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“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in– ”
*
Some say home is where your heart is, but they forget hearts are slow things to mend. Coming home, it takes time.
*
Dick Grayson comes home with grief wrapped up around him like a heavy cloak. It drenches him to the marrow, soaking through skin, muscle, blood, and bone. Grief that trades places with guilt and regret and sorrow and anger like a game of dancing chairs.
They rattle around his ribcage with sharp edges, cutting at every turn. Breath in, drip blood.
He enters the Manor and almost trips on the ghosts running around the halls. They’re everywhere, filling every corner. He watches them dance on the tiled floors, replaying a movie he already knows the ending.
This has always been a tragedy.
It always is, with Bruce.
In the kitchen, he finds Alfred. Grief has its claws all over him, too. It’s on the white of his hair, on the bags under his eyes, on the crook of his tie. Alfred is always pristine, there’s never crooks on his ties or creases on his clothes.
Except today. And yesterday. And the whole week before that.
“Master Richard,” he says, and it echoes. It stretches in the too empty silence. There should be something more after that, but there’s a lot of things that should be, but aren’t.
Once, the Manor had felt like home. Now, it feels suitably like a graveyard. Dick is glad, it would have been inappropriate, anything else.
“I heard,” Dick begins. What did he hear? A lot of things, not enough, too late. He trails off, too. It’s been a problem since he landed on Earth. “I’m sorry,” he settles. God, it sounds awful. It sounds stupid. It sounds– it sounds. “I should’ve been here.”
Alfred doesn’t answer, shakes his head. He looks older than Dick’s ever seen him. People say grief does that to you. He wonders what he must look like. He wouldn’t know, all his mirrors shattered either against the wall or his closed fist.
“Where is he?” Dick asks, doesn’t need to specify. They all know why he’s here.
Merry-go-round goes the carousel of emotions in his chest. Grief trades place with sorrow trades place with guilt trades place with regret trades place with anger. That one wins this time ‘round. He closes his hands in white-knuckled fists, the kind that would break his thumb if he punched someone. Dick hopes it does, when he inevitably punches someone.
“Downstairs,” Alfred tells him, too knowing eyes and too pale face. He’s worried, Dick knows. He’s worried about Bruce, he’s worried about Dick, and he’s worried about Dick-and-Bruce. He must still be worried about Jason, too. Pointless as they are, all of his worries. None of them are okay, none of them will be for a long time. Jason, especially.
Sorrow threatens to trade places with anger, but Dick finds that they can coexist.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Dick declares to the room, and means it’s gonna be ugly , because it is. He wonders how many fights between them Jason witnessed. Far too many, he figures.
“Master Richard?” Alfred calls, voice once again echoing in the haunting halls.
“Yeah?”
“Though the circumstances are terrible,” his voice falters. Yeah, terrible doesn’t begin to cover it. “Welcome home, Master Richard.”
Dick looks around. An empty house full of ghosts of a fearless child. Dick had been that fearless child too, once upon a time. It feels like a lifetime ago. “Thanks, Alfred.”
He heads down to the Cave, to have yet another fight. Still, he knows he will end up back here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that too.
*
Jason Todd comes home a few times before coming home.
It’s a slow-healing wound, and it heals all wrong the first time round. It scars angrily and it hurts and it aches and it itches, and he picks at it until it bleeds again. And then he claws at the skin and deepens it further.
It infects, it festers, it rots.
Sometimes, it feels like it would be better to just cut off the whole limb and be done with it.
He even tries to.
First, with eight severed heads and games of cat-and-mouse that cuts everything open with a butcher’s knife.
Then, with Roy, and then with Roy and Kori, and then with Roy again. It does help, in some ways. A fragile thing, that gives him time for scar tissue to grow, even if hurts in other ways. But maybe the problem is that Jason is restless, impatient. Or maybe, it’s just the way it goes, somethings are out of his control. But in the end, Jason trades a wound for another.
After that he understands, there’s no escaping Gotham. Artemis and Bizarro, they understand that too.
This time, he doesn’t pick at it so much. It’s a slow-healing wound, and so Jason gives it time. Lets it take its time.
All the small visits, the brief missions, the compromises. They help.
They remind him why he’s doing it, why he’s waiting for it to heal. Why he’s not tearing himself inside out and burning the whole world down.
He wants to, some days.
No killing, Batman says, meaning a question and an order at the same time. It makes the scar itch, his skin crawl, his blood boil a sickening green.
