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‘I vividly remember when I first met you, Grayson.
You were loud, tall, and vibrant. You laughed when I threatened you. Despite everything I’d attempted to do to Drake. When it was over, you turned quiet and soft. I had assumed you meant surrender. I mistook an olive branch for weakness.
When you gave me Robin, I believed it meant that I was better than Drake. I was a fool.
Despite my mistakes and cruelty, you told me I was kind. Never had I wanted to kill you more. I thought you were calling me weak, but I was wrong again. You knew it could be a strength.
It took time to realize that kindness was how you defined yourself and others in the world.
Sometimes I wonder if you had lied out of pity, or empty sympathy. But I’ve been trained to know you better than that.
I wish I had had the time to ask what you truly saw in me. I hope I can reflect that moving on.
I hope that in your final moments, you had few regrets, but I’m not that foolish. There was always something weighing on you, for as long as I’ve known you.
But you never had to be Atlas, Grayson. Despite what Father told you.
You were a good teacher. A good brother. You wanted me to be better, and I will be. I can be kind without being Atlas. I hope that would make you proud.
I’m writing this after my own revival. When I learned of your death, I demanded the prank end. Childish. I know. But truly, I did not believe it. A part of me still refuses.
The part that does believe has half a mind to wade into the graveyard to dig you out. To ask Mother to fix it, like she did for Todd.
But it’s not something you would want. I will respect your wishes.
I think of our patrols often. We were a good team. I hear you took my death hard. It wasn’t your fault. If only you could hear me say it. We were a good team, Grayson. I just miscalculated.
I cornered Todd. I forced advice out of him. He finally told me that the best way to honor you is to remember. I plan on that.
I will always be your Robin, Richard.
Damian W. Al Ghul’
It’s a brisk July morning, and it’s snowing in Gotham City. It’s been snowing for exactly eight days, three hours, and twenty-seven seconds — the type of storm that has Gothamites scrambling to exit their apartment buildings at floor two instead of one. The snow is piling up, and New Jersey is less than equipped to handle it.
You’d think the standard Gothamite kit of gas masks, Scarecrow antidote, and flares would take artificial weather patterns into account, but apparently not. The drifts in Newtown are so large that they’ve been picking straws for tunnel-digging duty all week.
For a game of chance, Dick Grayson has had the worst luck of anyone on Earth — drawing the short straw all eight days. Apparently, this statistical anomaly is nothing short of a normal Tuesday for his family, and Tim’s dead stare is enough to shut down any objection he might think to voice.
Cue ten-hour shifts consisting of digging, cracking his back, and digging again.
Dick supposes it’s the least he can do. If the others get some amusement from watching him unbury entrances across the city like an ant in its hill, so be it. It’s the first dent of many, trying to make up for Spyral. From the look of things, he’ll be paying for that for a long time. It’s only fair.
He fucked up.
He runs his hand along the library’s windowsill, taking in the feeling of chilled stone on his fingertips. If he focuses on the chill, maybe it’ll distract from the feelings burning in his throat.
Dick can count on one hand the words Tim has spoken to him since his full return. The others have taken a more direct approach, a comment from Steph, a shoulder check from Jason, or just a flat-out glare from both. Maybe he’s a bit thankful that Cass isn’t here. Dick’s not sure he could handle the probable disappointed look she’d throw his way. Dick doesn’t bring it up to B. What’s there to say? They’re rightfully angry, and they need an outlet.
Perhaps Alfred would comment that Dick is not an ‘acceptable’ outlet, which is bullshit. He’s the root of the problem. There’s no need for a middleman.
He’s curled up in the library, assuming Jason’s usual hiding spot. The quiet drone of the manor’s heaters and aging wood is a nice contrast to the ear-grating crunch of snow.
Since Jason isn’t actually at the manor, it feels like an acceptable place to get away from it all. He wants nothing more than to run back to his apartment, but he’s still needed here.
Once this is over with, he’ll turn tail and run. Bludhaven is a bit different now. New people. Old memories. A city stripped to its foundation before trying to rise from the ashes. It’s a place that needs help more than ever, but he still accepted B’s urgent summons the moment it came through. He always does.
A part of him will always feel sick that he always comes when he’s called.
Always.
Dick hums, his forehead knocking lightly against the frost-covered glass. Kicking himself for regretting coming here. Gothamites needed immediate help. How shitty of him to even consider turning his back. He has a responsibility. A duty. He chose this.
