Keep Long Vigils by the Silent Dust: Part I
By Amphitrite II

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Summary: A large part of Dick dies when he sees Damian's battered body. Things aren't the same after that. But it's when he claims hearing Damian's voice and seeing him in his dreams that the rest of the his family really starts to worry. Set after Batman Incorporated #8 and diverges from canon following that.

Notes: I'm not usually the type of fan who denies character deaths. When executed skillfully, they can be a sign of storytelling prowess even as they're completely heartbreaking. But Damian's death left this awful feeling in my gut—not sadness, but disgust. It was essentially the brutal killing of a child to further Batman's angst, which I found gross and completely unfair to the character, who they had worked so hard to build up, and who had charmed so many fans along his journey. I started writing this to cope. Dark and gritty has its place, but the superhero genre is about hope, about pursuing justice and order in a chaotic world. And this? Despite the torment I put Dick through, this is a tale of hope.

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The days that follow Damian's stormy funeral hover bleak and faint in Dick's memory. It is a small, private affair—just him, Bruce, Alfred, Tim, Barbara, Stephanie, and Cassandra. Jason comes, too, but he doesn't show his face, though they all know he is skulking around in the wet shrubbery. To his embarrassment, Dick is the only one who visibly cries, though he sees Stephanie wipe her eyes and knows that Bruce's eyes remain puffy and red throughout the unbearable ceremony.

Tim disappears after the funeral. One after another, Barbara, Stephanie, and Cassandra slink off not much later, solemn and awkward. As Dick falls to his knees crying before Damian's newly filled grave, he sees Bruce and Jason talking out of the corner of his eye. Alfred lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, but this is one wound that Alfred's tender care cannot heal. (It doesn't help that he can feel Alfred's hand tremble as they stare at the newly erected headstone, right beside Thomas and Martha Wayne's.)

Dick dreams in technicolor reds and greens and yellows, the vibrant shades rendering his nightmares more vivid, electrifying. He sees Damian's dead body over and over again. Sometimes he watches him die, helpless. Sometimes he runs in at the last minute and catches him as he falls. Most times, it's just like it happened: Dick simply wakes up and Damian is dead, as if the world jolted in his absence and Damian slipped through the cracks.

In his cruel dreams, the blood-soaked tunic is warm in his hands as he weeps, the wound gaping obscenely up at him. Sometimes, he stares down at the dead body and thinks that this cannot possibly be Damian, because Damian cannot possibly be dead. Sometimes, there are ripples in his dreams, like static. There are times when he thinks someone is watching him from the shadows, hovering over him. It never speaks, never threatens him, simply watching as he cries. He wonders if it pities him, or if it relishes his pain.

Alfred whips up all of their favorite foods with a fervent enthusiasm bordering on manic, delivering cakes and cookies and soups and sandwiches and steaks and lasagna (and in Dick's case, even cereal) to them individually and spoiling them terribly. Dick knows this is Alfred's way of coping, so he tries his best to consume all the treats, but the food never stays down. All too often he finds himself kneeling before the toilet, head buried in his hands as he waits for the tremors to subside, fresh tears mingling with the dried ones crusted on his face.

He skips patrol for a week, spending his hours staring at ceilings and doing push-ups and catching sleep between the nightmares. When he returns to Gotham's streets, it all seems too loud. Too dark. He punches criminals too hard and dodges too slowly. At one point he runs into Bruce on a rooftop. They don't speak, simply keeping silent vigil over the city lights and the murky sea beyond the ports. The original Dynamic Duo. There will always be something special unspoken between them, and in his haze of guilt and regret, Dick knows that Bruce, too, is drowning in grief. He knows that Batman needs the presence of Robin to ground him. And even if it's been years since he last donned the red-and-green costume, he will always be Bruce's Robin.

Later, they fly across the Gotham skyline together, perfectly in sync despite how long it has been since they have worked together. The car ride is silent, but Bruce mutters, "Thank you," almost inaudibly just as Dick steps out into the cave.

There is a new case next to Jason's, and the sight of it fills Dick with fury. The blood and gore have been washed off of Damian's costume, and under the spotlight, the fabric is vibrant and pristine. It feels like sacrilege—like rendering the gruesome reality of Damian's death into a clean little bubble, a shrine to a boy whose spirit and impact on those around him could never be contained in such a small, quaint space.

Dick thinks wildly that Damian would have hated it. He would have hated all of this—the mourning, the grief, the unrestrained emotion. He would scoff impatiently and cross his arms and say something scornful like, "Get over it already, Grayson," with a disdainful expression uncannily identical to Bruce's. He would expect more of Dick, maybe throw in a jibe about being superior to him. Of course he would, the little snot.