Some days Jason wonders if his blood would still drip red.
This promise feels too large, too much, too naive. It feels like a lie, most days.
Fake it ‘till you make it , Roy told him once. Jason curls around these words and hopes to will them true.
There will always be this thing around the Cave, around the Manor, where Bruce looks at him as if Jason is a puzzle that turned out all wrong in the end.
This thing where it feels as if Jason is a walking memory, a stranger wearing a ghost’s face. Maybe he is.
Maybe that is why, after all the bloodshed, the jealousy, the anger, the bitterness, Jason still finds it easier with Tim. There is no before with him. All the kid ever knew is this, is Jason.
It’s easier, as in: it’s easier to lift a mountain than to move an entire galaxy.
As in: if you tear at a wound until it bleeds, until the skin around it is jagged and rotting, until the it is growing larger than your body, it can still scar all over again.
As in: the second time it heals, it heals a little less wrong.
Jason steps inside the Cave a whole lot of times since waking up drowning in a Lazarus Pit.
But it doesn’t count, he tells himself, until the day Jason first steps inside Wayne Manor through the front gates. He does it half expecting to be thrown back out in the streets. Old fears are a bit like old habits, after all.
Jason comes home without telling anyone, without waiting for invitations. He stops in the threshold, and breathes in. Somehow, the world doesn’t end, even if it hurts like it.
Alfred is in the garden, tending to the rose bushes. He looks old, and he looks tired, and when he sees Jason, it seems even the roses startle. “Master Jason?” The question shouldn’t echo, but it feels like it does, and it’s heavy with too many unasked questions.
“Hey, Alfie,” Jason says, hands stuffed on the pockets of his jeans. He’s not usually shy, and he’s not usually unsure, but this house has a way of bringing out strange sides out of everyone. “The door was unlocked, so I…”
Trailing off, Jason shrugs. The rose bushes look fine from a distance, but that’s life he supposes. Alfred rises, dusting off dirt and leaves from his apron. The sun shines all over the garden. “Indeed, you’ll find that these doors have always been open for you, Master Jason.”
Sometimes scar tissue leaves the skin numb and unfeeling. Right now, mostly, it feels raw.
Maybe this is the kind of wound that will never heal properly, the kind that is always aching. Jason is finally learning to make peace with that, he supposes. “Thanks.” A pause. The wind rustles the leaves on a nearby tree. In the city, St. Peter’s bells ring. “I think I’ll just. Head downstairs.”
It’s safer, familiar. Common ground. Perhaps there’s always going to be fighting between him and Bruce, but that’s familiar, too.
“Very well,” Alfred nods, smiling faintly, “please, do remind Master Bruce that dinner will be served in an hour. Master Dick and Master Tim are both visiting and I expect you both to be upstairs on time.”
Jason laughs, a rattling sound that echoes loudly in the wasteland of a black hole residing on his chest. “I will.” It doesn’t sound like St. Peter’s bells, but it sounds almost like closure.
The sun is setting, all orange and red in the horizon behind the Manor. It makes the garden glow. Jason basks in the lasting sunlight for a second. It’s warmer than any of his safehouses, than any room on their floating headquarter. He heads inside.
“Welcome home, Master Jason.” The words float in the evening wind, and Jason smiles.
*
Tim Drake comes home limping, battered and bruised, with broken ribs and cuts that will definitely scar. He comes home leaning heavily on Dick.
And by home, he means the Penthouse. The Manor is too abandoned, too empty, too haunting to be anyone’s home. The graveyard grew too big, it overshadows the entire state in his mind.
But the Penthouse, it’s nice, or, rather, nicer.
Dick is there, listening to Tim talk, face guarded as the words flow. There are an abysm between them, and he’s not sure he has the energy to cross it. It cracked the night he left, and it’s been eroding ever since, growing deeper, wider. Impossibly wide.
And Damian is there too, a reminder of everything that happened and all that should, but did not. But after Europe, after his search, after the Council of Spiders, after Ra’s. Perspective shifts, priorities change. Damian is now a footnote, a spoiled brat to deal with.
It’s a bittersweet victory, Tim thinks. Not a pyrrhic one, not by a long shot. Everyone’s alive after all. Even Ra’s. Even Bruce. But it’s bittersweet nevertheless. Because Dick says he believes in Tim, now. There’s evidence, real evidence. Tim’s not crazy anymore. Or, rather, he still is, but in a good way. The kind of crazy that you grin, and say, you’re crazy, man , but means this is dangerously brilliant. Now there’s evidence, so Dick says he believes him.