As he’s been learning, it’s never something you can quit.
‘you never had to be Atlas, Grayson.’
The library’s drone of heat emanating from the vents extinguishes, plunging the room into dead silence — defined by the sound of his breathing and the creak of aged bookshelves. Dick supposes it’s pleasant to have a break, even if it feels undeserved.
After eight days of nonstop work, Alfred and B have mandated a rest day. Dick won’t admit that it was necessary, but if he drew the short straw again, he might’ve thrown himself into the harbor. His shoulders burn with such fire that it might ignite the shovel if he tried to pick it up again.
He tries to shift in his seat, reminded by the aching exhaustion as it crawls its way through his back and up his neck. He’s definitely had better days.
“Grayson.”
Dick looks up, affixing his smile near instantaneously. “Dami.”
The smile, first propped up out of habit, twists into something more genuine. It reaches his eyes, exuding warmth instead of the flickering guilt.
Damian is the only sibling who forgave him. Dick likes to say that it’s unwarranted, but the darkest parts of him relish it. His brother loves him; he doesn’t hate him. It feels great.
“You want to sit?” He pats the seat beside him, to which Damian scoffs, but assumes anyway.
His younger brother has hardly changed from what Dick remembered. He wasn’t like everyone else; he wasn’t around for Dick’s death. He’d already been gone.
Dick would never, ever say it out loud; sometimes, he wished he had died. It was the worst in Spyral, plagued by the notion that instead of playing spy, he would be with his parents, Wally, Damian. Every person he’d ever failed to save. Maybe it would’ve been nice.
Damian still seems like the same violent, stubborn, and secretly thoughtful kid Dick had come to love so fiercely. The ‘secretly’ is more of a debate. Damian is intense with his care and loyalty, even if he sometimes doubts it himself. He holds himself responsible for it all, holds his mistakes too closely to his chest. But at the end of the day, they’re mistakes and nothing more. They’re entirely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Dick wishes he could hug the boy and tell him he was kind and sweet and caring; beyond deserving of everyone’s love and affection. The kid might kick him, though, and he’s not sure he can take another bruise right now.
One thing he’s learned is that trying to pry answers out of Damian is near-impossible. It’s clear he wants to say something, but Dick knows he’ll reveal what exactly that is in his own time. Dick settles for another blinding smile. The kind that usually has strangers doing a double-take.
His family usually just rolled their eyes. Recently, they’ve taken to leaving his immediate vicinity.
Its effect is not entirely lost on Damian, who scoffs. “Tt, I require you to take me outside.”
Dick pauses, settling for a questioning hum. It wasn’t unusual for Damian to linger when he was at the manor. Perhaps it’s still a leftover from Dick’s fierce “You will stay at my side at all times.” That he’d forced onto his newly-recruited Robin.
The silence settles, leaving Damian undeterred. His eyes scour Dick’s face for an answer. Dick leaves it blank for a few moments further.
It’s obvious Damian still thinks of him as his Batman. B said as much just last week. A lasting impact had been the goal, but it had unintended consequences.
Damian’s death being one of them. Tim’s lingering frustration being another. Dick can’t say he was in the wrong for what he did, Bruce would’ve done the same thing. He did do the same thing what seems like a lifetime ago.
He doesn’t regret it.
Tim hates him for that.
Dick was being Batman. He was being Bruce. He pretends to not feel his gut twist at the mere thought.
Their youngest brother needed Robin. There’s never been any doubt in his mind about it. Bruce’s loss was felt by the whole family, and Dick based his decision on the facts at hand. There was no way he could’ve verified Tim’s claims at the time, it had felt like false hope.
Still, Dick had been unnecessarily cruel about it. That, he regrets. He thought Tim and he understood Robin the same way. Dick hadn’t considered that Robin meant something else to his little brother. That conversation is on his long list of to-dos.
“Father has declared a rest day, but I cannot miss a day of training.” The boy is just shy of having his feet brush against the ground. The sight of him lightly swinging his legs as he sits beside him lets loose a pang in Dick’s chest. Damian is just a child.
He needed Robin, but he was just a child. He was Robin, and he had died wearing the colors.
No more dead Robins. Just another promise Dick couldn’t keep. Two brothers had died.
