Chapter Text
“How’s Alfred?” Dick asks tiredly an hour later after his breakdown. His eyes heavy and swollen.
They’re sitting on the small round table that is in the kitchen, where Alfred likes to take his tea in the morning because it has a pretty view of the garden. Dick had spent a good part of his teenage years sitting here, eating or doing his homework with Alfred across from him, and he knows Bruce liked to sit down with Alfred in the same place during the good days. Most times, it feels comforting to sit in the kitchen because of all the good memories.
Right now, it feels just cold.
Bruce taps his fingers on the table softly. In front of him, his steaming coffee lies untouched. Dick stares at his own cup of tea.
He has never quite understood the big deal about tea. It tastes the same to him either in a tea bag from a cheap brand or made in a teapot. Jason had called him uncultured for it.
He enjoys the process more, but he doesn’t have the energy to make himself a cup from the start. Instead, he had accepted the simple cup with a tea bag that Bruce had offered him.
“How do you think he is?” Bruce bluntly asks back.
Dick looks around the kitchen. It’s spotless, almost shining in the light of the early day. The spices on the counter have been rearranged and the floor is freshly polished. The windows are so clean he could almost believe there are no crystals in place.
He wonders how red Alfred’s hands are. If he used cleaning gloves or if his hands are bleeding red.
“Touche,” He mutters, and then pulls his cup to drink from it.
***
That’s how Alfred finds them a while later. Sitting across each other in silence, with empty cups, an open pack of goldfish crackers, and a bowl of green overpriced grapes that Dick found in the fridge in the middle of them.
They’ve been picking periodically at the snacks, not really hungry but knowing they have to get something in their stomach. Dick hasn’t really eaten a full meal since two weeks ago for the nature of the Titan’s mission, and knowing Bruce, he probably has been surviving through protein shakes since last week.
The food tastes like ashes in his mouth, but at least Dick doesn’t feel sick.
“Good morning,” Alfred cautiously greets them.
Bruce, looking beyond tired, picks another grape and keeps quiet.
Dick, on the other hand, mutters, “Morning,” politely as he fidgets with a cracker.
They descend into an uncomfortable silence. Dick can see Alfred trying to find something to say at the edge of his vision, and struggling to fill the silence.
Bruce sighs heavily.
“I have a meeting in an hour,” he says aloud, getting up from his chair. “I should get changed.”
Dick doesn’t look at him. He kind of wants to lie down on the ground and sleep until he feels better.
He stares at the cracker in his hand. The pack was probably Jason’s.
“I was just about to make lunch,” he hears Alfred say. Dick’s stomach turns.
A couple of grapes and crackers are easy to eat, but the thought of eating a full meal in the Manor without his kid talking his ear off makes him want to throw up.
Bruce must agree, because he says, “No, thank you. I’m not hungry,”
Dick hears his steps exiting the kitchen, leaving him alone with Alfred. He breaks the cracker in two and sighs too.
“I’m not hungry too,” he mumbles, pushing the bowl and the crackers away from him.
“My dear boy…”
Dick raises his head to his father.
He looks old and tired. There are stress lines around his eyes and he’s paler than he remembers. He looks fragile like this.
Dick offers him a weak smile.
“It’s fine,” he lies. “It was a long trip. I’ll just go home and lay down in a bit.”
Alfred’s expression turns pained the moment he mentions going back to his apartment, but it can’t be helped. There’s nothing for Dick in the Manor right now, apart from the heavy grief impregnating the halls.
Dick watches him putting his teapot on the stove.
“Did Bruce talk to you?” Alfred asks in a poor attempt to be subtle.
It’s a fair question. Bruce isn’t exactly known for his knack for communication, or for sharing vital information with others. But Bruce knew what Dick meant for Jason.
Bruce isn’t stupid. He probably caught Dick’s role in Jason’s life way before it solidified and let it happen. Maybe it had been because he needed the help, or because he wanted Jason to have a bigger support net. Either way, he had allowed it and knew Dick wouldn’t have accepted anything less than the truth from his mouth.
The crying probably helped too.
“Yeah,” Dick answers in a subdued tone. “He told me everything.”
