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He remembered the end.
Of course he did, as it was one of the only things he bothered to think about, both when he was silent and when he was bawling his eyes out.
Years, centuries had passed and yet it was still all that was on his mind. It consumed him, caused him to stay awake for days or weeks on end. It was all a blur, and even though he didn't need to sleep anymore, it still hurt him to not do it all.
Maybe if he were still alive, it would have affected him more. Maybe he would actually have to take care of himself rather than sulk by the graves of his murdered brothers all day.
The very brothers Dick killed himself.
He felt another tear trail down his face, and even though he was acting a fool and crying he still felt almost emotionless.
Dick's head turned on its own as he heard a calling in this distance. He recognized the voice, it was Jason, most likely worried (but now knowing) about where he was.
Jason... the one part of his family he had left. His last brother. Despite everything, Jason had decided on his own to live out the rest of eternity with him. How far they had come, from when Jason had angrily returned from the dead so long ago. Dick just couldn't understand. He never would.
What if he snapped one day? What if he hurt the one person who dared to stay with him? Dick knew he'd snapped before, many times when Talia was over, giving him what he truly deserved for killing Damian. They ended up mutilating each other every time, but he always healed, and she always came back the same way Jason did.
If he had an episode and it was Jason he hurt instead...
His train of thought stopped.
Dick just knew he didn't deserve him.
He heard the voice calling again. Some part deep inside of him felt bad for refusing to move from where he was. The part of him that was buried deep inside the hollow shell that was left.
Dick looked back toward the graves, cracking from the passed time and freezing from the frost of the winter. It was winter, wasn't it? He'd lived through so many now he hadn't remembered if he'd ever payed attention before or not.
The Court, his former masters... They had messed with him so much. Their torture had- very extreme- effects on him even now. He suspected they would forever.
He'd never be able to recover.
And what if they miraculously came back? Would he give in? Jason would be the only one to help him, and he could not best all of them. He'd end back up in their clutches, theirs again, and Jason would be permanently left for dead, and-
Murderer. That's what he was and that's what he would always be, forever, regardless of whether the Court ever rose again or not. The word rang through this mind.
He saw the headstone again, seeing the name Damian written on it. Every time he looked at it, Dick was reminded how he was- IS- Talon, the blood and the cries, the reasons why he deserved this hell of living on forever.
His golden eyes stared upon the name, until at last Jason found him and helped him up. Everything was a blur again, like it usually was. Dick heard him talking but he did not comprehend the words. He couldn't.
How was it that Jason could act as if Dick was not in the wrong?
There was a poem he remembered reading somewhere when Jason had tried to get him to do something other than stare blankly into space. It talked about nature and robins, but it was not happy and it reminded him too much of what had happened.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
It started to drizzle, Dick noticed. Soon enough it'd be snow.
The soft rain had come, and it seemed as if not one truly remembered the war but him.