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“Hey, chum.”
Dick snaps his head up and looks at Bruce. The sight doesn’t feel quite right. Bruce is gone.
“Bruce?”
The answering smile makes Dick emotional. His eyes water and he walks over to hug Bruce tightly. He smells just the same as always, leather and old books. He buries his face in Bruce’s shoulder and just holds on as tight as he can. It’s been so long since he hugged his dad.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs. He presses a kiss to the side of Dick’s head. “You look tired,” he says.
Dick nods, trying his best not to cry. He is tired. So tired. He doesn’t want to be Batman. He doesn’t want to be in charge of everything. He just wants his dad back and maybe to stay in this hug forever.
“I know. I know.”
Bruce holds him for a long time and then he pulls him back. Dick tries to move back into the hug, but Bruce stops him with a small shake of the head.
“You have to go back now. But I’m proud of you. So proud.”
He presses a final kiss to Dick’s forehead and then gives him a little shove for momentum. Dick feels himself falling and falling backwards.
He wakes up with a gasp, Damian’s terrified face above him. Something is wrong, he can feel pain radiating up his leg. Embarrassingly, he starts to cry. Damian still looks panicked and Dick uses one of the pieces of his brain that are not still feeling the loss of Bruce anew to hit his emergency beacon. Then he lays there and waits, wasting all of Bruce’s pride.