"So far I'd say you've been my favorite partner. We were the best, Richard. No matter what anyone thinks."

Trembling with anguished rage, Dick punches the case. The glass shatters around his unforgiving fist, the shards singing as they crash to the cold ground.

It's after two weeks of fitful sleep and hazy wakefulness that he first hears the ghostly whisper as he leaps off a gargoyle atop a bank in the East End, at a harsh angle that leads to a harder, more painful landing than his skill ordinarily conjures.

"Getting sloppy, Grayson," the unmistakable—but faint, as if the sound were traveling from galaxies away—voice reprimands.

Dick cannot believe he is so far gone that he's hallucinating. Even worse, he can't stop himself from responding: "Little D?" he calls out, the affectionately teasing nickname tasting like guilt and barbed wire on his tongue.

There is no response. Of course there isn't. Dick curses and clambers to his feet unsteadily, loathing himself for the vicious streak of hope that lashed through his heart for those few precious seconds. Like a blinding flash of light in a dark place, it burns, the whiplash leaving white spots in the corner of his vision. He doesn't know if he has any tears left to cry.

"We were the best, Richard."

That night, he dreams in slow-motion, watching Talia's assassin-clone strike Damian in the heart with that blood-smeared blade, over and over and over again.

The second time he hears Damian's voice is after a shouting match with Bruce over his recklessness in a fight with Two-Face.

"Bruce, I've been fighting Two-Face since I was twelve years old—I can handle myself just fine!" he had yelled.

Bruce had countered with a sharp jab to the chest, in the center of the Nightwing emblem, and growled, "You took an unnecessary risk. Your right side was wide open—any of Dent's henchmen could have taken you down!"

It was insulting to be treated like he was new to the superhero gig. Bruce knew better than to patronize him, and Dick knew better than to take anything a grieving Bruce said to heart. But neither of them had been in their right minds for weeks now, and Dick hadn't bothered to hold back. Old wounds and old resentments had come spilling out, regardless of whether or not Dick had gotten over them years ago. It had felt good to shout, to funnel all his frustration toward something—someone—but Bruce gave as good as he got, and Dick had stormed away from the conversation feeling even emptier than he had before, knowing Bruce well enough to understand that his hostility stemmed not from a lack of faith but rather a profusion of fear.

Without really thinking about it, Dick holes himself up in Damian's room. In the days immediately after Talia's rampage, the wound had been too fresh, and he had reasoned that Damian wouldn't have liked for him to invade his personal space. But now, he is wracked with the desperate need to be closer to his lost little brother, to confront the fact that Damian is gone and, more heartbreakingly important, that he is not coming back.

He grinds his palms against his eyes, drained of the energy he spent yelling at Bruce.

"When will it end?" he groans to himself, knowing that he is better than this, yet unable to stop the relentless barrage of despair when it washes upon him. He is so tired.

If only he had been there for Damian. If only he hadn't allowed himself to be knocked out so easily. If only he had planned their attack better. If only he had been better.

But he hadn't been, and he will carry the weight of that regret for the rest of his life.

"Grayson."

Lost in his thoughts, Dick almost misses the whisper, a nearly inaudible sound ringing with a strange desperation. He whips his head up, eyes flickering around the room as his senses kick into alert mode.

"Grayson. Grayson. Grayson."

"What?" he calls back, frustrated and desolate and clearly losing it.

There is no response, and Dick's heart sinks inexplicably. But then the small voice says: "You can hear me?"

"Yes, of course I can hear you; you're a voice in my head—what kind of question is that?" Dick replies, although he cannot articulate why he's bothering. Anything to take his mind off of his thoughts, he guesses—even if it's imaginary voices. He has officially reached a new low. Might as well commit himself to Arkham now.

"What?" the voice says, a little louder and clearer now. "I'm not a voice in your head, idiot."

Even the voices in his head are in denial, Dick thinks glumly. At least it seems to be in-character.

"Sure you aren't," he replies wearily.

"I'm serious, you moron," the voice responds. "Grayson, it's me."

"Yeah, that's helpful," Dick quips, although there's no mistaking the voice or the tone for anyone else.

"Grayson, please," the voice says, and something about the urgency laced in the words makes Dick sit straight up. A Damian that was a figment of his imagination would never say please.

"What is it?" he says cautiously just as the door opens. The voice falls silent as the shadow of Bruce's tall figure falls across the floor, landing close to where Dick sits against Damian's bed.