Alfred presses his lips. There’s skepticism in his expression with a bit of discomfort.
Ah. He is doubting Bruce.
Dick tilts his head at him in the way Bruce had told him once it was creepy. With wide, curious, and unblinking eyes. Without pretense.
Bruce didn’t mind back then. Alfred looks at him warily in the present.
“Do you blame him?” Dick asks him without rodeos. He talks blankly, forgetting his manners in favor of his morbid curiosity.
Alfred takes a sharp breath.
“Of course not,” Alfred says, but he’s a beat too quick to deny it, a bit too expressive around the eyes. Dick has known him too long.
Dick goes back to his cracker. He closes his fist around it and pulverizes it, letting the crumbs fall onto the table.
“Good,” Dick distantly says. “The blame game is a dangerous path to walk through, Alfie. And it’ll only end up burning all we have left.”
***
Dick leaves the Manor with the excuse that he is tired. Which he is, but more than anything he wants to lie down, curl himself into a ball, and disappear.
A part of him hates himself for leaving Alfred to deal with Bruce and their loss of Jason by himself, but he knows he won’t be any help right now. Not when he is tired and fragile.
He wants to be alone. He wants to be able to process the situation instead of feeling like he has to perform for someone else’s sake.
He goes to the cemetery.
The Wayne Family Cemetery is a gated part inside the normal cemetery of Gotham. It’s been closed off from the public since Bruce’s parents’ deaths, after someone had tried to give guided visits to Thomas and Martha’s graves.
He picks up the lock from the gate easily, and lets himself in without caring if there’s a camera seeing his movements. It’s eerily easy to get in.
His feet move him without his permission, forcing him to walk around the graves, searching for the fresher mound of dirt to find the kid.
He finds Jason’s grave thanks to the angel statue that screams money at the far end. It’s so full of flowers that the recently disturbed dirt isn’t visible from where he is standing.
Jason would have hated it, but the funerals and the graves are mostly for the living, he supposes.
From now on, everything related to his kid will become just an attempt at self-comfort for the ones who were closest to Jay. For the rest, he’ll become just a memory. Dick hates it.
Slowly, he lets himself fall in front of it, in a sitting position. He leaves the bouquet of lilacs and peonies he brought with the rest of the flowers and clasps his hands firmly between each other.
“Hi, Jay,” he murmurs softly, “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I didn’t know.”
The wind is cold, and the sky is full of clouds.
Just another day in Gotham City.
Just another loss of many.
Fresh tears start making their way down his cheeks. He doesn’t try to stop them; his kid doesn’t deserve less than honesty from him.
“I’m really sorry,” He whispers to the wind.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, just crying quietly and feeling like his heart is breaking all over again, but after a while -when his nose and cheeks are red from the cold and the crying and the sky starts to get too dark- his phone starts vibrating on his pocket insistently.
He rubs the tears off his cheeks, and gets his phone out to turn it off.
Except he pauses. Bruce’s name blinks back at him.
His stomach turns.
“What’s wrong?” He answers without thinking twice, anxiety gawking at his stomach. His voice is rough from the crying, but he already knows Bruce won’t care about it.
The tips of his fingers are freezing, his hands feel numb from the cold.
There’s a long pause.
“Where are you?” Bruce asks, ignoring his question. He doesn’t sound much different from the morning, but Dick can’t help but stay wary.
Bruce’s calling is nothing but worrisome.
“Out,” Dick tells him quietly. “Is everything okay?”
There is a beat. Two. Dick hears Bruce deliberately take deep breaths.
“You didn’t come back to the Manor,” Bruce says, and he sounds like he is forcing himself to spit it out.
Dick blinks.
“Okay?” he answers, baffled. For the first time in years, Bruce’s words confuse him.
Dick forces himself to get up on his unsteady feet. The injury he has on his ankle throbs.
Bruce doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then hangs up.
Dick stares at the phone, and then he decides he’s too tired to try to deal with Bruce’s issues. It’s time to go home.
***
His apartment is half empty. There are boxes everywhere on the floor and a layer of dust above his furniture.
Jason had been helping him pack before he went away on his mission so he could move to another bigger apartment as soon as he came back.
