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Hearing by Sleeping at Last
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When the heroes touched down in the ruins of Mount Justice, it was quiet. They came down from the night sky like specters, meeting their mentors on the rock strewn shore. They’d seen the emerald glow of Green Lantern’s ship, carrying the Justice League home, at a distance. It’d all started here, in more ways than one. The start of the team, the departing of the six Leaguers to their trials on Rimbor, all of it. There was no sense of homecoming when either group landed. There was nothing left of home here, and it hurt too much, rang too clearly through their anxiety and grief, to think of it that way. The Team touched down, and they were quiet.
Sitting on the back of the Sphere in its cycle form, Dick watched as the distant scene of Mount Justice rose up beneath them, and the figures of the Leaguers grew larger. He sat beside Artemis, arms crossed over his chest as she kept her arm around him. Her grip tightened just slightly as they descended, the older heroes watching them with dread and confusion. It felt a little too much light falling, that slight swoop in the pit of his stomach aching as they landed. Dick couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t bear to look at any one. He’d barely been able to stand the pitying stares when Artemis and Barry had finally coaxed him into the Bioship. Watching as the Arctic faded into the endless white and grey of the endless dusk sky had been fucking unbearable. Dick had left it all behind with a numb stare, feeling too much like he was abandoning the ice and the frigid wind, like he was truly leaving -
Fuck.
Across the twilight beach, Batman stepped forward, piercing gaze sweeping over the Team. Dick could practically feel the man’s eyes lingering on him. Finally, he turned his attention to Kaldur, his voice stern and demanding. “Aqualad,” he addressed the young man with a sharp pitch to his tone. “What happened here?”
Kaldur hesitated only a moment before squaring off to Batman to answer. Dick was slapped across the face in that moment with a bitter nostalgia, of watching countless times as Kaldur had reported back to the Dark Knight after missions, years ago when they were just kids, when - Dick gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut beneath his mask, and struggling to breathe in harshly through his nose. Beside him, Artemis shifted closer, smoothing her hand up his back. Thought he didn’t look, he could hear the exchange. “Fear not,” Kaldur responded. “The Crisis has passed... but at a terrible cost.”
Dick felt those words like a hand around his throat. The beach was too quiet. The waves crashed up on the shore, a rhythmic lapping at the rocks and the sand with a dull roar, like the ocean was trying to breathe for him. Dick could taste the salt on his tongue, and couldn’t tell if it was the sea breeze or his own dried tears. All he knew was that the taste was acrid and wouldn’t go away, and that the ocean was too big and too empty, and his mind couldn’t pull together coherent thoughts through the crashing waves and the ocean breathing down his neck. It took a moment, but Dick manage to suck in a slow breath, feeling Artemis’ hand on his back slip with the expanding of his chest, and exhaled as he opened his eyes.
Batman was watching him. Everyone else, at least, pretended that they weren’t staring, weren’t waiting for him to say something, but the cowled gaze never wavered. Dick, finally willing himself to move, slipped down off the back of the Sphere. Artemis looked for a moment like she wanted to follow, to support him, but Dick walked on. He needed to be the one to do this, right? This was supposed to be his duty. Barry had already gone ahead to Keystone to break it to the Wests. Delivering this “terrible cost” to his friends, his family, and his allies was the least he could do. Dick walked through the throng of young heroes, and they parted for him like a fucking widow, unable to meet his eyes. He stopped in front of Batman, still just shy of his height, and opened his mouth. A strangle sound died off in the back of his throat.
Looking back days from then, it would shock Dick. Not much, but enough for the effect of that moment to linger on in the back of his mind. Bruce reached up and pushed back the cowl. All those years of arguing, of shouting matches over their identities, all of it washed away because this was more important. In that one smooth motion, the facade of the Dark Knight fell away, and Bruce was left looking down at him in a rare, honest moment. His hair was awry from the cowl, the lines around his mouth were deep, and his eyes were so unbearably kind. “Dick...” Bruce whispered.
Dick exhaled, his entire frame shaking with it as he reached up and slipped off his mask. He kept his gaze down at the course stone beneath his feet before finally looking up at his guardian with red rimmed, swollen eyes, already wet with tears. Dick opened his mouth to try to speak again, to breathe it into existence - Wally was dead.
And once again, the silence said more than he possibly could.
Dick crumbled. He gritted his teeth against it, pressed his hand to his eyes, dropped his head, and felt the sob shudder through his entire body. In the next instant, Bruce was there. He wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in, tight and so strong and steady Dick couldn’t help but cling to the man. Pushing his face in against Bruce’s shoulder, Dick held onto him for dear life, and Bruce held him back with a fierceness he’d rarely ever felt from him. It didn’t matter that they were still at odds, that they never really did affection like this. Reputation be damned. Dick was in for the hurt of his life, and Bruce was there, steadier than the mountain blown into the sea.
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That night was a haze of one place to another, of voices and conversations in hushed tones that he couldn’t really care to listen to. To be honest, he didn’t remember much of it. With Mount Justice gone, and the Invasion averted, there was a lot to be discussed. Plans needed to be made, rebuilding efforts put into place, and everything just... generally processed. They went up to the Watchtower. The young heroes were taken care of, any wounds treated, and for a while there was just that - a respite. Dick just went where he was taken, feeling more like he was talking through a cloud than actually living. He would out of focus. Indisposed.
