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“Man, I’m excited to get home.” Dick said, stretching in his seat in the bioship as they reentered earth's atmosphere.
“Me too.” M’gann said with a grin.
The two of them, along with Conner, Artemis and J’honn had been out on a mission to Mars to help work on a peace treaty for two weeks. Communications between Earth and Mars were limited so the mission felt even longer than normal. Dick knew that Artemis was antsy to get back to Wally and Dick honestly couldn’t blame her. He missed his best friend too but he was really missing his brother.
Jason was still new as Robin, but he was growing like a weed, both physically and skillfully. When Dick left, Jason was working on a very specific roundhouse kick combo with Canary and Dick would be willing to bet that he had gotten it down by now. Dick was excited to see it.
When Bruce first took in Jason, Dick was hesitant. His own experience as Robin was good until it wasn't and it hung over his head like a bat-shaped shadow. He didn’t want another child to go through that but seeing Jason work was almost like magic. He was bright and stubborn and daring in a way that Dick never was. He was willing to fight everyone on just about anything but he had a heart of uncrackable gold. He was a good kid. So against all odds, Dick had a younger brother.
And he missed him. Two weeks was a long time to be away from the people you love.
“We will land at the Watchtower in approximately two minutes.” M’gann said. She was smiling brightly and Dick couldn’t help the surge of fondness for her. She was happier than she had been in a while. It made being gone for so long worth it.
The descent into the Watchtower was smooth and soon they were disembarking into an empty hangar.
Conner frowned. “They knew we were coming back today, right?”
“We told them when we left when we’d be back and I reminded them a few days ago.” Artemis said. “They know.”
“Knowing our colleagues, they have simply been swept up into more of their duties.” J’honn said calmly.
“There’s never a break with this type of stuff, is there?” Dick joked. He swung his duffle bag over his shoulder. “There’s always someone in the monitor bay anyway.”
“Good point.” M’gann said. “Let’s go ask them.”
It was a short trek to the monitor bay from the hangar and they were greeted with the familiar sight of Superman and Black Canary next to the computers.
“Hey!” Dick called out to the two. They both turned around to look at the new arrivals. They smiled, but Dick noticed that Superman’s smile tightened when he made eye contact with Dick.
“Nightwing.” Superman said “Glad you’re back.”
“Glad to be back.” Dick said with a nod. “Where is everyone?”
Superman shared a glance with Black Canary that made Dick’s stomach churn. He had known and trained with these heroes for a long time. He knew when there was bad news etched onto their faces.
“Most people are out on missions right now, but Nightwing…” She trailed off and sent Superman another look. “There is something wrong in Gotham. We aren’t sure what.”
Dick frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Three days ago, Batman left a league meeting to deal with an Arkham breakout.” Superman said. “He didn’t say many details, because it’s him, but I know the Joker escaped. No one has been able to get in contact with him since.”
Something in Dick’s chest froze for a moment. He glanced at his friends and saw a similar expression on their faces. He looked back at the two other heroes.“What about Robin?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“I’m going there.” Dick whipped around and rushed to the zeta tube.
“Dick,” Superman called before Dick could go. Dick glanced back at him and saw the gentleness of Clark Kent standing in Superman’s place. “Stay safe.”
Dick nodded and stepped into the zeta platform.
The feeling of zeta transport always made Dick uncomfortable. It was safe, he knew that, but for just a brief moment, it always felt like falling. He never wanted to say it, even to himself, but falling to his death was his biggest fear. He didn’t want to be like his parents in that regard.
But as always, his feet hit solid ground the moment after he exhaled. His eyes focused in on the sight of the batcave. The batmobile was parked in the center of the room where it belonged and Dick could just barely spot the familiar silhouette of Batman against the monitor's bright light.
Dick stepped out of the tube and willed his feet to slow. There was a thickness in the air of the cave but Dick told himself that it couldn’t be that bad if Bruce was just sitting in the cave. If there was something really wrong, Bruce would be out there fixing it. It’s what he did.
“Bruce!” Dick called out.
“Dick.” Bruce said gruffly, the ever present Bat-persona laying thick overtop of any emotion that Bruce could have. Dick frowned.
