Chapter Text
“Wake up.”
He doesn’t want to wake up. That would require moving, you see, and he’s perfectly adequate where he is, thank you. And yes, lying face-down in the grass isn’t exactly dignified, he knows. Mother would never approve. But Mother isn’t here right now, and neither is Father, so the fact of the matter is that Damian Wayne can do whatever he so chooses. And he tells this voice so, though it comes out as more of a muffled grunt than actual words.
The voice laughs. “C’mon, time to wake up now. I’ve let you lie there for long enough.”
He really, really doesn’t want to wake up. The sun is warm on his back, the grass smells of spring, and the simple presence of the person at his side is more soothing than the gentle caress of the warm wind tousling his hair. He could happily stay like this forever.
“What, is the face of your big brother too radiant for thine mortal eyes to look upon?”
Damian can’t suppress the smirk that edges at the corners of his mouth at that. He turns his face and cracks an eye open to glare at one Richard Grayson, seated next to him on the grass.
His brother leans in, grin wide and fond. “There you are,” he says, and brushes the hair away from Damian’s face. The younger boy swats his hand away and sits up, shuffling closer to Dick and breathing deeply. They sit in a grove, surrounded by a forest of lush green trees that never stops, not for anything, all covered in vibrant and dark green leaves being brushed just so by the wind. The breaks in the treetops closest to them allow a stream of sunlight to perfectly illuminate the spot that he and Grayson have chosen. Distantly, he can hear the sounds of gently trickling water, and feels his eyes begin to droop closed again to revel in the serenity of it all.
Beside him, Dick jostles him with his arm. “You prick your finger on a spinning wheel or something?” At Damian’s cocked eyebrow, he adds: “Never did get around to watching Sleeping Beauty with you...” He chuckles then, and the sound reverberates in Damian’s mind, replaying over and over and over again. It’s easy and full of mirth, like a wind chime in summer’s breeze, and Damian feels his heart throb and squeeze painfully at the sound, though he can’t seem to figure out why. His brother is smiling slightly into the distance, face tilted gently towards the sky, and the sun illuminates his raven hair while casting a glow around his form. The halo of sunlight briefly reminds Damian of a renaissance painting on the walls of the Vatican, and the younger boy finds himself, for seemingly no apparent reason, transfixed on his brother. He drinks in every feature of the man, because he can’t shake the feeling that he won’t ever get another chance. His youthful face, his relaxed yet strong and confident posture, wind still tousling his hair as it was wont to do back on the rooftops of Gotham where his entire being seemingly defied gravity without a single care as to the laws of physics.
Damian misses him, he realizes suddenly. With all his aching heart he misses him.
His brother then turns and looks at him again, softly now. Dick’s steely blue eyes are fixed on Damian’s green ones. And he remembers, now. He knows why his heart hurts every time Grayson smiles at him, why hearing his laugh is like a distant memory filled with a painful nostalgia bleeding from the gaping wound on his heart.
“You have to wake up now.”
Damian screws his eyes shut and shakes his head violently.
“Dami…”
“You can’t make me, Grayson,” he snaps, “this is my dream and I’ll wake up from it when I see fit, and only then.”
Neither of them speak for a long time, after that. Dick places a gentle hand on Damian’s back, and the younger boy shudders, gaze fixed on the ground. He cannot feel what should have been a warm, familiar comfort, not now that he’s becoming aware of the dream. He wishes to God he could retreat back into his mind, back when he’d actually believed this was all real, when Dick had strolled with him through the winding path of the forest and sat by him while he’d laid down in the grass. He wishes to go back to the only place left where he can know his brother is there with him, talk to him, feel the motions of Dick’s hand rubbing up and down his spine. He knows that if he wakes up, there will be no real Grayson to hold onto, and that this Grayson is about as real and tangible as the fractured light that makes a rainbow.
The colours are illusions, Damian thinks bitterly, solid at first glance.
“Can I not stay here, even for a short while longer?” He asks, looking up once again at Dick. With you?
The sad smile that finds its way onto his brother’s face is in no way comforting, and Dick stops his gentle ministrations to lightly cup Damian’s cheek, who leans into the touch he cannot feel.
“Sorry. Don’t wake up soon and you may not be able to wake up at all, kiddo.”
Damian swallows. “And what is so wrong with that?”
