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It is ten thirty in the morning when the world ends. Bruce is unaware of this. He is standing out on the back patio with his dog, watching the clouds, when it happens. His dog is taking a shit. There are birds somewhere. Crows croaking, robins calling, and a single cardinal whooping. It’s a relatively nice morning, and Bruce is thinking about calling Clark. There is something he wants to research at Clark’s fortress, and he has time today.
Before he decides if he will call Clark, Tim comes out of the house. His clothes are slightly burnt and his eyes are deeply shadowed.
“B!” He gasped. “Dad.” He is shuddering and Bruce fights with his Batman instincts and the sudden swooping drop in his gut at the sight of Tim. Something is terribly wrong. Batman was made to stop wrongs or help solve the problem but Bruce, Bruce promised to be a father. To do better. So, instead of interrogating his son, demanding to know what happened, he wraps Tim into a hug. Batman might not understand it, but Bruce learned, eventually, that sometimes knowing is a worse kind of hell than knowing there is a problem tipping over on the horizon. Tim is still shuddering and Bruce holds his boy, waiting, because for this moment, and only this moment, there are an endless number of reasons he might be upset. For this moment, the problem might be, is almost certainly, fixable.
“I just—I—I—Babs saw—we were working on—and then—I,” he gasps and shakes and sobs.
“Breathe with me Tim.” His voice drops into the commanding tone of Batman to his Robin. Tim breathes. His hands spasms where he grips Bruce, but he breathes. When he is steadier, he manages to speak clearly. Bruce wishes he wouldn’t, couldn’t finish.
“There’s been an accident.” Tim said. “Dick and Damian were on their way back from the art school and they—the car rolled at least five times—and they—Dick was—Babs said he was p—p—he’s gone. He’s gone, Dad. And Dami—“ he swallows.
He cries. Bruce does not stop the tears. He’s here again—it could go either way. It has already happened, and yet it is the flip of a coin. A yes or a no. Did Damian survive? Did he lose one son or two? How much of his world is gone?
“They think Dami might be paralyzed. He’s headed to surgery. They are worried about head trauma. And—and—”
Tim doesn’t continue. He’s crying too hard now. His tears catch on Bruce’s neck and drip into his shirt. Bruce knows, the way one knows the sun will rise tomorrow, that he will not force Tim to hold him up this time. He will not succumb to despair. He can’t. For Tim, and the others, he can’t give into his grief even as it swishes at his ankles, surging slowly with each sob Tim releases. Bruce will hold his son’s pain. He will hold it all, like he should have for Dick when they’d lost Jason. He will do better. He has failed so often before, but when he was ready to listen, Dick had told him how to be better. He’d been trying, he had, for them all. Things were going well. That is the worst part of this moment. His life had been good, great even, and now—now Bruce must be vigilant. He cannot slide backwards. The good world that was has ended. His world is shattered, and there is no way to put it back together. The little boy he picked up off of sawdust packed ground is gone, flown away once and for all. Bruce cannot catch him this time. He cannot hold him, not ever again. But Bruce can hold Tim. Bruce can hold the grief of the world inside himself. He is Batman. He is shadows and vengeance, and he has lost Robin. Like so many times before. Yet so unlike those times. This time he cannot act. This time he cannot do anything to bring Richard Grayson home.
“I need to see him.” The words are spoken only after Tim is no longer sobbing. Only after his son shifts away from him. Only then does he insist. Only then. He cannot push away Tim, not now, not ever again. He did that enough when they met, and he vowed already that he will never do it again. So, he will take his lead from Tim, and he will be what Tim needs. His silent promise fills him up, and it is good because it holds back his own tears.
Tim nods. “Can you drive? Should I call for a car?”
“I can drive.” Focusing on something would be best. “I will—where is Jason?”
Tim’s expression cracks. He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Roy wanted to go fishing or something.”
“Can you call the hospital and find out when they think Damian will be out of surgery?”
“Yes, yes I can do that.”
Bruce calls Jason. When he and Roy do not answer, he calls Wally.
“Dick did you lose your phone again?”
Bruce gasps, one punched out wheeze he cannot help. The silence on the other end of the line is heavy, weighted. Wally does not speak while Bruce struggles to find his voice. “There’s been an accident,” Bruce said woodenly. “Dick is—is—is.” Bruce can’t say it.
“No.” Wally denies. “Nonononono.”
“I need to tell Jason but I think his phone is out of range. Do you know where Roy wanted to go fishing?”