Three. His traitorous head murmurs, but it doesn’t apply. Dick hadn’t died. His heart had stopped, sure, but he was brought back by Luthor himself. There hadn’t been any harm done, all in all.
They needed to disarm the bomb. Stopping his heart was the only way to do it. He came right back, two minutes later. It was fine because it was the only choice. The right choice.
“What training would you need outside? Isn’t the cave—”
“—It isn’t suitable.”
“It isn’t?”
“I’ve never liked the cold. I’m unprepared when it comes to winter survival.”
That sounds highly unlikely. Nanda Parbat is by no means warm, and Talia has never been one to skip out on anything when it comes to Damian’s training. “I don’t think I’m quite getting what you want to train.”
“Perhaps ice skating?” His sentence twists in a calculated question. Even though Damian may want to appear as if this is a sudden idea, Dick can easily tell this has been on the boy’s mind for a while. Perhaps all week long.
Dick knows better than to let a word of that slip. “I’m surprised you aren’t already Olympic level.”
“It’s not a common skill.”
“Fair. And I guess when you live in a city with guys like Mr. Freeze—” he pauses to look out the window again. Still snowing. Hopefully, these clouds will disperse by next week. “I guess perfecting other methods of transportation is important?”
“You see? I require a teacher.” His chest puffs out, if only he knew how cute he looks when he gets haughty.
“I can take you, Dami. But I won’t lie, ice skating isn’t really my forte.”
“You’re an acrobat. I’ve seen you perform the Nargonyy with adequate precision.”
Dick scoffs. “That’s because I spent more time in the air than on the ground. There were a lot of flips involved, you know.” He laughs, waving a hand. “I prefer to fly, not walk.”
“So you won’t take me?”
“I will, I’m just giving you a fair warning. I can teach you the basics.”
“Acceptable.” Damian hums before standing up. “I’ll be ready to go shortly.”
“Oh– right now?”
“When else?”
“Fair point, let me grab my stuff. B’s probably got some skates we can raid.”
An hour later, the two park an official Wayne snowmobile in the depths of snow-buried Gotham City, and are trudging their way to Gotham’s outdoor rink with skates hung over their shoulders. There aren’t many good places to park a snowmobile after all.
Gotham’s landscape has proven to be more hostile than usual. Snow has been piled up past doorways and against windows, burying anything unfortunate enough in its path. Tunnels, some constructed by the bats themselves, twist out from below, coming out on top to a series of footpaths. That, the bats had little part in.
It’s Gothamites themselves that line the top-most layer in tarps, wood scraps, and metal sheets for traction. Designating safe trails and unstable zones throughout the city. It's a surprising amount of teamwork from Gotham’s inhabitants.
Mr. Freeze was handled by day one, hour three, but the impacts are still being felt. The JLA concluded that there would be no eternal winter— more like a two-week one. Worse things have happened in July, Dick supposes.
The two make their way down into the depths, eyeing an army of snowmen being built by a gaggle of snow-day schoolchildren.
“Attack!” A little girl in bright red snowgear yells, and the air fills with snow projectiles as children hiding in trenches fire from all sides. It’s unclear if there are dedicated teams, but children go down everywhere. One even pulls out red food coloring to really sell his snow-caked demise.
“Terrible throws. They couldn’t hit an elephant if they tried,” Damian mutters, but he pulls up his coat hood for protection nonetheless.
“You could join them, show them what’s up?”
The boy sniffs, taking the lead in his fluffy green coat. “It would blow my cover.”
Main Street has turned into a gathering area. Vehicles substituted for hand-pulled sleds of supplies, and a small mass of people cheering each other on as a ragged-looking family emerges from a newly built tunnel.
The snow banks haven’t entirely cleared the streetlights, but they’re accessible enough that children are scaling them like makeshift jungle gyms, squealing in glee.
A small folding table is set up on a nearby bank, handing out food, water, coats, and blasting Christmas music. ‘Rockin’ around~ The Christmas Tree~’ A piece of cardboard acting as a sign stands up on the table, handwritten and reading ‘Please bring anything you can donate, we’ll be here till 7!’
As the two walk past, a lean man in a fuzzy beanie props up a pop-up canopy, the group cheering as it’s moved over the table, protecting them from the still falling snow. Dick sends a silent text to Alfred with the location. By 7, huh? That’s plenty of time to make a delivery.