Dick had picked a two-bedroom apartment in a nicer part of the city just so Jason could stay more time with him. He had even sat down with Jason and picked out paint swatches for his room, along with decoration and furniture.
The apartment is already waiting for him to just move in, but there won’t be a kid sharing his space anymore.
Above his sink, there’s a plate and a tea cup suspended in time. His bed is made, and there are books over it. Signs that Jason did come to his apartment at some point while he was in space.
Dick takes a shower, treats his leg -a nasty gash that needs four stitches before it closes properly- and carefully puts Jason’s books on his bedside table. He shakes off the dust off his blankets and curls in his bed.
He feels like he can’t possibly make more tears after spending his whole day crying but, in the quietness and darkness of his apartment, the tears still come easily. They’re a lot more slow, and Dick could probably stop them if he tried, but he lets them fall and dampen his pillow.
Jason used to have nightmares sometimes. The kid would be silent about it, but because they used to sleep in the same bed, Dick always woke up in time to see his kid crying quietly in his sleep.
He always wondered why Jason never allowed himself to be loud when he cried. Why when the kid knew he had people ready to catch him if he broke down? But maybe Jason didn’t really know how many people cared about him.
Hidden under his blankets, he lets a shuddering breath out.
Hesitantly, he opens his mouth and lets a wounded whine out.
The last time he had ever made a similar sound had been the night his parents died, at the moment he had understood there was nothing to be done to save them. He had been too little then, and he hadn’t had any of the control of his emotions as he has now.
The hurt that burns inside him is somehow worse, though. It’s inside his skin, crawling in every part of his body, scrambling his thoughts and forcing him to curl more into himself in a poor attempt to brace for the mental waves of pain.
Unable to keep it inside, he turns his head to his damp pillow and screams into it, trying not to think about the occasional whine and sobs that he lets out between the screams.
***
At first, he doesn’t know what wakes him up.
Maybe it’s the slight drop in temperature, the sudden breeze in his apartment, the soft click of glass in his window, or the burning sensation of eyes on his back.
His eyes are heavy when he turns around in his bed to face Bruce’s familiar figure by his window. He is in the bat suit, and he melts almost perfectly in the shadows of his apartment.
He thinks he should feel something about it, maybe surprise or anger at the breaking in. Perhaps even worry.
Instead, he doesn’t find enough strength to care.
He wants to go back to sleep. Go back to that space where nothing exists and everything is quiet and peaceful. Go back to not thinking. To not feeling.
“You didn’t come back to the Manor,” Bruce stiffly repeats the words he said to him earlier.
Dick blinks tiredly at him.
“Why would have I?” Dick says. His voice rough from all the crying.
Bruce doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares at him for a long moment and moves to Dick’s kitchen. Dick watches him rinsing a cup before filling it with water. He offers it to Dick without any other word.
Dick sits in his bed and, hesitantly, accepts the cup and takes a wary sip to clear his throat.
“You should be sleeping,” Dick finally says after a couple of minutes in silence. He takes another longer sip. “Don’t think I can’t see all the sleepless nights you’ve been having written in your face.”
Bruce looks around his apartment, at the boxes and the dust. He looks at the couple of pictures Dick still has on his wall and takes his time to come up with an answer. Dick finishes his drink and leaves the cup beside Jason’s books.
He watches Bruce looking at the shoebox that is his apartment. The shoebox that had become a second house to Jason. He doesn’t feel anything.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see everyone close to me dead,” Bruce finally tells him in a pained tone of voice. “Of course, I know that’s just my head, but I still find myself looking through surveillance cameras and trackers to reassure myself it’s false. But you don’t have any trackers, or cameras connected to a red I can access to.”
Bruce’s hands are faintly trembling. It might be the fatigue, the lack of proper alimentation, or the injuries he might be sporting. Or it could be anxiety.
Dick did get rid of all his trackers years ago, and he did make his electronics Bruce-proof. He had never thought it could ever be a problem.
He feels like he should offer something, like his surveillance camera access or his suit vitals, but his eyes are starting to feel heavy again and he still doesn’t care enough to give him a solution.
He eases into his bed again.
