Batman.

Damian takes a deep breath trying to steady himself. Because he knows that nothing good will come from allowing himself to fall apart when he is the closest he has ever come to his goal.

The words, the file in front of him and the grass and the gravestone beyond that, only grow harder to parse.

A breath hitches its way out from his lungs, getting caught halfway up his throat on something hard before managing to escape his mouth. He tries to take a deep breath, but he is only halfway through it before it escapes him, hitching on that same hard thing in his throat.

Then, before he can stop them, tears are flowing down his face and his breathing is turning into sobs. Huge, ugly, wracking things that claw up his throat.

Damian swipes at his face, tries to make himself focus on what he came here to do. Because he should not be showing such obvious emotion, he knows better than to expose such a weakness. But he also knows  that he only has so much time until he is discovered, until Richard’s file is taken from his hands and he is told that he does not need to see the details of the report. Until the information that he has been searching for is removed from him once again and any attempts to fix the problem are removed from him entirely.

And if he cannot even read this file, if he cannot do this one thing for Richard, confirm with his own two eyes that there is nothing to be done, then what good as a Robin is he?

He is failing. Damian is failing Richard. He has been failing him for months now, since the moment he was not there to protect Richard as a Robin should, a cumulation of all his failures up until this exact moment.

Even if Richard  were to be returned to life as Damian was, he is sure that Richard would know that Damian failed him, over and over again. He would know that Damian alone was the reason why it took so long for him to be returned, that Damian was chosen before him, that Damian had been the reason why no one discussed Richard for months, that Damian could not get his act together long enough to read a damn file.

Damian has no doubts about what would follow such a revelation.

So he tries to pull himself together, to gather his emotions tight in the center of him and to shove them into a small box, to quiet them as he knows he must. Because this is his one chance to make things right. He will not fail.

He fails.

Of course he fails.

Damian fails because he is a failure as a Robin, as the son of Batman, as Richard’s partner. All he has done is fail the people who should be able to rely on him the most in key moments. He keeps failing, over and over again.

“Hey, Damian, where did you go?” He hears someone call. They have obviously not spotted him yet. But he knows they will soon, that his plan is failing, all because he could not keep from crying. He had the chance to fix this whole situation, to set it right, and he allowed the opportunity to slip through his fingers.

He has failed Richard all over again.

“Damian? Hey- oh shit,” the last part is not directed at him. He knows because it is accompanied by the sound of a body tripping over some foliage, crashing through the last part of the trees that separate the graveyard from the rest of the Manor, and then Brown is there. Wrapping her arms around him.

Damian had not even known that he was on the ground until she is there next to him, kneeling, holding him close. Offering him her warmth.

It is the wrong warmth.

He does not want these arms around him. He wants his Batman.

He wants Richard.

“It’s okay Damian, I got you, you’re okay,” She tells him, her words low and soothing. Meaningless platitudes.

Because nothing is alright. Nothing will ever be alright again. Damian is alive but Richard is not.

And Damian could not do the one thing he was supposed to be able to do to bring Richard back to him. He was not even able to complete the first step.

“What’s that in your hands? Did you bring something?” Brown asks, clearly seeing the folder that Damian currently has clutched to his chest. Damian grips it tighter, feeling it crumpling against his body.

He does not want her to see. Does not want her to know how weak he is.

He also cannot stop her as she reaches forward and tugs gently on the file. He tries to keep it close to his center mass, to keep it right where it is safe, where Damian can keep it and the desperate kind of hope that he has pinned on it, from being harmed.

But despite the way he wants to keep the folder and all it represents safe in his arms, he cannot seem to manage to keep his fingers locked around it when Brown gives it another tug. Damian feels the file slip from his fingers and he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is over.

Every hope, all the wishes he pinned on it and every wandering daydream, they all slip through his fingers with the folder. He feels it as they all vanish like morning mist being hit by the first rays of sunlight. Spiderweb strings that he had convinced himself were steel cables. All of them wiped away with a gentle tug from someone he knows he could have resisted.

Damian knows better than to tilt at windmills after all.

And somewhere deep down, he knows that this has always been futile. That he has been grasping for something that was never there in the first place.

“Oh,” Brown says dumbly, apparently realizing what Damian had been holding close. He can feel the way she goes tense, clearly uncomfortable with Richard’s file being out in the light, in front of Richard’s gravestone, with Damian here. “Do you want me to go get Bruce for you?”

“No!” Damian says. The word practically rips itself from his throat. Because the last thing he wants is Father right now. For Father to see his shameful display.

