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Bruce finds Dick in the foyer this afternoon: standing in mismatched socks on the parquet, with red string spilling from a skein in one hand all around his feet. An arms trafficking case has pulled him back to Gotham, conveniently in time for the opening of Damian’s school art exhibition. With him back, Bruce won’t deny the house has felt warmer.
“Hey, you’re up early,” Dick says brightly, when he catches Bruce standing at the top of the staircase. Bruce’s lips quirk involuntarily. Dick waves the skein he’s holding, gesturing to the rest of the room. “Has Duke shown you his theory yet?”
“Theory,” Bruce repeats.
The length of string doesn’t bode well. It’s been knotted to the very end of the banister of the stairs. Dick gives it a tug, and, idly, begins to walk backwards with the loose end in his hand. “Theory,” he confirms. “The distance between the stairs and the door changes. It’s longer when you try to leave.”
“Hm.”
Dick’s eyeroll is visible even from the ground floor. He pauses in his trajectory, rocking back of the balls of his feet. “No, hear me out. You remember when I was a kid? And I hit my head on the door coming down the stairs?”
He motions, illustratively, to the side of his temple, where there is still a pale scar the precise angled shape of the left door handle.
“I recall a certain amount of vaulting from the landing to see how far you could skid across the floor,” Bruce says dryly, recalling at the same time that he’d done very little to prevent it, bewildered by the sheer quantity of energy Dick possessed.
“Well, yeah,” Dick says. He swings his arms, taking another step back, trailing the string behind him. “I used to clear the whole foyer in my socks. I could get to the door every time. Until—” and he tugs at the string again for emphasis, “—I hit my head.”
“Something subconscious,” Bruce suggests.
“Probably,” Dick nods agreeably. He does a little pirouette, pivoting on his feet to face the door, and walks out as far as the string will take him. It’s too short to reach the door by a full five feet. He pivots again to face Bruce. “But it’s worth checking, don’t you think?”
“Has Duke mentioned anything else about this theory?”
“Mmm, not really. But Cassandra once had a story about finding stairs in the library,” Dick says.
“There are stairs in the library,” Bruce says.
Dick laughs like he’s made a joke. He starts reeling himself back in, letting the excess string trail along the floor as he returns to the foot of the stairs. “Duke did say he’s tested it, though. And Damian too, actually.”
“Damian?” Bruce has to double-check.
“I mean, he’s adamant it’s absolutely nothing,” Dick adds, with a chagrined, fond little smile. “But he’s seen it too. That’s weird, right?” Bruce just frowns. Dick continues, conversational, “I mean, have you ever noticed anything like it?”
“Have you asked Alfred?”
“Uh huh. But I want to know what you think.” Dick flashes him a smile, tugs at the string, and begins to walk backwards from the foot of the stairs again.
Bruce has spent a long time alone in this house. When he was young he’d grow so engrossed with his books of pathologies that he’d find, looking up at the library windows, that the sun had set without his noticing. The room would be turning deep and blue and dark at the corners. It would almost seem—for a moment—that there was something in there with him: twisting, like a body, on the floor.
But scintillating scotomas are a common symptom of acephalgic migraines. Even as a child, Bruce knew this. So he says to Dick instead, “Are you keeping the angle of the string consistent for your measurements?”
Dick gives him a withering look. “You’re avoiding the question, B.”
Of course he is. Here is the crux of it: Bruce sleeps in staccato naps through the morning and wakes poorly most afternoons to the sun weeping in under black curtains. His dreams stick, itching, in the hollow edge of his palpebral commissures. His old habit is to take a moment to remember who’s dead. It’s a newer one, to remember who is not.
This afternoon he’d woken to a child’s voice murmuring his name. The timid tug of a hand at the edge of the sheets. Years ago, Bruce would have lifted his arm, the sheet veiling the air like a great wing for the voice’s owner to crawl beneath. But Jason’s voice hasn’t sounded as soft and high as that in a very long time.
Bruce had still reached out. Still grasped at the empty air.
And sometimes, as he trudges out into the dim hall, Bruce might catch a flicker of yellow from the corner of his eye. But his migraines still come with those rolling blooms of un-colour and static. Midday buzzes the way flies settle on a carcass: it’s easy to misinterpret visual stimuli, when he’s still shaking off sleep. There’s no reason to look and see what’s at the end of the hall.
Dick is right, and it’s no surprise to either of them. Bruce just says, “I’m not one for ghost stories.”
Dick tilts his head and considers Bruce for a moment. Today, mercifully, he doesn’t drag the truth out to hold it up to the light. He just keeps walking backward, string in hand, until his back hits the door with a little thud.
This time, the thread has extended the full distance.
As if nothing strange has transpired, Dick looks up at Bruce again, and smiles. “I guess I’ll just have to make some up, then.”