“I-yes.”
Bruce waits for the information, but instead Wally says, “Are you sure it’s real?”
“We’re about to go confirm it’s him. But yeah, we’re sure.”
“I—I’ll go tell him.”
“Damian was with him.” Bruce adds. He’s deeply relieved he doesn’t have to try to tell Jason and he feels horribly wrong about that fact. It was the same with Dick. He couldn’t voice it, when Jason died. He couldn’t tell anyone what was happening; he drowned in his grief in the smoldering remains of a warehouse. It shames him to be so weak that he doesn’t tell Wally No.
“Is he?”
“He’s in surgery. I’m not certain about the state he’s in.”
“Fuck.” Wally whispers.
Bruce feels that in his soul. Grief was carved into his bones as a child, and with every death it was etched a little deeper. It’s punctured the bone. Now his marrow seeps out and fills the etchings across his bones, burning him from the inside even as grief licks and swirls and swishes about his knees.
“If he wants me to bring him there, where should I go?”
“Damian is in Gotham General. We’ll go there after…” After seeing Robin, his wings broken, his great heart halted, his terrible sense of humor withered. Bruce’s world is a desolate salt flat. His heart is the seared remains left after a dropped nuke. Who is he without Robin, without Dickie, without his eldest son? How is he supposed to outlive his baby? His little monkey? His boy wonder, his light, his hope, his heart.
“Dad?” Tim peeked from the kitchen. “You ready to go?” His voice is hoarse from crying.
“Yes.” He said. “I have to go, Wally.”
“Bye. I’ll…see you soon.”
The drive makes no impression on Bruce. He gets into the car. Then he is parked at the morgue. He is getting out of the car. Tim is hesitating.
“You don’t have to come in, Tim. I can do this.”
Tim shakes his head. “I have to. It’s not—it can’t be real until I—I have to see.”
Bruce nods. “Take your time. I’ll wait.”
He stares up into the sky. He wonders where Clark is. He wonders if he should call for him. Is Bruce still alive? His heart is inside the squat building that looms before him like a crouching beast. Clark might know. He doesn’t call Clark.
Tim gets out of the car. They go inside. Tim is quiet. Bruce puts an arm around him, holds him close. Tim presses into him slightly.
The room where he is, is cold. The covering is pulled back. There he is. Dick Grayson. Last of the Flying Graysons. Dead.
“It’s him.” Tim whispers.
“Yeah,” Bruce agrees. “That’s Dickie.”
He cannot stop himself. He reaches out and brushes a hand through his hair. “Chum,” he says and chokes halfway through.
Tears roll down his cheeks.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
He’s really, honestly dead.
Bruce has to hold himself together. He cannot fall into despair. His other children need him. But he cannot stop his tears. Tim is crying again. Bruce tucks Tim against his chest. Holds him gently. They both weep. They cannot undo this. Dick didn’t want them to. Bruce is wise enough to respect his wishes. It took him years to do so. And now, at the end, as the world crumbles into the ocean of his grief. He will honor it. He will bury another son. There is nothing else he will be allowed to do about it.
All he can do is hold his family.
Wally, Roy, and Jason are at the hospital when Bruce and Tim arrive. He folds Jason into his arms as soon as he finds him slumped in a plastic chair. Jason doesn’t grumble. He sinks into the hold and shakes quietly. Bruce will hold his tears too. He rocks gently as Jason weeps into his chest.
It’s past noon when he calls Cass.
“Come home,” he said.
She doesn’t have to see him to hear it in his breath. She does not ask why. “Who?”
That question is worse. “Dick.” His name is hard to say. It sticks in Bruce’s throat, scrapes across his tongue. “Damian is in surgery.” He manages.
”Love you, Dad.” She said, and then she is gone.
Tim at some point called Stephanie. She and Barbara show up at the same time. Dami is still in surgery. The waiting room is heavy and stale. Bruce holds Jason, who cried until he passed out. Bruce doesn’t mind. His boy needs sleep. It will likely get harder from here, as the knowledge becomes more concrete to everyone.
They wait for news. Will Damian survive? Will he be in one piece? Can his baby boy, his youngest, his prickly pear, survive without Dick? Bruce is afraid of the answer.
They wait in that room for hours. Clark comes at some point. Bruce is not sure who told him. He doesn’t say a word. Clark sits on Bruce’s other side. Bruce leans into him. By then, he is holding a sleeping Tim instead of a sleeping Jason. Clark’s arrival is a balm. Bruce does not sleep. He is thankful to have Clark there to lean on.