“No welcome back?” Dick said, coming to stand next to Bruce at the monitor bay. “No hello for the hero who just got back from a mission?”
“You were on a peace treaty mission to Mars.” Bruce said, not looking at Dick at all. “You were never in any danger.”
“That’s debatable but whatever.” Dick said. “Superman told me that something is going on here. What’s up?”
“There was an Arkham break. It’s been dealt with.”
“Okay…” Dick said slowly. “The League said that they haven’t been able to get in contact with you for days now.”
“It was my problem to fix.” Bruce said. “I did not need their help.”
“Okay what is wrong with you?” Dick asked point blank. “Did you get hit with fear toxin or something?”
“Jason is dead.”
Once upon a time, Dick watched his world literally fall apart. He watched his parents fall to their deaths and the world froze for just a moment. Just long enough for a single heartbeat to resound like a hit drum in his ear and then the world kept turning. The world had no time to mourn with him and this time was the same. Everything seemed to stop moving for just a moment but Dick could still feel his breath moving in and out of his chest rapidly, an unfair motion when Jason’s must be still.
Dick had spent his life surrounded by death, a spectre and a father in all the same ways Bruce was. It was an inherent part of him, yet he couldn’t fathom it for Jason. Fourteen years old and unmoving, dead before he got a chance to grow into himself. Jason, dead. Jason, dead.
It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be.
Dick didn’t remember a lot from the first few months after his parents died. He didn’t remember leaving Haly’s, didn’t remember moving into the manor. He didn’t remember the crushing sadness that he knew was there but the one thing he could remember was the anger. The anger at the man who killed his parents, the anger at the world for allowing that man to exist, the anger at Bruce for trying to help him when he didn’t want help. The anger was all consuming and while Dick had pushed it down for a long time, it bubbled back up in his chest like blood from a fresh stab.
“What happened?” Dick said, slow and low. He looked up at Bruce and for the first time in a long time, Dick wanted violence. He clenched his fists and forced his anger into his words. “What the fuck happened, Bruce?”
Bruce wasn’t looking at him, choosing instead to stare blankly at the monitor. His voice didn’t sound like his own, but like a robot made to recite mission briefings.“Three days ago, Joker escaped Arkham. Me and Jason tracked him to a warehouse by the bay. We went in but it was a trap. We got separated and when I took out all of the goons, both Jason and the Joker were gone. Joker somehow deactivated the tracker in Jason’s suit, so I had to recalibrate it remotely. By the time I figured it out, he had already taken Jason to an empty warehouse in Bialya. He beat him half to death with a crowbar. I got there in time to watch the building explode with Jason inside.”
The air of the Bat Cave was scratching blood marks into the inside of Dick’s lungs. Every breath hurt more than the last, carving him to pieces from the inside out. He couldn’t think, everything slipping through his fingers like a cut trapeze wire.
His pinky caught on the smallest piece of the wire and he used it to grab onto his anger again.
“You didn’t call me.” Dick growled. “Jason died three fucking days ago and you didn’t think to give me a call? Use all this fancy, useless tech to drop me a line? Ask for help?”
“There wasn’t time, Dick.” Bruce explained, furiously calm as always. “I had to act fast. Besides, you were out of range.”
“Bullshit, Bruce!” Dick shouted. “I would’ve come back earlier! I would’ve made M’gann take me back so I could fucking be here!”
“Telling you would have changed nothing.” Bruce said. “It would’ve only distracted you from your mission.”
“I don’t care about the mission, Bruce! I care about Jason!”
“Well there’s nothing left to care about besides a corpse.” Bruce snapped.
Dick saw red. It took everything in him not to punch Bruce’s lights out but at the end of the day, Bruce was still a good teacher. Dick kept his hands to himself. “Go fuck yourself, Bruce. I'm sleeping at the Cave tonight.”
“Dick-” Bruce tried to say but Dick was already in the zeta tube. He glanced back one more time before the zeta tube took him away. The last thing he saw was Bruce alone, silhouetted against the computers of the Batcave.
Nothing felt real in the zeta tube this time and it made Dick want to throw up. It felt like he was a kid again, still trying to learn how to fly again. It wasn’t until he felt the floor of the Cave under his fingers that he realized that everything felt strange because he was on the ground.