“I don’t think I can have this conversation right now,” Dick murmurs under his breath.
Bruce doesn’t move from his spot. Dick sighs.
He tries to come up with something to scare Bruce away. To leave him alone, at least for the night.
“You should take a shower and try to sleep,” Dick tries. “There’s a change of clothes Jason stole from you in the closet, and the bed is big enough for the two of us.” It is not. Bruce is built like a tank.
Bruce, predictably, steps back automatically. As if Dick has a contiguous disease.
Dick isn’t surprised by it.
He closes his eyes.
“Or not, you can just leave me alone,” he mumbles, already half asleep. “Your choice.”
Giving for ended their interaction, he turns his back to Bruce and drifts again to sleep
***
Bruce isn’t in his apartment the next morning anymore, and he doesn’t come back during the next day or the next one.
Dick isn’t really shocked by it, but it is still surprisingly hurtful to know how easily Bruce can walk away.
He spends the first couple of days barely able to get out of bed, only managing to drag himself out of his bed to go open the door for the food delivery drivers he calls, even when he is not eating all he orders.
His hair is greasy, and half of his day is wasted in crying until he is too exhausted to do anything else.
In a way, it feels selfish to try to pretend that nothing happened. It feels wrong to act like everything is fine when nothing will ever be okay again.
Maybe that’s why he forgets to keep treating his ankle. Maybe that’s why he ignores the swelling in his leg and the knowledge that he should take antibiotics and keep an eye on his injury.
Maybe that’s why when he wakes up on the sixth day shivering in his bed and his head swimming in a haze he doesn’t try to call anyone for help, not even when he starts feeling like his leg is being lit up in fire and he starts having trouble breathing.
Why fight when all he has to do for the pain to disappear is just to close his eyes?
***
“You should never ignore an injury,” Dick chides Jason, who only rolls his eyes at him but lets him stitch his side and obediently takes the antibiotics Dick gives him.
He is starting to get too big for Dick’s scoldings to work, too cocky, too teenager-ish. It’s a normal part of growing up, but it’s dangerous in their line of work. Dick should have known Jason would start hiding injuries once he realized it got him benched by Bruce when he found out.
Dick sighs once he is finished treating his sulky teen. He hugs the kid, and squeezes him gently, mindful of his freshly treated side stab.
“You need to be more careful,” Dick can’t help but add.
Jay hugs him back, but it feels more reluctant.
“I wish you would stop worrying so much,” Jason answers, annoyed. “I’m not a kid anymore. I know what I’m doing.”
Dick hugs him a little tighter.
“I know that, Jay, but it’s my job to worry,” Dick tells him, a little softer. “If it makes you feel better, this doesn’t have anything to do with age, and it has everything to do with seeing someone I love hurting. I would take your wounds if I could, but because it’s not possible, I can only try to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Jason doesn’t have anything to say about it, except a simple dejected, “Is it too much to ask you not to tell B?”
Dick doesn’t roll his eyes in exasperation as he wants to, instead, he kisses the crowd of the kid’s head.
“What about this? I’ll talk to your father to let you stay with me this week,” he promises. He knows he shouldn’t keep Jason’s injuries from Bruce, it’s irresponsible, but if he does it right away, he runs the risk of Jason thinking he is not safe to talk to. “You give yourself that time to heal, and then I’ll keep quiet if you are careful during patrols, and let me keep an eye on your stab.”
Jason perks up.
“Really?” Jason asks, way too excited.
Dick laughs, reluctantly fond of the kid’s foolishness.
“Yeah, but you need to promise me to not try to hide another injury from me ever again,” he answers warmly.
Jason groans theatrically, but he doesn’t sound that upset. Dick knows Jason only doesn’t want Bruce to know because he worries in a stifling way with the kid.
“Deal,” the kid says at last with a pout once they end their hug.
***
Bruce does come back.
A day -or maybe two?- after the fever starts Bruce shakes him awake again. Dick blinks at him blearily from his bed. He’s blurry and Dick’s head is spinning, but he could recognize Bruce everywhere at any time.
