Work Text:
The landscape around him was strange and shadowy, the darkness a living thing, opaque and heavy. He blinked, and the navy blues and blacks and wine-dark purples shifted around him in that split second, so when he opened his eyes again in that half-space he was lost, disoriented in an unfamiliar world once again. There was no light, save for what came from him. At least, it must be coming from him. There was no explanation for why he could see only as far forward as an arm-length in front of him, no matter how far he walked.
He was tired, but there was nowhere to sleep. When he tried to lie down, the ground stretched below him until he was falling standing up, his body and space stretching and distorting so wrongly that it made him nauseous, but there was no food in his belly to vomit up. There was no food to be found anywhere, or water to drink, and he was hungry and thirsty and tired but there was no rest, so he carried on.
He’d tried to stop, once, to just stand still and look, but his eyes had started to feel like sand and something had bit him, just a nip on the ankle like a sheepdog herding a sheep, and there was a sinister, lonely sound like churchbells at night or a door creaking open in a dark and empty house, and it had been enough to send shivers down his spine and spur him onward.
He wanted to rest, was all.
He thought he might be dying.
There wasn’t much to do besides walk, wherever he was, and that gave him a lot of time to think. His theory made sense, anyway. He was somewhere that was nowhere; he was hungry and thirsty and tired but didn’t seem to need to eat or drink or sleep, he just wanted it. Images kept coming to his mind, like home videos of someone else’s life, only he was certain it was his own. His parents, teaching him to tumble; Tim, showing off his latest gadget; Bruce, holding his shoulder after a job well done, yet he felt disconnected from all the memories, which would make sense, since they'd happened to a body and a soul, and if he had no body, well, there was the disconnect.
He was dying, then. He didn't have a better theory, anyway.
“My boy?”
Dick didn't look up. The voice was familiar, but so had all the other voices he'd chased after in the beginning. He didn't know if the voices were real sounds that his mind was latching on to as a form of comfort, or if they were hallucinations, born from the stress and boredom. But this voice, this voice. This voice made his chest ache and his eyes sting with unshed tears. This voice summoned a memory of sitting at a table, peeling potatoes and chattering about schoolwork and girls in his class and the new model car he wanted.
“My boy,” the voice said again, and this time, Dick couldn’t resist, and he looked.
“Alfred?” he said, weary and hurt and wishing-
The man, who was as much a father to Dick as John Grayson was, stepped out of the swirling shadows and into the dim light around Dick.
“Oh,” Alfred said, sounding heartbroken and overjoyed and so much like Alfred that Dick nearly started sobbing on the spot. “You’re here. Oh. Oh, my boy.” He reached out and started to stumble forward.
And Dick took a step back.
The hurt that crossed Alfred’s face was too expressive. In life, Alfred’s emotions were kept hidden, even more so than Bruce’s. His feelings were almost always masked, save for moments of high-stress or extreme grief, and even then, they barely showed on his face.
‘In life’, was the key. If anything, this was more proof that Dick was dead, that he was in some cold hellscape, suffering for his sins. But it didn’t make sense that Alfred was there. Alfred had no reason to be there.
Dick moved away on instinct, some part of him uncertain and recognizing danger, recognizing an enemy. The other parts of him, though? They just wanted a damn hug.
“Are you really Alfred?” Dick asked flatly.
Alfred tilted his head a little, and the gesture was so familiar it made Dick’s heart ache.
“Ask me something, then, something only I would know,” he said.
This thing, if it wasn’t Alfred, knew Alfred’s mannerisms to a such a degree that if Dick hadn’t spent half his childhood with the man he might not have realized something wasn’t quite right. And if he knew everything Alfred did, there wasn’t any point in asking him anything.
Dick debated with himself, but in the end, there was really only one thing Dick wanted to hear.
“What’s my name?” Dick asked.
Alfred smiled, his teeth too long. “Richard John Grayson,” he said, the words like oil dripping into Dick’s ears. “Dick. My boy.”
He had started to forget the sound of his own name in someone else’s mouth. If he was honest, he had started to forget himself. The timelessness of whatever place he was in had stripped him of his personhood, until he felt like nothing more than an empty shell, until now, when Alfred said his name and he felt real again.
With a choked sob, he lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Alfred.
“Rest, son,” the thing wearing Alfred’s face said. “Just rest. You can be at peace, now.”
Dick was so weary, he didn’t care that Alfred’s breath smelled like rotting meat, or that it was cold against the side of his face. His embrace felt real, his arms holding Dick up, and that made Dick feel real. He just buried his face in Alfred’s shoulder and cried, holding tightly so that Alfred couldn’t slip from his grasp and leave him alone again.
He wanted to rest, was all. He wanted to rest.