Chapter Text
It’s cold, so incredibly and horribly cold. Dick takes a deep breath- tries to take a deep breath. He can’t. It’s like his ribcage weighs a ton. Something’s pressing on it, something has to be pressing on it. He raises a trembling hand and finds nothing. Not quite nothing, he finds blood, so much blood and oh. That makes sense. He’s bleeding out.
He tries to breathe again. The conflict roaring on around him. “Guys?” he asks on the comm, voice croaking. There’s so much noise. Too much noise on the comms. Orders being barked. No one is going to notice a fading voice. He tries to move his hand to the comm to change frequencies and call Babs but it falls helplessly at his side. He needs to... maybe if he can wrangle the focus to press on some sort of psychic bond then he can survive. He just needs to find the threads and they all just immediately slip from his brain. Just out of reach. He thinks for a moment of a rope, snapped and dangling. Of the ground coming up below him, it feels like his parents’ arms. The thought soothes him for a moment.
“No,” he breathes, he gasps. This isn’t… he’s not going to die out here. That would be…. That would probably make sense, wouldn’t it? To go unnoticed until the battle’s over. It’s peaceful almost, in this little alcove of rubble, cloudy blue skies above him. He sees one that almost looks like a bird, taking flight. It would feel fitting if the one beneath it didn’t look like a crab emitting a remarkably long turd. He guesses it’s coincidence and whatever his ailing brain can come up with. His vision goes darker around the edges, and he blinks once, twice. He forces his eyes back open. He’s not ready to go just yet.
He hopes they’re going to win. They’ve got to win. If they lose well then, that’s the end of everything. He sees a rabid Robin scurry by. It ignores him and for that he’s somewhat relieved. Glad to be spared the fate of having his intestines eaten by a child wearing his old colours. The battle continues to rage in the distance. The Justice League are pushing the soldiers of the Dark Universes further and further away. Good, they need to get them further away. The Batman Who Laughs won’t win. He can’t win. They will have more days like this. Dick won’t but everyone else will.
“Hey, Dickwing,” a voice says in his head. It sounds like Roy. But Roy’s back, Bruce used the Black Lantern ring to bring him back. Just a hallucination then. Just a hallucination and Dick is drifting out of consciousness. He needs to hold on. He doesn’t know why he needs to hold on. No, that’s a lie. He knows and it’s selfish. He doesn’t want to die alone. “Hey, Dick!” Jason says, bright and fifteen and dead. Another hallucination, He doesn’t want to die without knowing if they win. He doesn’t want to die at all but feeling where the wound is, he’s not going to get that last wish. If he doesn’t bleed out, some mixture of infection and liver failure is probably going to kill him before anyone can actually do anything to save him. That’s okay. That’s okay, he doesn’t need to live. Not for long, just until the battle’s over. Just until they win.
The sky seems so blue, the sun bright, shaded by the clouds. He wonders for a moment what it would have been like to patrol in the day. To have taken flight across a brighter city. He’s always envied Clark a little for that. To be able to be an emblem of hope, something that people want to see instead of Nightwing, instead of the rest of his family, candlelit vows that taste of pain, grief perseverance. How would it be to be the sun in the summer than a dwindling, flickering flame in the darkness? A promise instead of an apology? He supposes if he was a light that bright, he probably wouldn’t be here now. Candle light is always a fragile thing.
It’s so, so cold. He thinks about the light of the flame again, how he wishes he had its warmth at his fingertips, of the weight of the vow on his tongue. Why can’t he remember the words? He hopes Bruce is going to be okay. Hopes that Tim, Damian, Donna, Roy, everyone, he hopes everyone’s going to be okay. That tomorrow they will bury their dead, him included and then they will live life and the world will keep turning and people will be happy. And maybe, just maybe one day, they won’t have battles like this. In some wonderful, delirious part of Dick’s brain, he wishes for that. He hopes for it. Hope is the last thing he can do. The only thing he has left. It’s so cold and the sky is so beautiful. The ground is his parents’ arms around him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into the open comm link.
“It’s okay, Dickie,” his mother’s voice replies, her hand is warm against the back of his head. “We’ve missed you so much.”
The candle goes out.