When the surgery ends, Bruce is the only one allowed to see Damian. They aren’t sure if he will be paralyzed or not. There is a high chance of it. Something about swelling on his spine that Bruce should probably pay attention to. When they tell him, he is too busy looking at his boy. He’s hooked up to countless wires. He’s on a morphine drip. There’s machines breathing for him. Damian’s heart is beating a decent rhythm. Bruce tries to focus on that. He’s distantly aware they tell him they will have to do more tests, more surgeries, later.
They keep him sedated. Medically induced coma. The first surgery was to attend to the swelling on his brain. They don’t say anything about the likeliness of brain death but they do not have to. Bruce knows. Bruce knows too much about brain injuries and comas. He can hear the words they do not say in their silences and hesitations. It’s too early to be certain. They say more than once.
Bruce does not leave the hospital. He sends everyone else home. Jason stays. As does Tim. The rest go. Somewhere else.
Cass arrives the next day. She holds him and he holds her. Neither says a word. She knows; of all his children, she can see it plain as day.
The world has ended. The fields have been salted. The ocean rises to his waist. Robin is dead. He will not hear his boy cackle with mischief ever again.
Damian is here. He sleeps. He might not wake. But for now, he is here. Bruce holds that truth close, cups it in his palms. Bruce hums into Cass’s hair. She hums back.
Around seven, Damian is rushed back into surgery. Two hours later they are told he had a blood clot. After that, in secret, Bruce sends in Clark to check Damian with his X-ray vision. Clark is not a medical professional, but he reports he doesn’t think he sees anything concerning.
By day four, there is a system Tim worked out. Bruce goes home and sleeps between 3pm and 8pm. He takes a sleeping pill each time. Which he hates. But he will not sleep at all otherwise. He does not go out as Batman. He cannot. His head is not in the right place for it. Bruce knows what he did last time. He will not channel his grief into violence. Never again. If he slips, Tim will try to catch him. Bruce cannot put that back on Tim. Especially not now. No, Bruce is a real fucking adult, and he can really fucking adult (as Jason so aptly put it once when he was angry at Bruce).
Clark offers. With exhausted thankfulness, Bruce agrees to send Clark out as Batman. Jason snorts but doesn’t object.
*********
It has been eight days. Bruce wakes up. He eats something. It tastes like ash. He goes to the hospital to sit with Damian overnight. He moves to the stale waiting room when morning comes. When someone else wants to take a turn. People come and go throughout the day. He forgets about food. Tim drags him to the cafeteria. Stephanie sits with Damian. The guilt that Tim had to do so him is enough that he cries as he eats. His tears make Tim cry. Jason finds them in the cafeteria crying.
“Is he?” His voice cracks. A look of pure devastation rolls across his face like a crack of thunder.
Bruce wipes his eyes. “No. No. He’s stable. Everything’s just hitting me at the moment.” He reaches out and takes Tim’s hand. “You do not have to take care of me Tim. I can manage things this time.”
Tim gives him an angry, disbelieving look. Bruce weathers it. Jason sits next to Tim, across from Bruce, and steals Tim’s fries.
“Go home, old man, it’s almost three. I am here for my watch.” He still eyes them both warily.
Tim had wanted to set a revolving watch, to keep everyone regulated. Bruce had told him he’d be here. As much as possible. No matter what was organized. Tim had told him if he went without sleep, he’d make the doctors sedate him. Bruce is sure that wasn’t quite an empty threat. He’d agreed to a few hours away from the hospital a day. Each time one of his children would stay. No matter who else came or went. It has worked out so far, though it’s only been a few days. Today it is Jason. Tomorrow it will be Cass.
Bruce shoves his plate over to Jason. He’s eaten about a third of it. That is better than he’d managed alone.
“Tim, are you staying here or do you want a ride somewhere?”
“Staying.”
He nods and looks his boys over. He leans across the table and rests his hand on the top of Tim’s head. “Don’t forget to take care of yourself, son.”
Tim scoffs. “Pot.”
Bruce hums.
Tim sighs. “I will if you will,” he grumbles with feeling.
“It’s a deal.” He points at Tim but speaks to Jason. “He hasn’t slept since yesterday around 2am. If he doesn’t sleep here, have a car send him home. Don’t let him drive.”
Jason nods seriously. He looks at Tim. His expression is strained. “I’ll make sure he sleeps.”
