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Dick’s heart was thundering in his chest when he came to see Bruce. His mind had been racing since the less-than-ideal news he received earlier that night. Bruce's doctors had told the family there was nothing else to be done. They had exhausted all the options, and it had become clear that Bruce was dying.
Dick's nerves hadn’t been made any better as he waited for his siblings to say their goodbyes.
He didn’t regret letting them go first. It seemed fair, in some twisted way. Dick had had more time with Bruce than any of them. He could give up some more minutes for their sake.
If anything, he needed the time to pull himself back together.
“Hi, chum,” Bruce greeted him in a raw voice.
“Hey, B,” he answered conversationally, settling himself in the bed so he could be facing Bruce. His dad looked tired, each machine he was connected to echoing a symphony of noises that did nothing to soothe Dick’s nerves.
He laid a hand on Bruce’s chest, feeling each heartbeat against his fingers like a countdown. Just grains of sand trickling down an hourglass.
The one constant of Dick’s life since the day his parents died was that very heartbeat. Steady and stubborn, rising time and time again, even when all seemed lost. Back when he was young and reeling with anger, Bruce’s arms had held him clumsily, untrained as he was at being a father. Hesitantly, he would bring Dick’s head to lay against his chest, each rise and fall registered under that lost boy’s ears.
It had been an anchor. A tether to the present when all Dick wanted was to drown in his past.
It took years for Dick to realize Bruce had tried to give him a path that was lighter than his own. A pathway to a better life, if not an easier one.
“How are you?”, Dick asked, for the lack of anything better to say. And perhaps for the lack of courage to try.
Bruce took a deep breath, shifting against his pillows with some effort. “Tired,” he answered after a moment. "Relieved.”
Dick crooked an eyebrow. “Relieved?”
Bruce nodded, urging Dick closer with a tap on the mattress. Dick complied and settled against the headboard instead of in front of Bruce, their shoulders now touching.
With his son tucked into his side, Bruce said, “I never thought I’d have this. A full house of children to say goodbye to. When I started this journey, I thought I’d die alone. One day, a force I couldn’t fight would take me down, or my own recklessness would do the job.”
He interrupted himself when pain flared up in his chest, and he had to take a minute to breathe deeply until the discomfort eased off again.
“B, don’t wear yourself out,” Dick asked, even if he knew it was pointless. No amount of resting could fix anything now.
“It’s okay,” Bruce answered. He laced his wrinkled fingers around Dick’s, placating his son. “I’m relieved, yes. For you’re here, and so are your siblings. I haven’t always deserved you, and yet, here you are. All of you. What else can a father wish for when he’s dying?”
Dick winced at the mention of death, avoiding Bruce’s gaze when he said it.
“Dick, look at me,” his father asked, some of Batman’s growl slipping into his tone. The unexpected change of his voice made Dick look up again. “I am dying. We can’t hide from this.”
You can’t hide from this, he meant.
“I know it is hard, but this is also a blessing, son. You didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before. You do now,” Bruce reasoned. “I don’t know how much longer I have… To be here, truly present, but whatever you wish to say to me, I’ll hear it.”
Dick bit his lip, sinking his teeth into the flesh until pain spread through him. Bruce was right. He had no warning for his parents’ death right in front of his eyes. He wasn’t even himself when they lost Alfred.
This was the only chance he would ever have to say goodbye to a parent on his own terms. That didn’t make it any easier, though. His chin shook as he tried to hold the sobs in.
And then Bruce hugged him, through his IV and the cables keeping him alive and the pain he was definitely pretending he didn’t feel. His father held him, Dick’s head tucked into his chest, his hands running through his hair, and Dick cried.
“I… I’ll miss you,” Dick whined, his voice muffled by Bruce’s arms around him.
Dick was twenty-six and adrift with a legacy too heavy to carry and a brother to raise. He was eight and waking up screaming from terrible dreams of falling Graysons. He was thirty-two and a terrified first-time father, pleading for his dad to tell him he wasn’t going to screw everything up. He was eighteen and angry but so desperate for comfort. He was fifty and losing the one man he had always been able to run home to.
Dick pulled himself out of Bruce’s embrace, scrubbing tears away. “I want you to know I’ll look after everyone. You don’t need to worry. I’ll keep us together.” He promised, and Bruce nodded, not even remotely surprised.
Dick traced the criss-crossed scars of Bruce’s wrinkled hand, just like he used to do when he was much younger and needed to stay grounded while his mind was racing.
“Look after yourself, too. You always forget that,” Bruce pleaded, ruffling his hair.
Dick smiled at him through the pain threatening to break his heart in half. “I got that from you.”
Bruce laughed. “I can’t argue with that logic.”
Nonetheless, Dick promised him. “But I’ll try. I swear.”
The sun was setting, the stray sunlight escaping through the open window of Bruce’s room as the day left them behind. It could be the last day he spent in Bruce’s company.
“It’ll be hard, though,” he admitted, both relieved and terrified at saying it out loud. “My whole life, even when I had nothing, I had you. I could fight you and scream at you and run away and, somehow, in the back of my mind, I just knew I still had you.”
Bruce hummed, deep in thought. “That doesn’t need to change. You can still talk to me even after I’m gone. You always know what I’m about to say, anyway.”
Dick laughed, surprised by how much that was true. “It won’t be the same thing, though.”
“No, it won’t,” Bruce agreed, “but it’ll be enough until we see each other again.”
Dick didn’t ask why he was so sure of that. At that moment, he just needed his father to tell him all would be well. He needed to believe in something greater, and his trust in Bruce had always been endless.
It wouldn’t be different now, even after he was gone.
Dick laid down with his father and stayed quiet. He held his dad tight and honored the last moments they would ever share together on this Earth.