At some point, he ended up in one of the bedrooms. He couldn’t remember who suggested he get some rest - Barbara, maybe. The room had been dark and empty, but blissfully quiet. Dick had changed into plain sweats (when, he had no idea,) had eventually just succumbed to exhaustion. God, he was tired. It’d been hard to keep up with, between the chaos of the Summit and the Invasion hardly giving him a moment to breathe. It was a kind of tired that was marrow-deep, burrowing into his bones and dragging him down all at once like the hollows had been filled with pebbles and he’d been dropped into the ocean.
And when he woke up, he thought, just for a moment, that it hadn’t been real after all. There was a blank moment, eyes staring up at the steel grey of the ceiling, when he had to think about where he was. There was no “morning” on the Watchtower. It was just as dark as it had been when he’d passed out. Minutes could have passed. Slowly, the memories came trickling back, each one of them looping around his neck in another knot. Dick pushed himself upright, legs hanging off the side of the bed, hands balling into fists. For a long while, he just sat there, staring down at his bare feet perched just at the edge of the bed frame. It wasn’t until his eyes lifted, gravitating toward the window, where the Earth turned on below on the axis of its white cap that he truly realized - fuck. God, Wally was dead. He was really dead.
Dick had had panic attacks before. He’d been sprayed with fear gas, he’d been scared out of his mind, he’d felt that rush of searing heat in his chest that burned up all the oxygen left in his lungs - but he’d never felt like he was fucking dying. This wasn’t crying, this was struggling to survive. Dick recalled, if only for a second, standing on the Arctic plane just the day before and thinking with a harsh clarity that he was breathing in a world without Wally West in it, and now he knew he couldn’t do that. Dick felt like he was being choked in a burning building, like the Watchtower was free falling into Earth’s gravity...
Like that ethereal force that took Wally from him was reaching out to finish the job, to take the other half left behind, and Dick found himself for a dark moment wishing that it would.
Someone was knocking on the door, calling his name. Before he could fully register, the door was swinging open, and Barbara was suddenly crouching down in front of him. Her eyes were wide, hair undone and tumbling over her shoulders as she took Dick’s hands in both of hers. Dick couldn’t even feel ashamed or embarrassed. She didn’t give him the chance. With a forced evenness to her voice, she began counting him through breaths, getting him to describe sensations and sights until he was grounded. It felt like an eternity before he was somewhat coherent again.
It was the first time he woke up without Wally. He didn’t know how he was supposed to do this again and again for the rest of his life.
“You just do it twice,” Barbara had replied, before Dick realized he’d said that aloud. “Today, and then tomorrow.”
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The funeral was a plain affair held two days later, in the cemetery of the West Family’s church in Keystone. The morning was dull and bleak, but patches of unwelcome sun streamed through over the rolling green. Wally’s parents had, through their own grief, managed to put together a service for their only son; an empty casket for closure, and a headstone reading Wally’s name, and the dates of his birth and death. Simple, of course - the Invasion had brought with it a great deal of tragedy, and as superficial as it seemed, the stone masons had... a lot of orders to complete. A lot of cemeteries to fill. So, it was a practical ceremony, pragmatic almost, and Dick loathed every fucking second of it.
There probably should have been something a little bittersweet about seeing all of the people Wally had touched in his life, gathered in one place to say goodbye. Dick should have been comforted by it. Hell, he should have felt anything. All he was, was hollow. He couldn’t pointed to where the pain was. It just was. He sat through the ceremony and the moderate chords of the pipe organ in the church. He hugged Marry West and he shook Rudolph’s hand and tried to ignore the fact that the man wouldn’t look him in the eyes. He watched as they lowered the casket too slowly into the ground, with no weight inside to carry it down. He took condolences with quiet nods, knowing that if he opened his mouth, the tightness in his throat would close entirely, and nothing would come out anyway. Dick went through the motions. After all, he’d had a lot of practice being at funerals.
When all was said and done, Dick was the last person there. He stood in front of the grave with his hands in the pockets of his black suit jacket, and he stared at Wally’s name, as if he could look hard enough and finally believe that it was true. Oddly enough, he felt like he should say something. Like he should talk to this hastily carved and polished slab of rock as if it were Wally himself. What was he supposed to say, anyway? That he still kept searching for him every time he walked into a room? That the grief just kept coming in waves and he could barely keep his head above the water? That he knew he was going to be okay someday, and he didn’t want to be?
So, Dick didn’t say anything. He just tilted his head back as a beam of dull grey sunlight peaked through the clouds, and he breathed.
A hand came to rest heavily on his shoulder. Opening his eyes, he looked over his shoulder at Bruce. At a good distance behind him, Barbara, Alfred, and Tim were waiting. Bruce gave his shoulder a light squeeze.
“You’re doing alright?” Bruce asked. Dick could hear in the slight, awkward cadence of his voice that he wasn’t sure if it was the right question.
Dick swallowed past the ache in his throat. “I’m...” he trailed off, his voice cracking, “...yeah.”
Bruce nodded, and for once, didn’t push for better answers. A warm breeze ghosted over the field. It was another several minutes of quiet before he spoke again. “Come back to the Manor.”
Dick flinched. It wasn’t just the thought of moving back to the Manor that had his gut twisting. He hadn’t really been permanent anywhere for the past year. It was the thought of moving on that had him feeling almost guilty. “Bruce, I don’t...”
“Dick,” Bruce cut him off with a gentleness to his voice that drew Dick’s gaze away from the headstone again. “Come back to the Manor,” he repeated. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Dick sighed, gaze flickering over his shoulder, where his family was waiting for him. “Okay...” he breathed, and this time, found it just a little easier.
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Sorrow by Sleeping at Last
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