Bruce reaches out to touch Jason. He gives Bruce a grumpy look. And his ears go red. He lets Bruce’s hand settle on his curls. Bruce tries not to think of Jason’s death most days. But it was harder now than before. When he lost Jason, he had no reason to believe he’d ever be able to touch these curls again. Yet, here they are. And it is hard, incredibly, terribly, awfully hard. No one knew how Jason woke up in his coffin. No one knew if the same thing could happen again. Hope is a terrible thing, twinkling in his chest like a wish upon a star. Hope and fear and desire are all mixed together. He cannot stop himself from hoping that his heart, his Robin, his first and brightest and most astonishing son, would wake and join the living again.
After Jason had told them about clawing out of his coffin, Bruce had designed a new system. A coffin that would alert the cave to life signs. At the same time it’d raise the coffin into the open and pop open the lid. There was even a small computer. It would tell the newly-risen (a zombie, as Jason called himself) the date, the time, and who was in residence at the manor. And who was elsewhere. There was a voice command feature that allowed satellite calls. When he’d tested it with Clark, the call had gone to the Watchtower like it should. The design would have worked in space. It even had handles and gears that allowed it to be opened manually if the computers or motors failed. There were so many redundancies in the design, that even Jason had said Bruce had gone overboard with the coffins. (There had been jokes about Batcoffins, Vampire sleeping quarters, and puns. So many terrible puns that Bruce could still hear ringing in Dick’s voice.) No one would have to dig their way out. Not his family. Not even Gordon, if the Commissioner so desired.
Hope might kill him faster than the grief. Bruce let his hand fall to his side. He can still feel Jason’s curls against his palm. His second eldest looks up at him through his white bangs.
“Make sure you sleep, Dad.” Jason admonishes, his voice rougher than usual. Has he picked up smoking again? Bruce is too wary to ask. “I’ll know if you go into the basement.”
Bruce’s expressions have been stuck in blankness since Tim had told him the news. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get his face to shift. He would smile reassuringly at his boys now, if his muscles weren’t frozen. He’d laugh if his ability to do so hadn’t atrophied. He cannot even grunt. Doing so brings Dick’s voice to his ears, telling him to use his words or let everyone, forever, believe they weren’t enough, weren’t loved, weren’t his. (Dick hadn’t even yelled those words, when he’d tossed them at Bruce. They had been raw, and broken. The last attempt of a boy wanting a dad. Why had he been blind for so long?) These boys are his, as much as he is theirs. There is nothing else for them but this. So, he takes a breath and answers the two boys sitting before him, so they will know he’d heard them. And they’ll know he is as alright as he can be.
“I will follow the schedule. I will sleep, I will eat, and then I will shower.” And then he’d come back to sit at Damian’s bed. Or to the waiting room with the bench he’d claimed. The one where he could hold whichever of his brood crawled up there with him. He didn’t need to add that. They knew the schedule. They knew he’d return faster if there was any change at all. They knew.
Jason smiles. “Go on then, I’ve got Tim.”
Tim squawks, but he doesn’t throw Jason off when he wraps an arm around his younger brother. Bruce immortalizes that image in his mind. Jason and Tim. Wrapped around each other. They are held together by the fact that they had, in the end, chosen each other. They had chosen to stick it out and be a family. Even after all Bruce had gotten wrong. Oh, how he loved them. How he loves his boys, his girls. (The Bat Clan, as Kate had dubbed it, laughing at him years ago when his world had been smaller.)
Bruce nods and goes home. He went through the motions and got ready for bed. But this time the sleeping pill is not enough.
He remembers, only vaguely, when Jason died and he pushed everyone away. Clark had come to see him anyway. He had found Bruce passed out. Drunk. On the floor of his room. He had cleaned Bruce up. He sat with him for a small eternity. Bruce remembers how, the moment he’d been conscious enough to be angry again, he’d sent Clark away.
Clark had gone. Bruce had regretted it. The moment he was alone. He had not called Clark back.
He isn’t angry now. Well, he is angry, but it isn’t the same. He isn’t the same. He is a gorge weathered by the constant churning of grief. He cannot muster the same anger, even if he was willing to try. He didn’t want to.
He closes his eyes.
“Are you busy?” He whispers. There is a breeze. And then Clark is there in his room.
“No, no I’m not.”
“Will you—” Bruce reaches out his arm. His hand is trembling. His breathing is ragged. His eyes are dry. “Hold me?”