This isn’t what Tim wants, not what he needed.
He needed faith . He needed Dick to have looked at him and saw past the grief. Tim’s grief, his grief. He needed Dick to have known him, known Tim would never say something he doesn’t mean, something he’s not ready to go to the ends of the world for.
Dick caught him when Tim fell down that window, and Tim meant what he said after. He still does. Probably always will. That’s just how it is in this family. They trust each other with their lives, but most of the time they have no trust in anything else at all.
Still, bittersweet is nothing like pyrrhic, and Tim is glad. It’s the first step to cross this slow-rising ocean. And being here, it helps. There’s something soothing in listening to the morning sounds of a house waking up. He hears Alfred in the kitchen, Dick stumbling in the room next door, Damian turning on the TV and loudly announcing he has no interest in these morning cartoons.
Outside, cars drive by. The city rises with the sun, and Tim knows he needs to wake up, too. They have their father to rescue, a brother to find, and a city to keep safe. He might not know who Red Robin is now that Tim Drake-Wayne is back in Gotham, but that’s okay. He has time to figure it all out.
There’s cereal in the cabinets, and orange juice on the table. Alfred cuts a sandwich in half, adds it to a plate, takes another. When Tim steps into the kitchen, he looks up. “Good morning, Master Tim.”
“Morning, Alfred.” Tim pauses, leans against the doorway until it doesn’t feel like his lungs are catching fire. It works about as well as gasoline would.
“I trust you are feeling better,” Alfred raises one eyebrow, sees the flaming ribs and the swollen ankle. Sees the fear and the relief and the barely there hope. A plate of sandwiches is pushed towards the seat nearest Tim. A glass of orange juice follows. “If you are already disregarding doctor’s orders.”
“Well, you know me, Alfred.” He sits down, eyes the plate, the glass. After his stay with the League, it’s a learning curve, he figures.
“Ah, that, I do, my boy.” Alfred sets another two plates, two glasses. They don’t mention all the empty chairs. This table is smaller, anyway. Less room to miss. He pauses, regards Tim with soft eyes. “Welcome home, Master Timothy.”
Tim smiles, takes a bite of the sandwich, washes it down with the orange juice.
*
Cassandra Cain comes home on a cold, wet night.
It rained on the day she left, it rains on the day she comes back.
The Manor stands tall, but there’s still cobwebs all around. In the shadows, in the corners, in the people. It’s a little unsettling.
She sees them dancing around each other, afraid to cut themselves in all those new sharp edges.
This past year, it did no one any favors.
The rain soaks through her coat, her shirt. The umbrella had been lost somewhere along, between here and Hong Kong.
A light is on inside. The library, she guesses. It’s late enough for everyone to have returned from patrol. Cass wonders who everyone is, how many of them are here, how many are still scattered. It’s only a matter of time, she thinks. Now that Bruce is back, they will all converge in Gotham. Even Jason. Even her.
It’s a bit tiring, this city. Always tearing itself apart. But Hong Kong showed her all cities are more of less the same. Though, Gotham certainly takes it to the next level. Maybe that’s why they all keep coming back, they belong in this place and it belongs to them, in a way.
The door is unlocked, and she walks in. It’s clear they’re all still moving back in, things still missing, things still at the Penthouse. She should have brought her bags, but the rain. A puddle of muddied water trails where she goes, and Cass wrinkles her nose. Alfred will be upset when he finds it.
Trying to clean after herself, she mops the puddles and footsteps with toilet paper as best as she can. It’s not that great, really, and Alfred catches her in the act. He makes a disapproving noise, “this will not do, child.” He’s the only one that still calls her child. She wants to contradict him, tell him she’s never been a child but well. It’s Alfred. “Stop this nonsense. We must get you into dry clothes and by the fireplace before you catch yourself a cold.”
He ushers her towards one of the bedrooms, away from the mess on the front door. A pile of her old clothes is placed on her hands. “Come on, off you go. It’s flu season and this wretched rain is no help at all.” The door closes with a dull thud, and Cass is alone once more.
She changes into the her new, old, clothes and wanders around. Wandering, she’s been doing quite a bit of that in this past year.
There’s a new light on now. The kitchen. Alfred sees her lingering in the hall, and gestures her in, places a mug in front of her. “Hot chocolate, the best remedy for the cold.”