"Who are you talking to?" Bruce asks, and as he moves closer, Dick wonders how he missed those bags under his eyes earlier. He feels bad, but he has no way of articulating it.

"I…" Dick says uncertainly, not so sure himself. "Nobody."

Bruce gives him a funny look before letting it go. "I apologize for earlier," he says stiffly. "I realize this isn't easy for you, either."

Dick shrugs. "Wasn't going to hold it against you," he says, forcing levity into his voice that he doesn't feel. "But for the record, I'm sorry, too."

Smoothing out the corner of the bedspread, Bruce nods his acceptance and offers, "Tim is downstairs. You should come have breakfast with us."

Dick has been taking his meals in his room, and he assumes that Bruce has been eating down in the cave. The thought of sitting through breakfast, acting as though things had gone back to the way they were before Damian had shown up in their lives, is nearly unbearable, and yet the undisguised hope in Bruce's eyes cannot be denied. And he feels guilty for not having spoken to Tim since the funeral.

"Of course," he says.

Breakfast is quiet, but Dick finds himself grateful for the company, and for the brief respite from his thoughts.

After the meal, Dick and Tim stay at the table after Bruce retreats to his room. Outside, the sun, buried behind heavy gray clouds, strains to reach Gotham.

"How are you really doing, Dick?" Tim asks, as if he couldn't tell by just looking at him. Dick is perfectly aware that he looks like a pathetic mess, but he can't bring himself to care.

"Not so great," he admits anyway, scrubbing his hands through his hair.

"It's not your fault, you know," Tim says, because he knows him too well. Dick bets that he had spoken the exact same words to Bruce earlier.

"No," he says, smiling humorlessly, "it really is. He was so good at making us forget how young he was, but in the end, he was just a kid. And I wasn't there for him when he needed it the most."

Dick knows that Tim doesn't protest because he understands—after all, he has lost countless loved ones over the past few years, and though some have returned to him, Dick remembers how Tim had retreated further into himself with each death, until he stopped bouncing back. He also remembers Tim, mad with grief, trying desperately to reclone Superboy. It's what compels his next words:

"Did you ever hear Conner or your dad trying to talk to you?"

Tim frowns at him. "Dick, are you hallucinating?"

"I don't know," Dick says. "Maybe. I thought I heard Damian one night when I was on patrol, and then again today when I was up in his room."

There's pity in Tim's eyes now, and Dick hates to see it. "When was the last time you slept?" Dick opens his mouth to answer, but Tim interrupts him. "And I mean really slept, not dozing off in between the nightmares."

Shrugging, Dick replies honestly, "I stopped keeping track."

"I should let you go to bed now," Tim says as Dick rubs his eyes. Tim has a point, but that conversation earlier didn't feel like a hallucination…

"Are you sticking around?"

"Yeah," Tim says, though he doesn't sound too confident. "I just… I'm sorry, I just needed some time."

"I know," Dick says, unable to imagine how Tim felt about it all. When they weren't trying to kill each other, he and Damian had spent all their time together sniping at one another. Tim had made no secret of the fact that he had never trusted Damian, and Damian's heated jealousy had been just as evident. Their confrontations had always frustrated and infuriated Dick, but he couldn't bring himself to care anymore.

With a grimace, Tim answers his unspoken question: "I wish things had been better between us," he admits. "And I wish I had had the chance to tell him that I had grown to respect him, despite everything."

Dick nods. There are so many things he wishes that he had told Damian when he had the chance, but at least he is certain that Damian knew how much he meant to Dick.

"No matter what anyone thinks."

He returns to Damian's room and sprawls out on his bed. There's something comforting in lying where Damian once lay. After twenty awful minutes of staring at the ceiling as unpleasant memories swim before his eyes, his exhaustion catches up with him, and he falls into a turbulent slumber.

The Heretic is killing Damian again, impaling him brutally with his sword while his other arm flares up in flames. Everything is stark red and yellow, and as Damian gasps his last breath, his hood disguises his expression of shock in shadow.

Dick is screaming, trapped where his body lies unconscious on the other side of the room, when he hears Damian shout his name. But the voice doesn't come from the body that the Heretic flings to the ground. A small, indistinct figure materializes next to his prostrate body and shakes him, shouting "Grayson! Shut up! Get a hold of yourself!"

This is new. Dick immediately obeys, undeniably delighted about this change in routine. When Damian speaks to him in these dreams, it's only ever been to blame him for abandoning him and for not being there when he needed him. And he's always been costumed and drenched in blood, his wounds gaping and taunting Dick for his failure and neglect. But this Damian is whole and in his civvies, jeans and an unzipped hoodie.