Seeing Gothamites in any other mood than dreary is shocking enough; finding them slow dancing in what used to be an intersection is another thing entirely. It’s not just them, either; an igloo is being constructed on 27th, and Damian has to be restrained from stealing away someone's bounding Husky.
The ice skating idea is sure to be a bust; the snow is just too high, but Dick can’t bring himself to voice the thought. He’s not sure he can handle another disappointment right now.
As they round the final bend, both brothers can’t help but gawk. The entire rink has been dug out, a mountain of snow piled beside it. Hockey-jersey-clad teenagers are still at it with shovels, apparently having dug out the massive pit.
Gothamites big and small are rocketing down the unburied rink, one even managing a small leap before spinning off in unbalanced terror.
There’s a group of five-ish boys working on a staircase as Dick and Damian draw closer. One of the closest stands, wiping the sweat from his brow and cracking his back. Upon seeing them, he grins. “Didn’t think it’d be open?”
“Not at all.” Damian replies. Dick represses the urge to roll his eyes; of course, it had crossed his mind. Dick wonders what his backup plan would’ve been.
The teen laughs. “Yeah, well, we’ve been here five days. We have six teams, making good progress, yeah? It might be the off-season, but the boys want to hold a tournament before this all goes away. It’s tomorrow, if you guys want to show up. Benny’s carving out bleachers over there.”
Dick smiles, “We might take you up on that.”
“Have a good skate!” The teen returns to his task, hucking snow over his shoulder.
Damian assesses the area. “Doing this task by hand sounds miserable.”
“And they did it anyway.”
The two lace up near the boards, surrounded by the chatter of families and scraping blades. Dick tugs on his skates, reveling in the simplicity. Just a few months ago, this would have felt like an impossibility. But here he is, about to ice skate with his baby brother.
He stands. “Okay, so! Let’s break the ice on how to get into the rink.”
Damian is sitting on a bank a small distance away, tying off his skates before he joins Dick at the entrance to the rink. His green eyes scan the area, almost like he’s waiting for a bomb to drop at any moment. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Grayson. I’m just going to step inside; it isn’t anything worth instructing.”
Dick rolls back his shoulders, taking the comment a bit on the nose. Slipping into old habits is easier said than done. “I thought I was supposed to be the teacher here? No. Make sure to not step on the board part, face the right as you step, and grab the railing. No— you’re not above grabbing it. I’m trying to spare you from falling on your ass too much.”
Damian huffs, but follows instructions, avoiding the entrance plate into the rink, stepping sideways onto the ice. He wobbles for a fraction of a second before he grabs onto the railing. Scowling all the while. “There.”
“Now, sorry, little bat, but we’re going to start small. March forward, test your traction.”
“It’s ice, Grayson. I imagine there won’t be any traction.”
“I can tell you how it feels to get punched all day, but you never actually know until you get punched.”
“I do know how it feels to be punched.”
“That you do, and soon you’ll know how ice feels. Go ahead.”
Damian steps forward, arms lightly outstretched as he follows the instruction. To Dick’s surprise, he doesn’t fall and marches to the end of the rink. The other skaters are kind enough to avoid him.
“Nice!” Dick calls, stepping onto the ice himself. He’s no expert, but Cass and he had gone quite a bit after she arrived at the manor. His little sister was trying a lot of things at the time. But eventually, she settled on ballet. Something Dick definitely couldn’t help with, and his days of ice skating trickled away.
He pushes off, following after Damian on the ice. He angles his blade long enough to drift to a stop beside the boy. “You’ve got some ice-stremely good potential. How’s it feel?”
“Unnatural.”
“Perfect. I can show you the next step, but you can go back to marching at any time.”
“Show me, Grayson.”
Dick obliges, swinging out with arms splayed at his sides. “Okay, next thing, baby bat, is gliding. This is where rhythm starts to come into play. There’s a flow, just like running. One step– two step– glide.” He plays off his wobble as showmanship, even if the genuine misstep leaves his head buzzing. Stepping twice before being carried forward by the ice. He rounds to a stop, catching himself on the railing before angling his head back.
Damian is still holding onto the wall, peering at him with the same intensity he displays on patrol. This is probably just as important to the boy. He really does want to be the best at everything. Dick can’t fault him there.
“A test of balance.” The shorter comments, green eyes scouring the ice as if glaring at it, would force it to give up its secrets.
“Exactly.”