Clark’s eyes go soft. He kicks off his shoes and climbs into Bruce’s bed. He wraps Bruce in his arms. He smells like sunlight and hay and the warm scent of the farm. Clark hums to him. It’s a familiar lullaby he doesn’t remember hearing before.
Bruce doesn’t cry. He sleeps deeper than he has in days. And he knows it’s because Clark will hear the moment anything changes.
Bruce dreams of Dick as a child. Tears come in his sleep. Even though in his dream he is laughing with Dick, he knows. The ocean of grief is swishing around his ribs. He is aware enough that he can hear Clark shushing him, whispering his name. He tells Bruce that he is right there, that Clark will not leave him. In his dream his laughter turns to tears. He wakes still crying.
He doesn’t move. He lets himself be cradled. Bruce cannot allow himself to drown again. Tim will try to hold Bruce’s grief. He cannot do that to his son. To any of his children. He cannot drag his children beneath the ocean.
What else can he do? If it is between drowning and this? He will cling to Clark. His friend. Superman can fly him up out of any water before he drowns. He will cling to Clark, if he must cling to anyone. Dick is gone. But Bruce remains. If he is to hold his family up and keep them from drowning in their own grief, he will do what he must to stay afloat.
No matter how weak and pathetic it makes him feel.
Clark stays. Bruce listens to his heart. Clark holds him. When Bruce finally gets up, Clark sends him to shower while he makes food. He, too, knows the schedule.
And so it goes.
*********
Clark does not allow Jon to come to the hospital. Bruce finds him in Damian’s room anyway. There is only supposed to be one person in the room at a time. In case they have to attend to Damian in an emergency. Bruce never sends Jon out. Never forces him to leave. Jon can disappear fast enough that he will not be in the way. Bruce does tell Clark about it. Sometimes Clark will come for Jon and take him to his mother, or to see to Damian’s animals. Sometimes he will let the boy stay, even though he does not want to.
Sometimes Bruce holds Jon on the couch while the boy cries into Bruce’s chest. Bruce holds him and rocks him, as he does for all his children.
Clark finds Jon fast asleep against Bruce several times. Clark never carries Jon away when that happens. He simply puts a hand to Bruce’s free shoulder, giving him something to lean against. Helping him to remain upright.
Bruce and Clark have known each other a very long time. It is good that Clark does not need to speak, nor does he need Bruce to speak. Silence between them is comfortable. Having him nearby these days helps calm the rising tide inside him.
*********
The funeral happens before Damian wakes simply because they do not know if he will wake. It is as awful a funeral as Bruce expects. He does not drive that day. Nor do his children. Clark drives them all.
Everyone who knew Dick was Nightwing comes. Bruce hates it. It goes against all sense. But he allows it.
The original members of the Titans. The ones alive. The team Dick started. They sit with Bruce’s family.
When it is over, he returns to the hospital. He is not surprised Talia is sitting with Damian. He sits next to her. They do not speak. What is there to say? She will not put him in the Lazarus Pit. And neither will Bruce. He’d gone down that road once. He knows better. He knows. He’s an old dog who learned.
After an hour of silence. Talia surprises him. She takes his hand. He squeezes back. They sit and watch machines keeping their boy alive.
By the seventeenth day, Damian has had four additional surgeries. Mostly for his broken bones. The swelling on his spine is going down. His brain scan looks good. They plan to stop the coma in a few more days. The doctors do not know if that will wake him.
Talia comes and goes. On that day, they again find themselves alone in his room together. For the first time, she tells him about their son when he was a baby. Bruce soaks in every story about him. In return, he tells Talia about Damian’s paintings. About his dog Titus, his cat Alfred. And what a fierce and practical Robin he has been.
He does not say that he has taken to having Titus in his room when he sleeps. He makes no mention how Tim’s schedule also includes care for Damian’s animals. He doesn’t describe the look Damian gets when he thinks no one sees his achingly soft heart. Bruce is sure Talia knows that look. Perhaps better than he does. He tells her, instead, of the young man he’s growing into. And the pride he holds for his youngest is apparent for Talia to hear. Even after she broke all trust between them, she knows Bruce well.
