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It had been five years since Dick had last had a conversation with Bruce.
It had not been a good thing. A difficult mission, the irritation skyrocketing to be put in the background, to his leadership questioned, and he had exploded.
Many things had been said to each other. Things that Dick had regretted in retrospect, but at the time he thought them all. Bruce had also given him respectable verbal lunges, don't you think.
Anyway, Dick hadn't spoken to him in five years, and if he had returned to the Manor, it was only because receiving a message from Bruce asking him to come had surprised him so much that he had to see what new end-of-the-world crisis was coming to make the man believe he needed help.
Tim, Jason and Stephanie had joined by pure chance. Dick was with Tim when he received the message, while they were at the store deciding what to add to Tim's wedding list. Tim had read, and told Stephanie, who in turn had called Jason.
Dick suspected that wanting to know what was going on was just an excuse to see Bruce again.
They expected a crisis of the multiverse. Not cancer.
"You didn't think to call? Not even once?" Dick shouted, a reaction he was more familiar with.
Anger, he could handle that.
Fear? No, he couldn't.
And knowing that Bruce's illness was stealing his last years with more cruelty than anything the Joker or Bane had ever done was terrifying.
Sitting in the chair, Bruce didn't move a muscle. The robe seemed too big on him, he looked twenty years older than his forty-five years.
And he was so tired. The sight was heartbreaking. But that didn't stop Dick from being cruel.
It was always so easy being cruel to Bruce, isn’t it?
"God, Bruce," he made a mocking sound, ugly, mean, "Do you still think you're invincible? Even after all this time?"
"Dick..." the man tried, but they didn’t let him finish.
"Titans fall in the end," Jason commented neutrally. Dick, however, saw the tension in his gaze, on his shoulders. He was afraid. "Your time has come too, huh?"
"God, that's a shitty ending," Stephanie muttered under her breath, Tim nodding in agreement, both too nervous to look at Bruce now. Who knows if he would ever send the invitation for the wedding or ask Bruce to accompany him to the altar. If Dick's departure had been explosive, Tim's had been quieter, more discreet. A search for independence combined with the annoyance of being treated like a child. Tim had emancipated himself at seventeen, and had never backed down from his decision. "You'd rather not have us around because of that?"
"You and your damned pride..." Tim muttered, still not looking at their father. Still wanting to ignore the signs of mortality on someone that all of them, for years, have considered invincible.
A loud bang on the table interrupted him. They turned. Damian, taller than the last time they'd seen him, was glaring at them with the same fury he'd had the first time, as a nine-year-old new to America. Damian, however, was no longer a child. He was nineteen, signs of fatigue that no one at his age should have, and all the indignant fury of a son who loved his dad and couldn’t stand in silence.
The young man hissed, "Are you really that dense? How dare you show up here after years like nothing happened, and get angry?"
"Dami..." Dick tried, but his younger brother wouldn't let him finish.
"Instead of being nice to someone who...isn't well...you yell at them. Who the hell does that?"
"Maybe someone should have called..." Jason said, and Damian let out a mocking noise, "Oh yeah, because you would have come, wouldn't you? If we'd called, you would have forgotten your stupid grudges and come, without thinking."
Jason looked impressed. He didn't even remember the last fight with Bruce, four, maybe five years ago. He couldn't even say he was right because he didn't remember it. He said, "Of course...come on, old man, you knew we were going to do that, didn't you?"
Everyone finally looked at Bruce, who let out a sigh, so small and subtle it was almost inaudible, and admitted, "I didn't think you would care..."
Jason bristled. He didn’t want to listen. "That's bullshit..."
Bruce didn't continue. Damian, however, did not have the same kindness as his father, "Bullshit, Todd? Last time you told him the world would be a better place without him. You all told him he ruined your lives. Oh, and Brown said Joe Chill missed his aim that night!"
Stephanie trembled under Damian's glare. Probably, she didn’t even remember it, "I didn't mean it..."
"Years of no contact have shown otherwise! If you ever cared, you would have come sooner! If you had given a damn, you would have followed the news and realized something was wrong when father withdrew from public life! You didn't care! So don't come here screaming and acting like children, and blame him for all your negligence. Take your fucking responsibility for once, and admit you fucked up..."
"Damian," Bruce interrupted, gentle but firm, "They are your siblings."