Cass smiles, takes a sip, letting the warmth sink in, hoping it will warm her body, her bones, before the cold seeps in, burrows into the marrow. “Who is here?” She inevitably asks.
“Master Bruce insisted Master Damian moved back in the Manor with him,” Alfred tells her, dutifully wiping the half-moon stain her mug left on the table, “and Master Richard as well, though this one insists it’s only for now.”
Another sip. She can barely feel the ghost of the rain on her skin now. “Not Tim?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Master Tim is still at his apartment. And, well,” he hesitates, his own hands twisting the dish rag without his noticing, “the last we heard of Master Jason, it was that insane stint of his in Qurac. Breaking Oliver Queen’s boy from that prison! And in that manner!”
Cass heard about that in the news. Subtlety has never been Jason’s thing, maybe that’s why they all worry when he goes silent. “It was very brave of him, I thought.”
“Yes, brave indeed, and a quite commendable show of loyalty,” Alfred agrees, nodding, “but one can’t help worrying. He’s always been a bit reckless, that one.”
“Jason will come back,” Cass says. She knows he will. Like she did. Like they all inevitably do. “May take a while, but he will.”
“Let’s hope so, dear child, let’s hope so.” He stares a little unfocused at the table, but then shakes himself off, back to the present. Alfred looks up with kind, kind eyes, “but for now, welcome home, Miss Cassandra.”
“Thank you,” she says, and means it.
It rained the day she left, and it’s raining again when she finally comes back.
*
Bruce Wayne comes home and finds that he doesn’t recognize it anymore.
So much changed, so much he missed. Dick and Damian living in the Penthouse. Cassandra still in Hong Kong. Tim on his own apartment, living alone. And Jason, somewhere halfway across the world.
There’s still a Batman on the streets, even if there’s no Bruce under the cowl. His city remains standing, proof that they can all manage without him. He’s not essencial anymore.
He comes home to a Manor full of cobwebs and dust. To an empty house, abandoned to the elements. Bruce throws curtains open, lets sunlight in, but he’s not sure it’s enough.
Darkness has a way of settling in, digging its claws, and not letting go.
But it does help, a bit, so he does it in every floor. It takes him almost an hour, but the place looks almost hopeful.
The time spent fighting his way through the Time Stream, fighting the Omega Energy, forgetting and remembering and forgetting again, it left him exhausted down to his bones. The kind that you can never shake off again, the kind that stays with you. He welcomes it as the old friend that it is, and keeps it with all the other aches and pains that refuse to let go. They weight down his shoulders a little, but Bane once broke his back and yet here he is still standing. He can carry this, too.
Alfred is there with him, hovering by his shoulder. The man is worried, Bruce knows, even if he can’t figure out how to fix it. “This will take some work,” he says, voice echoing on the empty halls, “but it’s not a lost cause.”
Tim and Dick, something happened there. Bruce can see it in everything they do. There’s a distance, an hesitation, a resentment, that wasn’t there before. None of them are willing to talk about it, or acknowledge it, and without more information, all Bruce can do is trust they know how to mend themselves on their own.
Jason, that’s another story altogether. The last he could find of him was a breakout in a maximum security prison in Qurac, of all places. Jason swore never go back there. And yet, the article has a clear shot of Red Hood helping Arsenal escape his death sentence. After that, it’s radio silence. At the very least, Bruce is glad his son isn’t alone. Jason doesn’t take loneliness well. But maybe, maybe , with this friendship, then he can be fine.
“No, it’s not a lost cause,” Bruce nods, watching the sun setting from the balcony. After nightfall, Batman will walk again. “Things rarely are.”
“Indeed, sir.” Alfred looks over the gardens as well, steady gaze assessing the overgrown grass. His rose bushes are mostly obscured by now. “How many rooms should I open?”
That’s not a question at all. It’s never been. “For all of them, Alfred.” Bruce thinks this is what hope feels like. “You never know.”
“Of course, sir.” Alfred sounds almost smug, but he sounds pleased. Bruce offered him the right answer this time. “Oh, and Master Bruce?”
“Yes?”
The sun sets behind the hills, casting an orange glow all over the state. Clouds gather in the distance, it might rain soon. But by then, this house will be as good as ever. It can’t go back to how it was before, but it can be better this time around.
Things change, and so do people. Bruce learned that a long time ago, he learned how to adapt, too.
“Welcome home.” Alfred tells him, voice wavering for a second, and then takes his leave.
Bruce smiles, follows. There’s a lot of work to do.
*
“ –I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”
*