*********
Cass sometimes crawls into bed with him. He holds her. Or watches her breath. Sometimes he wakes to find her watching him. Occasionally she drags Tim with her and squishes him between them. Tim never leaves, even when he grumbles. Sometimes, Bruce falls asleep to them softly whispering. Their whispers follow him into his dreams. The dreams will be exactly the same, with one key difference. Dick will be there. He will be tickling Tim, teasing Cass, trying to convince Damian to sprawl on top of Bruce while Bruce pretends to sleep. It is not a memory; they had never had a morning quite like it. It is…calming, relaxing, hopeful. And that makes it a nightmare. He always wakes from his dreams of Dick—especially the ones that could be happening now—crying. He tries to not make a big deal of his tears around his kids. Does his best to draw no notice without hiding them. He isn’t ashamed of crying, exactly. He is unwilling to allow his tears to add any weight to their shoulders.
He isn’t sure how well he succeeds.
*********
They wean Damian off the medication keeping him under fourteen days after the funeral. He does not wake up that day, nor the next.
On the fourth night, Jason wants to be the one in Batman’s cape. Bruce agrees. As long as he leaves the guns at home. He does not want to scare anyone into thinking that Batman had been mind controlled again. Jason laughed without humor at the stipulation. He does agree.
On the fifth afternoon, he does not leave on schedule. When he is on his way out, there’s an emergency. Doctors and nurses rushed past him. He turns to follow, and sees Tim pushed out of Damian’s room. Then he watches them take Damian back into surgery. Bruce knows hospital codes. He doesn’t need the nurse who comes to them to tell him that Damian has just had a heart attack.
And yet.
Hearing the words. Heart attack.
He stumbles into the wall. He makes some broken sound. He does his best to stop himself. Bruce can feel himself slipping. Somebody steadies him. He is taken out of the hall. Someone lowers him to a chair.
“Dad.” That was. Jason. “Dad, I need you to breathe.”
Jason’s hand presses against his chest.
“Dad. B. Breath with me. Please.”
Bruce blinks. The world is unfocused. Blinks again. And again. Slowly his vision clears. Jason is squatting in front of him. He is crying. Bruce should do something about that.
“Just breath.” Jason demands.
Bruce listens. He breaths. It comes back to him. Damian. Heart attack. Tim.
Tim…is not in the waiting room.
Bruce wets his lips. “Tim?”
“He’s fine. How are you doing?”
Bruce shakes his head. It doesn’t help clear his mind. He reaches out. Jason takes his hand. The warmth of Jason’s hand makes him suddenly aware how cold his hands are.
“I’m alright.”
Jason gives him a disbelieving look. Which. Is. Fair. Bruce’s breathing is still off. Is it shock? Bruce can’t bring himself to care. He should be concentrating on Jason. On Tim. He shouldn’t be forcing Jason to—The waiting room door opens.
“Clark.” Bruce said. Clark is here.
Jason’s shoulders relax. He doesn’t let go of Bruce. That’s good. Bruce doesn’t want to let him go.
“Sorry,” Clark said. “I was in the middle of a mudslide.”
“It’s fine.” Jason said gruffly. His ears are red.
Clark comes closer. Looking Bruce over. No doubt using his Xray vision. When his hand rests on the back of Bruce’s neck, a tremor goes through him as he automatically relaxes.
They stay like that. The three of them are quiet. Bruce’s labored breathing calms. Jason’s anxious looks relax. Slowly, their family collects once more in the waiting room.
The surgery they do to repair the damage and strengthen sections of Damian’s heart takes hours. No one is willing to leave. It breaks their schedule. Bruce stays at the hospital for a full 72 hours.
Once Damian is allowed visitors. He spends his time next to his son’s bed. He keeps trying to mathematically figure out how to crawl in there and hold his boy without causing a problem between the machines he is hooked to or any of Damian’s various injuries. He doesn’t figure out the trick to it before Tim sends Clark to take him to the Manor. According to Clark, Tim doesn’t think Bruce is in a state to drive. Which is true. Bruce and Clark (and Tim) know that if Clark didn’t carry him out of there, he would not have left. It is probably for the best that Clark doesn’t give him a choice in the matter.
Even with his sleeping pill, Titus pressed against him and Clark holding him, Bruce’s sleep is awful. He dreams of a memory. It is a screaming match he had with Dick years ago. A fight about Damian. A fight he regretted even in the moment. One he hadn’t been able to stop himself from having. The fight ended the same way their fights often did. Dick stormed out of the manor and did not talk to Bruce for six months. The biggest difference that time, was that Damian had gone with Dick. Bruce hadn’t known how to ask him to come home. (He’d never known how to ask Dick either.) How could he make Damian come? Bruce had known since he was eight that home was always a person. Not a place. His memory ended with the slam of a door. His dream became less focused. More dreamlike. Bruce wandered an empty manor. He kept calling out for the dead. The dead didn’t answer. He then called out for anyone at all to answer. He is alone in the big house. The waters of his grief find him there. He’s swamped by a surging storm of grief and terror.