"Can you see me?" Damian asks. Dick doesn't know what to make of it, so he nods. "Thank god," Damian says. "I've been trying to reach you for weeks."

"What?" Dick says stupidly.

"I tried everything, even following you out on patrol," Damian says. "But I tire so easily, and I lacked the energy to make another connection for a long time after that."

"What are you talking about?" Dick says, because while this is much better than being yelled at, it does not make nearly as much sense.

Damian kneels beside him, gripping his shoulders. "It's me, Grayson. It's Damian. I'm not dead. Or at least…I don't think I am. Not completely."

Dick sits up so fast he almost loses his balance. "What?!"

"I'm not sure either," Damian admits, and Dick is briefly thrown off by his uncertainty. "I don't even know what I am right now. I lost touch with my body back there—" he gestures at the gruesome scene behind them, "—and I've been trying to get your attention ever since. I can see what's going on in the actual world, though it takes a lot of effort, and it's nearly impossible to interact with anything. Dreams are easier, but I haven't been able to materialize until today."

"You've been watching me," Dick realizes. Damian nods.

"I tried to reach out to you, but you were…occupied."

Dick doesn't know how he feels about the idea of Damian observing him crying and screaming over his death, so he tries a different tack.

"I fell asleep in your bed," Dick says. "Do you think that made a difference?"

"Yes," Damian replies. "I am energized when you think about me, so the tactile connection with my things must amplify the connection."

"Damian, this sounds crazy," Dick says. "Tell me the truth, are you just a figment of my desperate imagination and wishful thinking?"

"No," Damian insists, shaking him again. "It's really me, I swear."

"Prove it," Dick says. "Tell me something you've never told me before. Something I don't know about you."

Damian huffs in annoyance. "Of all the ridiculous…" But his eyebrows furrow as he thinks. "I believe Ravager would be a worthy ally and would not mind fighting alongside her again."

"Rava—Rose Wilson?" Dick says in surprise. That was not what he had expected. He definitely wouldn't have come up with that himself.

"Yes," Damian says impatiently. "Have I proven myself now?"

"I guess," Dick says, though it's hard to push his skepticism aside even as hope threatens to burst him. "So if you're not dead," he says slowly, "then there must be some way to bring you back." The scene around them begins to shift, the colors churning, evolving into something more palatable. Damian looks a little more solid, the fuzzy edges of his figure talking on a particular sharpness.

"Yes, but what?"

"I don't know," Dick says. "My first thought is the Lazarus Pit, but…"

Damian shudders visibly. "Perhaps," he says warily. "If you are hesitant due to what happened with Father's clone last time…and Todd…I would be open to any other options."

Dick laughs hollowly. "You say that as if there are a thousand different ways to bring someone back from the dead."

"I am merely…concerned…that I am not currently in my body, and to revive a soulless shell seems ill-advised."

Dick curses. "I'll think on it. Ask around. Maybe Raven…"

Damian nods grimly but doesn't say anything.

"Have you reached Bruce like this?"

"No, I—" Damian hesitates for a second before continuing, "Father is… I can't explain it. He's not you."

"So far I'd say you've been my favorite partner."

Dick thinks maybe he understands. What he and Damian had—have?—is something special, something a little like he and Bruce had going in the old days, before Dick grew up and realized Bruce wasn't without his flaws. Dick's had a lot of partners over the years, worked and teamed up with dozens of superheroes, but Damian has a special place in his heart. With Damian, he hadn't just been content with being a good leader or a good partner—he had striven to be a good role model, someone who could actually sway Damian from his spiteful, violent ways and change him for the better.

Without another thought, he grabs Damian in a hug.

His arms go through Damian's body, despite its opaqueness, and he makes a startled noise. Damian scoffs, but when Dick steadies himself and looks at him, he imagines he can see a hint of frustrated apology in his eyes.

"I can't," Damian says, which doesn't really explain anything. "I'm fading. You must be waking up."

The reminder that this is a dream chills him. "No, don't go!" Dick pleads. He wants more than anything just to grab Damian and never let go.

"I'll talk to you again soon, Grayson," Damian says, sounding more confident than he looks, as the landscape warps around them and the world seems to tremble beneath their feet. "Don't forget me."

"As if I could ever forget you," Dick says as Damian disappears. He hopes the words reached him in time.

Upon waking, he finds the room still dark and the world still bleak, but deep within him, a glimmer of hope has taken hold.