Dick stares at him, but he only realizes Bruce is trying to talk to him until he gets close enough to him for Dick to see his long dark eyelashes casting shadows under his eyes. Everything sounds too distant to understand, so he just blinks at him and tries to stay awake when Bruce puts a hand on his forehead. Bruce’s own forehead is wrinkled in concern, but his eyes are the ones who capture Dick’s entire attention.
Bruce’s eyes are full of terror.
“Br’ce?” Dick manages to mumble. A small spark of worry managing to break from his numb state.
His blankets are thrown off him with urgency, and the next thing he knows, he is being lifted from his bed like he weighs nothing. Bruce wraps one arm behind his knees and the other around his back.
A bridal style carry that Dick would be overthinking if his head wasn’t trying its best to kill him.
Everything gets blurry then, so he closes his eyes and drifts away again, and it’s only the sensation of cold water splashing against his back that has him waking up again with a startle.
Dick starts shivering violently.
“...up,” Bruce is saying, voice trembling. Dick isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating or not. “Do not fall asleep.”
He sounds like he’s begging. Dick doesn’t like the sound in his ears.
Dick’s lungs rattle with every breath he takes, his leg hurts, and his world is spinning around him without control. Every single one of his joints aches.
But he can try to do this much.
“...’kay,” Dick mutters.
He isn’t exactly sure of what is going on, but Bruce is holding him so he is upright, and Dick has always hated disappointing him.
***
He survives.
Of course he does.
He has that much of bad luck.
***
“Why would you do such a foolish thing?” Alfred tells him the day he is lucid enough to maintain a conversation for more than five minutes, his voice hard. “What were you thinking?”
His parent's face is pale, tired beyond words with a haunted look in his eyes.
Dick watches him from his blankets in the guest room he was moved once he was out of danger. There’s still an IV in the back of his hand, and he knows it will stay at least for a couple of weeks more if Alfred and Bruce have it in their way.
Dick feels himself curling into himself in shame.
“I don’t know,” Dick mutters miserably, because there are no excuses. He was supposed to be better, to be the one whom Alfred didn’t have to worry about. “I wasn’t really thinking, I just- I don’t know what came into me.”
He wanted to disappear, to stop the pain that is still waiting in the back of his mind to be addressed. He doesn’t feel any better than before mentally, but he is not telling any of that to Alfred.
Alfred fuses over him, tucking him into his bed properly, putting a hand over his forehead, and checking if the medical equipment is correctly put. And then he just lets himself fall heavily in the chair beside him.
It makes Dick feel worse about himself.
“I’m really sorry,” Dick says, and he hates how small he sounds. He isn’t sure he has ever let Alfred hear and see him like this. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” he finishes lamely.
Alfred shakes his head.
“My dear boy,” Alfred says, voice breaking. “I must have done something wrong if you think you owe me an apology for worrying about me. Don’t you know I always worry about you? It’s what one does when you care.”
Dick's eyes fill with tears again. This time without his permission.
He looks up to the ceiling, trying to will them to disappear, but he doesn’t have any training on how to manage real overwhelming emotions. It’s so tempting to let himself break in front of the only parent he has left, and still so hard when he thinks how much Alfred is already carrying.
There is a hand reaching for his. Dick is selfish enough to let his hand be held like he is a kid again.
“I should be the one apologizing if I made you feel like you could not reach out to me,” Alfred mournfully tells him. Dick's breath catches. “My boy, you should know you are not alone, and you will never be while I’m alive. I will always be ready to catch you when you fall, but I need you to talk to me.”
Dick bites his tongue and stares harder at the ceiling, but it must be evident how close he is to cracking because Alfred stands up again and, very gently, envelops him in a soft hug.
Dick can’t help it. He sniffles, and then, very quietly, starts sobbing on his shoulder. It’s stupid how safe and hopeful it makes him feel.
“He is gone,” Dick can’t help but whimper. Alfred hugs him a little tighter. “Alfie- I was supposed to teach him to drive this month. We had a trip planned for Christmas and he was so excited to sign up for his school play this year. It’s not fair. ”
Jason was so small, and he was so excited about the future.
“He was just a kid,” he sobs, closing his eyes. “He was my kid. ”
Alfred only holds him.