Bruce is woken by Clark when he stops breathing. His screams caught in his throat. He chokes. Titus licks his face. That’s how he notices he’s crying again. Clark sits up against the headboard. He tucks Bruce against him. The room is dark. Clark does not need to say anything. He gently rocks Bruce. The same way Bruce rocks his family. The dog lays across them. When Titus whines, the dam breaks. Bruce breaks. The flood surges out of him. Bruce cannot do anything except wail with his grief. Clark doesn’t whisper reassurances. He cries with Bruce. Titus howls with them.
*********
Four days after the heart attack. They take out the intubation. Two days after that. Damian wakes up.
Their schedule still is not fixed. Bruce is bringing food to their room. Jason is sitting with Damian. Tim is asleep on the couch.
Jason’s voice drifts into the hall. It takes Bruce getting to the doorway to understand the slow, soft reassurances. “You’re at Gotham General. You’ve been in a crash. Dad’s getting lunch; he drew the short straw. You’ve been badly injured so you can’t move, alright? Wait for the doctors to say what’s okay.”
He started the spiel over again before Bruce manages to go inside.
He strides to Damian’s bed. His lungs burn. Jason looks up at him, eyes widening. Damian’s eyes are slower to move. Slower to steady on him. His gaze is unfocused. Maybe the painkillers. Maybe the head trauma. Probably both. His neck is braced to inhibit movement. Bruce is glad for that. Damian’s heart rate spikes.
“Damian,” Bruce breaths his name. He studies his son as he brushes back his hair. “Damian.”
For a moment he cannot think of anything else to say. He feels like he could say Damian’s name a thousand times and it wouldn’t be enough. He clears his throat. Focuses himself. “Blink once for yes, twice for no. Do you want me to call your mother? She’s in town. She’s been visiting you.”
Tears leak from Damian’s eyes. He blinks once.
“Do you remember what happened?”
He blinks twice.
“That’s fine. We’ll talk about it later. The doctors are going to be here in a moment. Are you in any pain?”
He blinks once.
“Good, good. Thank you for telling me.” He continues combing his fingers through Damian’s hair. “Is it between 1 and 5?”
Two blinks.
“Between six and ten?”
One blink.
“Good, that’s a good boy. You’re doing great.”
More tears fall from his eyes.
The doctors and nurses come in. They flutter around as Bruce tells them what Damian conveyed. After the flurry dies down, the doctor wants to take Damian away for another scan. Bruce agrees reluctantly. He doesn’t know why he is reluctant.
Tim wakes as the bed moves. “What?” The word is a mumble that only his long acquaintance with Tim allows Bruce to decipher.
“He’s awake,” Jason mutters. “Dami’s awake.”
“Has he…said anything?”
“His jaw is wired shut.”
“Right.” Tim rubs the sleep out of his eyes. When he sees the bed moving, Tim jumps to his feet. The bed stops. His youngest boys watch each other. Damian’s gaze seems more alert. He doesn’t look at Tim long. All it takes is that one look. Damian makes a plaintive sound that shatters Bruce’s ribs.
Tim’s lips wobble. Fresh tears start rolling down his face. “Can we go with?”
Bruce gestures for the nurses to continue with the bed. He hugs Tim hard. Bruce runs his hand through Tim’s hair. “It’s okay Tim. They’re just doing scans.” He kisses the crown of Tim’s head.
“But—”
“Stay here,” Bruce tells them both. “Eat.”
He’d set down the food earlier without noting. Good. At least he hadn’t dropped it.
He lets Tim go. Bruce follows the nurses wheeling away the bed. He calls Talia as they go. He knows she will be there by the time the scans are done.
*********
Damian doesn’t see Dick’s grave until the next year. He isn’t paralyzed. He was too injured for the walk. And his son had demanded that he walk there himself.
So they waited.
They watched their youngest heal physically.
Bruce learns to hold Dami. And his son learns to let Bruce in as he cries. Bruce will never be what Dick was to his son. He is trying to be more than he was. He learns his son in a way he could not before. It starts the way Batman’s story always starts. It starts with a grief so deep, it changes something fundamental inside.