With no further hesitation, Damian follows. Marching before coming into a glide with two feet below him. He runs into his first problem when he carries too much momentum, and when his skates start to drift apart from each other, he blinks, surprised. He overcorrects, losing his center of balance before his feet go out from under him, and he lands flat on his back with a soft grunt.
Dick is immediately by his side. “Whoa! You hit your head at all, Dami?”
“Of course not.” Damian’s venomous voice mutters; he sits up, staring at the offending blades.
“I’ll give you five points for commitment, and an extra two for the drama. That was good. We’re just laying the groundwork here. Literally.”
His brother lets out a small hiss.
“It’s a good chance to learn to get up properly. Here.” Dick sits down beside him. He moves over to his knees, placing his hands on the ice in front of him, before he lifts up one leg, posts his hand, and pushes himself back to standing. Damian is right behind him, still shaking off ice shavings. He’s flushed, clearly embarrassed by the fall.
“You did good. Everyone falls. And before you say ‘I am not everyone’, you have two knives attached to your feet on ice. You’re basically relearning how to walk.” He places a hand on Damian’s shoulder, helping steady him as they stand up on the ice.
Damian glares, but the corner of his mouth twitches. “I understand.”
“Good, we can try again— This time, if your feet drift apart, pull them in so your toes point in an upside down V. Or.. just an A shape, really. Focus on your toes and heels. Don’t worry about the in-between right now.”
Damian tries again, gliding before skittering to a stop. His eyes gleaming with victory.
“Look at that! You’re a natural, you sure you’ve never done this?”
“Do not force your insecurities on me. What’s the next step?”
“Fair enough. Final step, Dami. This time, do what you just did, but repeat the pattern. Remember that this is rhythm, you can’t half-commit to it.”
“I never half-commit.”
“That’s right, you over-commit. It’ll only land you in the ice again, baby bat.” Dick glides ahead of the boy, twisting to get a good look at him. Dick’s legs already ache from the effort of pretending this is easy. His balance is muscle memory, but his muscle ability is another thing. Maybe he should’ve confronted Tim about the straws.
Damian’s jaw sets, eyes firmly set on his goal, the other side of the rink. He pushes off with a definite wobble, stepping and gliding. The pattern repeats, and Damian adjusts, newborn fawn shifting into a few-days-old-fawn.
Everything smooths out, and finally, Damian seems to be realizing that he can work with the ice, not against it. He passes Dick with triumph in his eyes, gaining speed with every glide.
Then, over-commitment.
His skate catches on a shallow indent, hurling the boy forward as he slams into the ice. The fall is quick and harsh, ground coming up to meet his shoulder. Before Dick can catch up— he’s already pushing himself to his feet. Ice shavings coating his coat and face.
Dick skids to a stop beside him, alarmed. Of course, the kid bounces back before he can even offer a hand. He gets close, brushing off Damian’s sleeves with a light touch. “Shit, Dami. You alright?”
“I miscalculated.” His normal hiss has quieted, and his expected fury has been replaced with a sullen consideration.
Dick lets out a breathy laugh. “You bit off more than you could chew.”
The response is rigid determination. “I’ll go again.”
“That’s the spirit.”
They repeat the pattern. Again. And again. The falls grow fewer, the rhythm steadier. The tightness in Dick’s chest loosens by a degree or two. Minutes blur into an hour, light banter and insults bridging the space between them. Dick demonstrates and Damian mimics— with varying results. By the end, his brother’s cheeks are flushed and his breath fogs heavily in the cold air, but his glides have purpose now. There’s technique in the way he turns and intention with every stride.
If he keeps with it, he could probably surpass Dick’s skill level in a matter of weeks. It’s not unexpected. His baby brother is talented at everything he does. He has B’s curiosity and Talia’s intensity. A lethal combination, considering B’s already intense.
Dick is waiting by the entrance, content to ‘assess his technique’ as Damian had put it. “Hey, how about we take a breather?” His grin comes easy, practiced, but it’s real enough. Damian looks content, and that’s all Dick needs out of the day. Anything to ignore the prickling curling over his neck and the headache thrumming behind his eyes. It’s a nice day out, there’s no need to think about his own bullshit.
He offers Damian a water bottle, which he promptly seizes. Damian downs half of it, chest heaving. “One more round.”
“Nope, you jinxed it.”
“Excuse you?”
“I mean it, we never say ‘one more’ anything. That’s when it all goes wrong.”