“Well, for starters, we both know how easily you get bored,” Dick withdraws his hand and spreads his arms wide, “Literally all I can see is grass and trees. Seriously, you’re an artist! Could you not have thought up something with a little more… I dunno, stuff to do? Some tall buildings? Maybe a couple of grappling hooks?”
“You are a… a figment of my imagination, something my subconscious conjured up, and you’re criticizing my choice of serene environments?”
“Well when you put it like that, it’s more like you’re criticizing your--”
“Shut up.”
“Just sayin’, a guy could go crazy seeing nothing but green without end.”
Damian scoffs a quiet -tt-, and they lapse into comfortable silence again before Damian speaks up.
“It’s… safe,” he says. Dick turns to look at him, and he continues, “This grove. I suppose that’s why I chose it. It’s open, and freeing, but it’s guarded well. Nothing can get here through the forest.” He turns his head and meets Dick’s gaze. “Except for you, apparently. But then again, you were always such an irritating exception to so many rules.”
His brother smiles at this, not sadly, but there is a certain wistfulness that Damian cannot quite place.
“There are people waiting for you,” Dick says, and his little brother feels his heart throb again.
They don’t matter! Damian wants to scream, They never loved me like you loved me. They never will.
And yet… he cannot stay here. He cannot stay here with a cheap imitation of Grayson. His brother would have wanted him to live his life…
“You’ll see me again,” Dick murmurs kindly.
...and leave him behind, if necessary.
“No,” Damian whispers and swallows thickly, eyes roaming over his older brother’s face in their last attempt to memorize every feature, “I don’t think I will.”
And he wakes up.
He blinks awake on a medical cot in the Batcave. He tries to speak, but his throat feels like sand. Gone is the summer wind that lightly caressed his cheeks, replaced with the stale air of the cave. Gone is the sun, the grass, the trees...
...Grayson. He’s gone, too.
Damian pushes himself up on his elbows, grimacing in discomfort. His chest is wrapped bandages that have tiny pinpricks of red showing through. Stitches, then. He sees Bruce rummaging through a cabinet, still in uniform, sans cowl.
“Fa--” Damian coughs, “Father.”
Bruce’s body jerks, and he turns quickly to face his youngest. Before Damian can process it, Bruce is beside him, arms thrown around his body, pulling him into a protective, all encompassing embrace, murmuring, “Damian, Damian…”
Months later, he is grasped tightly in the blessedly alive arms of Dick Grayson. Damian’s arms are locked around the man’s neck in a death grip, his legs around his waist, and he’s not letting go. Not ever. He already let go once. Richard is never allowed to leave him again.
Damian presses his cheek to Dick’s, revelling in actually being able to feel the contact, the warmth, the solid proof that his brother, his mentor, is alive and here with him. Dick presses right back, rubbing his baby brother’s cheek with his own.
“I missed you,” Damian says, his smile big enough to make his cheeks hurt.
“Me too, kiddo,” Dick returns, and oh, Grayson. He sounds like he’s about to cry, the absolute sap. “Me too.”
Two brothers lie in a quiet forest. They had been walking together and decided to take an excursion through the woods. They found an old path to follow, and eventually stumbled upon a hidden grove where the sunlight broke through the trees to illuminate the center patch of grass. They lie together and talk for hours; they have a lot to catch up on. After a while they fall into a comfortable silence, both content to just be.
When the sun begins to go down, Dick stretches and sits up, smiling softly at where Damian had curled himself at his older brother’s side. He’s dozing, and Dick allows himself a short while to appreciate the utter blessing it was that Damian was actually alive and beside him. Breathing, snoring, drooling a little bit? He pulls out his phone and snaps a picture, making it Damian’s contact photo as well as sending it to Stephanie and Bruce. A lock of hair has fallen into the younger boy’s face, and Dick smoothes it away with utmost care.
The sun really is going to go down, though, and they should probably get out of the forest before dark. Dick repeatedly pokes his little brother’s nose irritatingly, making Damian scrunch up his face and blink awake, wiping the drool off his mouth with his sleeve.
“Time to wake up,” he says, grinning, “I’ve let you lie there for long enough.”
Damian looks up at him sharply now, regarding him curiously, not saying anything. Dick’s caught off guard at the sudden intensity of his stare until Damian suddenly remarks, “We never watched Sleeping Beauty.”
“No,” Dick agrees, “I guess we didn’t.”
After a haughty demand that Dick come to the manor for a movie night, as well as an accepted request to invite Stephanie and Cassandra, the two brothers leave the grove the way they came.