They go as a family. Damian at their center. They bring flowers and a picnic. They eat lunch out there. No one cares that it is cold. It is the start of spring. It is Dick’s birthday. Steph made the cake. It’s held together with toothpicks and frosting. Jason made the lunch. Tim found the picnic supplies. Cass eats a little bit of everything. Barbra sits with her back against the gravestone, covering half the text.
Damian is the one who starts it. The first to ask for a story about Dick. Tim is the one who answers. He talks of a night he took pictures as a child. The story makes Bruce laugh. And it hurts. It hurts so much. Bruce hasn’t laughed often since his heart died. Every time he does, the cavity where his heart should be stings and burns and aches. When Tim finishes his story, Bruce tells the same event from his perspective. It makes Jason cackle in the middle of a sip of lemonade. He chokes and Stephanie jeers at him, even as she shoves napkins at him.
Barbara tells the next story. Jason is quietly swearing at his mess. They go around and around like that as they eat. Every one takes a turn or two or three telling tales about their golden boy. He was as warm as sunlight and the best of them all. Better than Batman. Better than Superman. Just better.
His son. The best thing that happened to Bruce was choosing that boy. Even if one of the worst is losing him. Bruce sits in this moment. He sits with his family in this grief they all share. It is an ocean. But for once Bruce sits on the beach. He is not drowning. They grieve with him. He holds Damian to his side. And he holds Cass’s hand when she wants him to. And with everything that remains of him, Bruce holds his family. Those here and those now gone.
His heart is buried six feet beneath them. His family remains around him. Bruce knows his heart better than he will ever know anyone else. He is aware of exactly what Dick would have wanted him to do. (He knows all he promised to do already.) Bruce is trying. With every breath. Every word. Every gesture. He’s trying to be better. It is too little, too late for Robin, for Dick, for his first son. Isn’t that how he always learned? (He silently apologizes to Dick for his failures with every tick of the clock.) Bruce presses a kiss to Damian’s temple. For Dick, who cannot do so again. (For himself, who had not done so often enough before.)
Bruce turns to the children. He regales them with a story about Alfred and Dick and Bruce’s first, terrible, attempts at parenthood. They laugh at him, as they should. Bruce tells them what Alfred told him, what he hadn’t understood for so long.
“A family is what you make of it, lad. You have to show up for that boy upstairs, you have to be there as yourself.” Bruce had taken that advice as he’d taken much of Alfred’s advice. Very literally and to the utmost extreme. But he understands it better now, he hopes he does, at least.
The last story he tells them is about when Dick figured out he was Batman. Dick had gone on a spree, naming everything in the cave, including the Batcave itself. Then he attempted to name everything upstairs too. Bruce smiles as he explains that week was the true start of ‘no night work upstairs’ because they couldn’t be calling the manor the ‘Bathouse’ or the bathrooms ‘Batrooms’ or Bruce’s bed ‘Batbed’. Bruce’s attempt at explaining this to Dick led to the worst tantrum Bruce had seen. (It did not stay the worst tantrum, much to Bruce’s despair. He had not intended to spoil Dick rotten.) Alfred had swooped in and saved them. As he had done many times before and after. He made the secret exciting. And that was enough for the boy.
Cass adds a piece of cake each to Alfred and Dick’s graves. Complete with forks and an unlit candle for Dick. Bruce can spy several toothpicks in each slice.
Before they pack up, Tim sets up his camera. They take a picture there at the graveside. There is chocolate on Stephanie’s face. Jason (somehow) looks sun burnt. Cass is laughing at Tim—who is blurry in the first and family favorite picture, where the timer was set too soon. Damian is leaning against Bruce. He’s looking at Dick’s headstone. Bruce is looking at Damian. Somehow, Barbra is the only one looking at the camera.
In the middle of packing things away, everyone goes still at the same moment. There’s a robin singing somewhere nearby. It is the first day of spring. They should have been prepared for it, but they are not. It is not long before they scatter in a sudden swell of grief.
Damian stands but does not leave. His hands gripping his crutches. His eyes scanning the trees. Bruce remains next to him. His eyes fall on Dick’s headstone. It’s a simple thing. At the bottom, beneath his name and the more traditional ‘son, friend, baba’ it says ‘His mother’s little robin, may he always be bobbin along’. Bruce swallows. He puts a heavy hand on Damian’s shoulder as they stand there together and listen to the first robin of spring sing.