"Thomas and Cain are my family," Damian replied, full of hatred, "They were here. These pretenders left, after hurting you, and now they're here to humiliate you again. I won't allow it."
"Dami, we're sorry..."
Once, Damian would have listened to Dick. He would have thought of him as a second father.
But now, he looked at him as if he were a stranger. And Dick couldn't blame him, because he had abandoned Damian.
He had left without looking back, texting his brother every now and then to make sure he was okay, but never recovering the relationship they had before. He had resented Damian taking Bruce's side.
He resented that it was not the boy's first choice. He had been so self-absorbed that he didn't realize that he had put his brother in front of an impossible decision, and that Damian had tried to do the best in his position.
Barbara was right. Dick was a terribly selfish person.
"Grayson, visiting hours are over. Go away,” the young man said, making a dramatic gesture towards the door, inviting them to leave.
"Wait, you can't kick us out, we're..." Tim tried to say, but it was useless.
“You are a former ward, a walking dead man, a man emancipated at seventeen, and an ex-girlfriend who always emphasized that she wasn't Bruce Wayne's daughter," Damian reminded haughtily, vicious only as his mother knew how to be . "All people who made it clear years ago what they thought of him and decided he wasn’t worth of them. So, go away. This is no place for you."
The worse thing was, Dick knew Damian was right.
The others, however, disagreed. There were arguments, more shouting, and the thing was quickly getting out of hand.
All this, in front of a Bruce in an evident state of suffering.
A Bruce who had called Dick to be able to talk to him one last time (and the thought that it could be the last nauseated him), who did not expect the others.
A Bruce who would only have wanted a minimum of peace, not that little theater.
So, Dick yelled, "Shut up all fucking shut up!"
Miraculously, they listened to him. Dick's voice trembled, "We have to leave."
"What? You are crazy? Do you really want to..."
"Jason, no. We have to leave. Bruce is tired, and we... We're just not giving it our best," the feeling of sand in his mouth left him numb.
He didn't say we're ruining his last moments.
He didn't say I don't want the last thing I ever told my father was that he was a terrible man.
He didn't say he was afraid.
He didn’t say a lot of things.
Thank goodness, Tim understood. He muttered a quick apology—to Damian, Dick, or Bruce, he wasn't sure—and walked out, dragging a still-belligerent Stephanie with him.
Only he and Jason remained. Jason looked at Bruce first, then at the door. He opened his mouth. Whatever he meant, however, it stuck to him, and he opted for an irritated grunt and retreated.
"And you? Why are you still here?" Damian asked, looking at him with hatred.
"I..."
"You don't have to feel guilty," Bruce sighed, wearily, and Dick's heart tightened, "I know I wasn't an easy man."
"Did you mean to tell me this?" Dick stammered, while Bruce nodded, "I didn't want you to feel any obligation to me. None of you. I wish Damian wasn't here..."
"Father!" Damian exclaimed, offended, but Bruce continued, "But he's as stubborn as I am. I cannot force him to make any decisions. What I can do... is to say that you have no obligation. You must not come and assist me, I do not ask you.'
"It's... everything?"
"Yes."
Dick didn't want to cry. He didn't want to think about how much he had disappointed the other man whom Bruce had feared was an obligation, a burden to be borne. Five years. He had wasted time to... What for? Pride? Stubbornness? Anger?
The fact remained that he had lost years with Bruce, years that will never return, Mar'i would never know her grandpa, and Bruce still thought first of all about what they wanted, not him.
"I... I would like to... to be able to come... if it's okay with you..."
Damian let out a snort, "How long will you last before you run away, Richard?"
"Damian..."
"You know it's true! He is only good at this!"
"Damian..."
"Don't make that beaten dog face, Richard. I offer you the minimum of grace only because father asks for it. If I could do it my way..."
He left the sentence hanging, a threat that Dick seized on the fly, and thought well deserved.
Bruce narrowed his eyes, "If you want to come, I won't stop you. But Dick... it won't be nice."
"I know."
"It's going to be difficult," Bruce continued.
"I know."
"You don't have to do it for me."
"I want to do it. You..."
You deserve it. You are my father. You are the man who gave me a family.
Dick didn't say it. That would sound too false, and it would hurt Bruce more than Dick wanted.
"I'll be back next week," he promised, and Bruce looked at him gratefully, but Dick knew he didn't believe him. He had given Bruce no reason to believe him.
Only once he was out of the bedroom did Dick cry.