“I know, I know, I know,” Alfred chants, and it doesn’t matter if he understands what Jason meant to Dick. He feels seen all the same.
***
A conversation does not fix everything, but it leaves Dick emotionally raw and tender enough to accept Alfred’s help.
He doesn’t think he is ready to talk about how affected he is anytime soon, but he doesn’t fight Alfred when asks him to stay at least a month in the Manor so he can monitor his condition. Dick doesn’t dare to ask if he means the sepsis he is recovering from, or his mental condition.
Bruce is another completely different beast.
“I just can’t understand,” Bruce says through gritted teeth a couple of days later. He looks just as tired as Alfred. “You always have been better than this. More logical, with better judgment and a good sense. You’ve never brushed off an injury. Why start now?”
Dick doesn’t bother to try to put a mask on with him.
He sighs tiredly.
“Don’t ask things you already know, B.” Dick tells him from where is sitting in his bed, propped up by pillows. “Because you understand, don’t you? You’ve been doing the same.”
Bruce looks uncomfortable now. He stays rooted in his place, though, and doesn’t run away like Dick expects him to.
“I’m not suicidal,” Bruce bluntly tells him. It startles Dick enough to leave him without words for a beat. “It’s different.”
Alfred hadn’t dared to open that can of worms, but Bruce’s lack of tact demolishes it.
It makes Dick snort with a sort of dark amusement. Or maybe that’s the meds talking.
He tilts his head. He knows his eyes are swollen because he still cries way too much during the day, but he doesn’t mind looking right at Bruce’s eyes like this. And Bruce doesn’t seem to mind looking back at him.
“I don’t think either of us is ready for this conversation,” Dick informs him, “And I don’t think either of us is going to get better soon, but for what is worth I already promised myself to avoid any permanent… conditions.”
Bruce doesn’t look comforted by Dick’s words. He’s quiet for a long moment. Dick can see him going through different things in his head while he discards them.
“I shouldn’t have let you go,” Bruce finally spits with a grimace. “And I shouldn’t have left.”
Dick blinks at him.
What?
“Just because I don’t love you doesn’t mean I should have hurt you and walked away all those times,” Bruce says.
Dick stares at him. Bruce stares right back.
It’s obvious right now that Bruce feels guilty for Dick almost dying, and that he is having a realization of how much he hurt Dick in the past. It’s an evident apology. Dick understands him enough.
It’s not Bruce's fault he is so bad with words and that Dick can’t seem to control his emotions at the moment.
To both Dick and Bruce’s horror, his eyes swell up in tears.
Bruce doesn’t love him, he thinks, and his brain seems to take it as an excuse to cry again.
“I only meant-” Bruce panics as Dick starts scrubbing aggressively his eyes, feeling humiliated.
“I know what you meant!” Dick sobs. He wants to die.
This would be the perfect moment for Bruce to walk away like he always does. Hell, Dick can tell he wants to as much as he does. But. He doesn’t.
It’s the worst moment to decide to stay after so many years of avoiding Dick.
“You’re sensitive,” Bruce helplessly says. And it doesn’t sound like he is talking about it in a temporarily way. It sounds like an observation, like when he said ‘You’re a weird kid’ and ‘You’re really good at lying’ . He says it like he is pointing out something about Dick that is an intrinsic part of him.
There is no way Bruce can tell that. Not this early. Dick is emotionally unstable. How could Bruce know?
It freaks Dick out.
“You’re so bad at this,” he laments between tears, his instincts kicking in and trying to make light of the situation. “Why are you so bad at this?”
Bruce doesn’t call him out. He just stands there like a fucking idiot, staring at him and looking lost.
Dick hates him.
“Do you want water?” Bruce asks him.
Dick buries his head between his arms.
“Stop talking, I’m being serious, B. Just stop talking.” Dick manages to tell him thickly. He has never felt so mortified and hurt at the same time in his life.
Bruce does listen to him and finally stops making it worse, but he doesn’t go away. He stays until Dick stops crying and offers him a fancy napkin to clean his face.
It’s the most humiliating experience he has ever lived through, but in a way is a reprieve.
A hurt heart is way easier to handle than a child's loss, after all.