Chapter Text
“Stay with me, Dickie. Hey.” Jason slaps Dick’s cheek lightly, causing his head to loll slightly as he groans. “Don’t even fucking think about closing your eyes. Get ‘em open. Hey.”
“Can’t,” Dick mumbles. To his credit, he does try, but they slide back shut almost instantly. Shit shit shit. Not good.
“Yes you can,” Jason insists. “You still owe me, remember? From that bust last month? I'm cashing that favor in now.”
“Remember.” Dick’s voice is slurred and thick around the blood that trails from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. He coughs harshly, spraying Jason’s face with it. “Sorry. ‘M probably not gonna be able to… to pay you back.”
“I mean this is the nicest way possible, Grayson, but shut the fuck up. You’re fine.”
Dick is decidedly not fine. He is, to put it simply, bleeding out on the ground. Jason can’t even quite figure out how it happened; one minute he and Dick were chatting on a rooftop and the next thing he knew Dick was tumbling down into a dumpster in the alley below, although not before smacking into a fire escape on the way down. Jason had pulled him out of the pile of soggy take-out containers and rotting food to discover the gash on his forehead and the brand new hole in his chest.
Gunshot wound. Jason has no clue where the sniper was, or where they are now, too busy trying to hold Goldie’s blood in his veins. He’s not doing a very good job.
“Can you tell them I’m sorry?” Dick asks, breathless.
“No,” Jason snaps. Because one, there’s nothing for Dick to be sorry for right now. And two, Dick is going to be fine. Bruce and the bat-brat will show up to rescue his perfect ass and then they can move on from this shitty-ass night.
“And that I love them?” Dick grits his pink-stained teeth. He’s fading, fast, the blood pumping out under Jason’s hands beginning to slow as his heart does.
“I’m not your messenger boy, asshole,” Jason snarls. “Tell them yourself.”
He presses down even harder on the wound, but this time there is no whine or whimper of pain. Dick seems totally floaty, a dazed half smile on his face. He tries to focus on Jason’s face, but his eyes cross almost instantly, drifting away again.
“You too, Jay. Lov—” He gasps wetly, chest stuttering, and Jason knows that will be the last he hears from Dick tonight.
The last he hears from Dick… ever.
“Dick, come on,” Jason says. He feels thirteen-years-old, back when Nightwing was so big and cool and invincible. Hell, Nightwing is still supposed to be invincible. This is Jason’s big brother. Nothing is supposed to be able to touch him. He’s Dick Grayson. He’s—
Jason falls forward, pressing his forehead to Dick’s. “Please, Dick. You can’t do this. We need you. I need you. Please. ”
Dick doesn’t answer him. Slowly, Jason pulls back slowly, searching. Dick stares up at the sky, where there are constellations hidden behind Gotham smog.
“No,” he breathes. This can’t be happening. “No, no, no. Dick. Dick. ”
Wake up! he wants to shout. He wants to shake Dick’s shoulders until he stops lazing around and snaps out of this. He wants this night to be over, for everything to just go back to normal. This isn’t funny, Dick. Wake up!
“Damn it!” he screams instead. His throat quickly starts to feel raw as he howls wordlessly, raging at nothing. He’s on his feet in an instant, slamming his fist into the brick wall. He doesn’t even feel the way it bruises down to his bones and splits his knuckles.
He stalks back over to where Dick’s body lies still on the ground. “Fuck you, Grayson,” he hisses, as shaking fingers pull Dick’s eyelids down to close his eyes. “Fucking fuck you.”
His sobs are silent, shaking his whole body and rocking through him down to his core. It hurts, deep in his bones and in his lungs and in his chest, and his blood boils, angry and scared and murderous. He’s going to figure out who did this and tear them apart with his bare hands. How dare they. How dare they take his big brother from him and think they can just get away with that. Dick Grayson has people who love him, who would die for him, who would kill for him.
Except… except Dick wouldn’t want Jason to kill for him. Jason has no idea why, but his brother always saw something good in him, even when no one else did, not even Jason. Dick thought Jason was a good person—and he was wrong. Jason knows he was wrong, can feel the burning righteous anger in the pit of his stomach, can see the green already beginning to tinge his vision. The moment he gets within twenty feet of Dick’s murderer, he just knows it’s going to look like the Emerald fucking City.
Dick was a good person, but Jason isn’t. And he doesn’t know if he can hold onto this last shred of goodness that Dick saw in him without Dick to keep it alive.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, bending over Dick’s body. “I don’t know if I can…”
And that’s when he hears it: the quiet rumbling sound of the Batmobile’s engine, fast approaching. Jason is on his feet in an instant, chest heaving, unsure of what to do. In a matter of seconds, Batman and Robin are rushing into the alleyway.
Bruce will be so devastated. Dick was his golden child, his only child for literal years before Jason showed up. Dick was the glue that held their stupid, dysfunctional family together, and when that cracks, Jason’s pretty sure Bruce will go too.
And Damian. He’s a brat and a demon but anyone with eyes can tell he fucking loves the shit out of Dick. Hell, Dick pretty much raised him before Bruce came back. Damian is only thirteen—this will absolutely devastate him, and Jason has no idea who’s going to be the one to pick up the pieces. Certainly not Bruce, with the way he’s bound to spiral. Dick was the only one who really understood this kid.
Jason doesn’t want to watch them grieve, doesn’t want to watch Dick’s dad and kid find him lying dead in a puddle of his own blood. And he doesn’t want their accusations. Maybe… maybe they would know better than to think Jason was the one to kill him, but he knows there would be at least some blame. Not aware enough, not fast enough, not skilled enough to save Dick. He doesn’t want to stick around to see their disappointment and anger and crumbling sadness.
So he doesn’t.
Jason takes off, firing a line and disappearing into the shadowy rooftops. Distantly, he hears Batman’s shout of “Hood!” behind him, but he ignores it, letting himself slip into autopilot until he’s crashing through the window into his safehouse.
Carefully, Jason locks the window behind him, but then he isn’t quite sure what to do next. He can’t see it properly in the darkness of the apartment, but he can feel cloying blood sticking to his skin and clothes. He can smell it too, the scent clinging heavily to his jacket. It slides down his hands, dripping slowly from his fingertips and onto the tile floor.
Dick is dead. His brother is dead.
Jason has lost people before, so the feeling is familiar—cold and hot all at the same time, with a terrifying numbness building in his gut and threatening to swallow him whole—but that doesn’t make it any less agonizing.
He makes a beeline for the bathroom, suddenly desperate to get the blood off of him. He sheds his jacket first, hurling into the trash can next to the toilet. Most likely it's ruined, and he doesn’t think his Tide To-Go stain stick is going to be enough to remove probably five or six pints of blood from his clothes.
His hands come next, scrubbing them under scalding water until they turn red and raw. Most of Dick's blood flows down the drain, but some of it lingers under his fingernails, stubborn as a bat and dried ruddy brown. Jason can't seem to get it out, no matter how hard he picks and scrubs.
“Fuck.” He could be whispering or he could be yelling—it’s not like he can actually hear anything other than the rush of blood and ringing in his ears. This can't be happening.
Dick is dead. His brother is dead.
God fucking damnit.
He needs a drink.