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There's a stretch of time between Nightwing going missing and Bruce realizing his newest obsession is finding him. The length of time isn't something Bruce can calculate, if only because he's lost himself in sleepless nights and harried stretches of time wherein he does nothing but painstakingly look.
He's only aware of the passage of time in the most peripheral of fashions. The demarcation of holidays that pass, his presence required, though a shallow shell of a man sits through them, present but not. His real time is marked by leads and dead ends and grief. So much grief.
He sees another version of himself in that grief. A man who with a little bit less to lose lying curled in bed, unable to move. A man who ceases to function. As it is, he is a man with a single function: to seek, to find. He no longer functions in any other way beyond searching.
There are days where he's so close to becoming the other man, the one that sits in the shadows and waits for him to give in, to give up. Days where all he can do is sit and stare at the opposing wall and think through scenario after scenario, hands unmoving in his lap, breath dangerously close to absent.
Another holiday, another sharp spark of grief creasing the face he sees in the mirror above the sink as he tries to get ready to see the others. The ones who remain. The ones he should be protecting and no longer can. He stands over the sink and closes his eyes and drips grief into the basin until he can grasp control of himself even a fraction more.
He sits in the parlor and he finds that all he can do is stare out the window, into the cold Gotham evening. He sees a streak of blue and he thinks - for a second - it's him. It's Dick, coming home to them.
He's at the window, heedless all else that is going on. Fingertips pressed to the frame, breath fogging the glass. But there is no blue and there is no Nightwing and there is no hope.
He breaks after that. Shatters and breaks and falls to pieces that no one else can pick up, sharp as though they are. He lives in his bedroom. He falls into a state somewhere between reality and not. And when the others take it upon themselves to call Dinah, he sits with her in the chair at the foot of his bed and rumbles off answers he'd never have caught himself giving in the past.
There's something about being so deeply broken that opens him up like a tap turned on full. He tells her everything. His loss, his grief, his desire to find Dick that's so deep he cannot rip it free of himself, the inner knowledge that he's not dead... that he won't make the same mistake twice.
He finds himself on the third evening of her presence, confessing what he's only peripherally allowed himself to acknowledge. He's in love with Dick. Has been for a good many years. That he's disallowed himself for, possibly, all the right and the wrong reasons.
They spend a good, long time talking about that. Her soft words and gentle encouragements and at times, her hard lines in the sand when he's becoming obstinate. His confessions that feel like weights being physically taken from his body.
He runs his words dry and then he listens. Listens and listens and tells himself this is how he makes it back to Gotham, to those who need him. By listening, by internalizing, by accepting.
So he does it. Brute forces his way through his grief and his depression - with the help of some little white pills she prescribes him - and comes out the other side at least able to function.
He isn't the same man he used to be. He's already known the loss of parents and how that changes a person, but now he knows the loss of a partner, of a chosen loved one, and how striking that grief is by comparison. He can see the changed man he is in the mirror every morning, in the hands he uses to fix Gotham, in the way he hedges lines closer than he ever once would have, and perhaps more so in the way he accepts the help of those who remain.
He's months out from that blur of blue at the manor when he sees it again. This time in an alleyway. This time somewhere finite. Somewhere he can prove to himself he's hallucinating. Except... he isn't. There's a little blue bird, brilliant in a way birds usually aren't. Gorgeous and so so welcoming to see.
Bruce doesn't think. He only acts. Leans down and offers his hand and parts his lips in astonishment when the bird hops onto his fingertips and lets him rise to standing with it. He places it on his shoulder on a whim and finds surprise when the bird remains even as he resumes his patrol. Little taloned feet clinging to his armor.
He goes in early, the bird still with him. Refusing to leave. Like it belongs there.
He says nothing when the others come in hours later, sits and waits for them to not notice the little blue bird on his shoulder, expects it; that he's hallucinating and nothing more. Except... they do. Tim asks about it. Jason thinks he's stealthy feeding it something from his belt pouch. Damian brings it water in a bottle cap and immediately sets to ordering all the needed bird supplies.
Bruce sits and he lets them dote on the bird and feels justified. It exists. It feels special somehow. Even if it's just a bird, it's a memory in the color of it's feathers, in the close way it clings to him.
The cage goes in his bedroom when it arrives. And the bird... it moves through the cave and the house at liberty. It makes no messes and it makes no move to leave until Bruce goes out on patrol and then it always seems to want to go.
At first Bruce convinces it to stay, whispers words to it about getting hurt and danger and all the things he remembers once telling each of the Robins in turn and feels a little silly and a little justified. But the little bird - the bird Bruce still can't bring himself to name because he knows what name he wants to call it - finds a way in anyway most nights. Flies along with him through the night, sits perched on the seat of the Batmobile, even flies with him in the Batjet when he takes it out one particularly bad evening. It warns him with loud cheeps and even dive-bombs some of the harder-to-beat villains. Incorporates itself into Bruce's night life in a way that makes him ache as much as it makes him feel little sparks of that love he's trying so hard to keep a lid on because this is not Nightwing. This is, by some absurd chance, a bird with his brilliant blue color who also hates the scum of Gotham.
It's only after an altercation with Kalrion - of all people - that he begins to realize he's not quite so off-base as he perhaps thought he was. Klarion's off-handed comments about his familiar being familiar - and god that feels like a joke Dick would have made - and some snotty comment about 'turning' his side-kicks now in the midst of Bruce doing his level best to fight off magicof all things.
It takes a trip to Zatanna to confirm he's not let grief and hope cloud his judgement yet again. He sits with the little bird cupped in his palms and he listens to Zatanna try thing after thing to get Dick from bird to human form. She tries until she's exhausted and out on the porch in the Louisiana heat, making phone calls in the dark.
In the coming weeks Doctor Fate tries all he's come up with. Constantine tries all he possibly can, including what Zatanna cautions is dark magic to change Dick back. All the while, the little bird sits in his cupped hands and Bruce sits and thinks he thought he knew what grief was, but perhaps this is worse. Dick trapped as a little bird.
At the end of it all, Dick still remains a bird. A brilliant, gorgeous, perceptive little bird. And Bruce... Bruce longs with a part of his soul he needs to function. The others, the all see it. At home, Damian almost encourages Bruce's time with the bird. Tim and Jason drift closer and further from Bruce, as if pulling back for the inevitable. In the field, he's a distracted mess, to the point he gets a dressing-down in bird format, angry chittering cheeps that - oddly - put him directly in his place and make him hang his head despite not understanding a single chirp.
He thinks about it again and again. All he'd give up to have Dick back. By the time he realizes he'd give his own life, he's standing in Zatanna's living room again and he's asking her if there's a way to make it so that he's a bird.
She quietly asks, "Forever," and he just as quietly whispers, "Please."
She has him take them all home to do it. Has him say his goodbyes while she stands by, ever watchful. Watches him as he calls Clark and then gets himself an armful of his best friend instead of a phone call being answered. He realizes he's already made all the plans, has been for months. Has nothing left to do.
He sits, puts Dick beside him on the couch, and closes his eyes, waits. Listens to Damian quietly talking to Tim about bigger bird cages. He can hear his son's quiet grief and a tiny part of him regrets what he's about to do. But a larger part feels relieved. At peace for the first time since that fateful night so many years ago, standing in this very room on his way to the theater.
When it comes, it feels right. And when he opens his eyes and he understands the chirps Dick makes, it feels like coming home. Because finding his way back to Dick... it's everything Bruce could ever possibly need.