There was someone talking to him but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. Wally, his best friend, deep in the Gotham Bay, with no hope of coming up for air. Or maybe it was Dick that was underwater. He couldn’t tell.
Distantly, Dick was aware of someone pulling him up by his arms. In another reality, he would be pretty sure that it was Conner picking him up.
Then there was a blast of cold and wet and the Cave came into sudden, sharp focus. Dick was being held up by Conner and Kaldur was directly in front of him, his water-bearers extended. Artemis, Wally and M’gann stood with him
Dick groaned. “Okay, while that worked, I hated it.”
“Deal with it.” Wally said. He stepped forward and grabbed Dick’s face to look him in the eyes. “What is going on with you?”
“I-” Dick stuttered, his breath coming in harsh. “I-”
“Dick, just tell us what happened.” M’gann said quietly, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.
The words burned, running up his throat like vomit. “Jason’s dead.”
A wind chill swept through the sealed Cave as Dick watched his friends faces shutter. Artemis reeled back in her spot, Wally a perfectly still presence at her side. Tears welled in M'gann’s eyes and it felt like Dick could see the sob bubbling in her chest. Kaldur’s eyes went tragic and so old, aging a decade and more right in front of Dick. Conner’s grip fell slack against Dick’s shoulders.
“The Joker got him.” Dick was whispering, as if saying the words too loudly would make them more real than they already were. “And Bruce is just...sitting in the batcave. God, I’m angry at him. Jason is dead and Bruce didn’t even call me while I was on the mission and I can’t, I don’t, I can’t handle this again, not like this and I-”
Wally crushed him against his chest in a hug. The two year age difference between them never seemed large but for once, Dick felt so small and so unbelievably safe in his best friend's embrace. His knees buckled and Wally gently lowered them to the ground as Dick sobbed into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Dick, I’m sorry.” Wally was murmuring into his hair. “I’m so sorry, Dick.”
Dick gasped for air between his sobs. “He was fourteen. Fourteen. How could Bruce ever let this happen? How could I? We were supposed to be the ones protecting him and we didn’t. We didn’t, we didn’t .”
“It’s not your fault, dude.” Wally said. “You were off-world. You didn’t know.”
“I know.” Dick took a deep breath and tried to push the sobs away. “I know. God, I’m going to have to go apologize to Bruce. I just screamed at him.”
“Sometimes anger is what happens when you’re sad.” Conner said quietly, resting his hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Trust me, I know.”
Dick wiped at his eyes and tried again to calm his breathing. It worked better this time but he couldn’t tell if that was from him or the way his friends were huddled around him, all of them trying to get a hand on him for comfort. They were grieving just the same as Dick, but they were putting all of their effort into holding Dick together first. He knew that his friends were there for him, he did, but there was always a difference between seeing the net far below and feeling it under the palms of your hands.
When his parents died, the net fell out from under Dick. There was nothing left for him to hold on to. And then there was Bruce, trying his hardest to build a net, even though he had such a small one for himself. There was Alfred, nailing netting to a stone wall, foundational in all the right ways. Barbara, his first friend. Then Wally, Roy and Kaldur, the first allies he had that were his own age. Artemis, the first person to truly know both sides of his personality and care for both. Conner and M’gann, both so willing to learn and grow with him, instead of against him. The rest of the league and the team, all willing to fight for him if he only asked.
Bruce, his mentor. Bruce, his guardian. Bruce, his dad. No matter how angry Dick was or how often they fought, Dick knew that Bruce was his centerpiece. He always was. Bruce was the one that picked him up when he fell apart. Bruce was the one who gave him the tools to stand up on his own and there would never be a time where Dick wouldn’t be thankful for it.
Jason, his younger brother. At first, Jason had made him angrier than anything, a burn of being replaced even though it was partially his idea. But Jason was too good to be angry at for long. He was headstrong and reckless and dead. He was dead and there was suddenly a hole in the net that everyone was trying to stitch over. Dick knew that it would never be fixed, the same as the hole his parents left but it wouldn’t make the whole thing unravel. No one would let it.
The netting held strong and for once in his life, Dick let it hold him.