In the League of Assassin, he would have been punished for this. A member who caught such a weakness in him would have been entirely in their rights to take advantage of his state. Deep down, most likely some part of him forged in that time when she was Batgirl and Richard was Batman, when it had been the three of them, with Gordon and Pennyworth, against the world, has faith that she will not conduct herself the way a member of the League of Assassins would. And Damian wishes he could believe that his Father would conduct himself in a similar way, but he does not hold that same kind of trust.

It has not been earned.

Not in the same way.

“Okay, okay, no Bruce,” Brown says. Placating. Like he is a child who needs to be comforted as he is confronted with the truth of the matter. “Do you, uhh, want to know what it says?”

He does. Damian so desperately wants to know what Richard’s file says.

It had been his whole purpose in forcing himself to Richard’s gravesite in the first place. So that he can know, clearly, what had occurred. So that he could find the one string that would unravel this wild situation, back to the pattern that existed in the fabric of the universe when Richard was still here, with Damian.

So that he can rewrite the fate that had been written, in the way it had been rewritten for so many of them.

Because if any one deserved to have a second chance, surely Richard did. Damian is positive that the world would not have kept a Batman from his Robin.

And yet, he feels the way his whole body seems to freeze, like he has been dumped in ice water, like he has become a sculpture carved from stone. Like he has been stabbed through his center mass all over again.

The thought of knowing what Richard’s file says, having it all laid out for him in plain English and hearing the careful, clinical report that Father would have put together, so similar to the report of Damian's own death, but without the eventual note that fate had seen fit to reverse itself. To know for certain, exactly what happened and all the ways in which Damian failed. It makes something cold settle inside him.

It is the absence of Richard’s warmth.

This is not the first time that Damian has felt this chill at the center of his person, of course it is not. But there is something final about it this time, something inescapable.

Damian cannot deny it, he cannot ignore it. And he cannot stand the idea of having Brown read the file to him. Because without that file, he has nothing to hold onto. He has nothing to shield himself with.

He wants so badly to keep pretending, to bury his head in the sand and act as if there is still the possibility that maybe he can make a difference, that as long as he does not read the file, then he will not have to know for certain. He wants to linger in the soft space that his denial has bought him amidst the chaos of everything else.

But Damian knows better, has known better. If Mother were here she would have made him face the truth of the matter long ago, and Father had done his best to do so with his reiterations that Richard is dead and gone. Damian had been unwilling to accept it though, had not wished to see the truth that has been looking him in the eye since he opened them.

Richard is gone.

He needs to accept that fact.

It hurts.

It hurts so much. Damian has been hurting this whole time with the knowledge that any efforts he might try to make to bring Richard back would fail in the end. Because if it were a possibility, then Damian, who returned to life well after Richard was dead and gone and so very cold, would not be the key to finding it. Someone else would have identified a way to bring Richard back, Father certainly, but he cannot discount the other Gotham vigilanties, nor the various other superheroes that have shown allegiance and care towards Richard.

All of Damian’s efforts have been doomed since their inception.

He has known that from the moment he was informed of Richard’s passing. But now, in this moment, he knows that it is useless to deny it any further. He is not doing himself or Richard any favors in attempting to do so.

Damian resumed drawing breath in a world that no longer contained his Batman. It is long past time for him to accept that fact.

“Yes,” he tells Brown. The answer to her question that feels like a lie on his tongue but which he knows must be the truth that he needs to face.

“Are you sure?” She asks, giving him the opportunity to back out. To continue on with his willful ignorance. But the willful ignorance hurts too.

There is no escaping this pain. It is a part of him, the part of him that used to hold space for Richard that has now been torn away from him. Damian is mired in the pain, and he does not know how to escape it.

He does not think there is an escape. Just more of the same pain, on and on into infinity, stretching out in both directions. Because now even his memories of Richard, things that had once brought him joy, are painful. It all hurts.

There is no other option for him but to hurt.

“Read it,” he tells her. Because what he has been doing up until this point has not spared him any pain, not really. And he needs to try something new.

Brown still seems hesitant, he can feel her reluctance. But she shifts so that she can support him better while she opens up the file. Damian allows himself to be manipulated, closing his eyes as he is pulled away from the ground so that he does not have to see. He does not want to see.

Then, she starts reading, and it is like a dam inside him that has been cracking and splintering under the pressure of everything that has been building up behind him, breaks. It gives way and it sweeps him away with it. There is nothing that he can do to stop it, and there is nothing he can do to save himself from it. He does not even try. Damian is a piece of detritus, nothing more.

Brown reads the file to him, and Damian knows that his failures led to Richard’s death, that it is his fault, because he was not there when she should have been. Hearing it out loud, is something else though.

He does not know how he is supposed to continue, what purpose he has as a Robin without his Batman. He is lost, and there is nothing else out there.