“You’re fooling yourself.”
“Last time I said ‘oh just ten more minutes of patrol,’ I got shot.”
“You let your guard down. That’s the difference between us. I—“
“You never let your guard down, yeah, yeah. But seriously, c’mon, Dami, I’ll buy us hot cocoa. There’s a nice lady selling it by the exit.”
Damian scowls, but it quickly turns to clear resignation. Damian mutters, stepping off the ice with only the faintest wobble.
They unlace their skates on the nearest bench, steam still rising off them in the cold. Dick stretches, cracking his back in three places instead of the usual five— while Damian glares at the now-empty water bottle.
By the time they’re settling onto a newly carved snow-bleacher, both are nursing steaming cups of hot cocoa. The noise of skates and laughter faded just enough for Damian to speak again.
“Grayson, I’ve been lying to you.”
“You have?”
Damian nods once, squeezing balled fists before evening out. With gritted teeth and an unbreaking stare, Damian reaches into his side pocket and pulls out an envelope. It’s a little crumpled now, with all the falling, but relatively intact. “I’ve been considering how to deliver this to you. This feels easiest.”
“Oh I— Okay.” Dick takes the envelope, Damian’s intensity doesn’t waver.
“Well? Are you going to open it?”
Richard Grayson,
This is a formal request to allow me to stay with you for the winter holidays. My official school break begins on December 16th and ends on January 2nd. Give me your answer at your earliest convenience. Within the next two days.
Damian W. Al Ghul
“You could’ve just asked. I’m a phone call away.”
“I wanted to frame this as an invitation, Grayson. Pennyworth says invitations are usually written down and sent through mail. I took half of his advice.”
“Is it an invitation if you’re asking me to invite you?”
Damian frowns. “That did not cross my mind.”
“Don’t fret, baby bat,” Dick laughs, before silence settles. It’s not unexpected to have Damian ask such a thing. But part of Dick feels ready to jump out of his skin. Damian wants the brother he had before, the one he’s seeing today. Dick’s not sure how long he could keep that up.
“God, you’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?” He laughs again, running his fingers over the words.
Damian replies in a hesitant nod. “Father has already given me his approval. I still await yours, Grayson.”
It’s desperate in its quietness, his low voice poised in almost a question. As if he’s already expecting rejection.
“Of course the answer is yes, Dami.” Because Dick will never be one to turn down his baby brother.
“Good.” Damian, after a moment, hesitantly leans against him. Dick doesn’t comment on it, but cards a hand through his brother’s hair.
The two fall into a comfortable silence. Sipping their drinks and watching the skaters laugh and dance over the ice.
As expected, Dick is the one to break through the fog. “You know, I got your letter.”
“The one you’re currently holding? I applaud your observational skills.”
“No. The other one.”
Damian tenses with the comment, pressing into Dick further. “Pennyworth saved it.” He curdles, emotions hard to untangle from the short remark.
“Based on the small burn marks, he acted pretty quick.” Dick had found it the first time he’d been forced to sleep over at the manor. It wasn’t hard to miss among the small memorial of cards, dead flowers and letters. A burned letter with Damian’s distinct handwriting was sure to be a fascinating read. And it was.
Dick had set it back down on the pile with tears in his eyes.
“It wasn’t meant for him.”
“I don’t think he read it. It was still sealed. Just in my room, with the other stuff.” He hadn’t even begun to dissect the other gifts. Cards from Barbara, the Titans, Clark and Alfred. Flowers from Steph. An old bracelet he’d made for Cass, now returned. A small photograph collection from Tim. And an ancient Robin patch from Jason. Nothing from Bruce, which was expected. Dick had never been dead, after all.
“Sappy old sod,” Damian grits. “But you read it?”
“I did. I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to.”
The boy shifts just enough to be able to look him in the eye. “I addressed it to you. You had a right to read it.”
“You never thought I would.”
“Correct.” Just as quickly, his eyes fall away. “But I have to confess, your death never felt permanent.”
“You knew I hadn’t died?”
“No.” Damian denies the notion harshly. “But death is inconsistent. Grandfather, Todd, Brown, Father, myself. The list never ends. Death is never a constant, I’ve found.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“But it’s not,” the boy insists. “So I hoped for your return.”
“Dami, sometimes that hope will only lead you on.” Death should be something constant, permanent. Affording to think of it as anything less will only hurt everyone involved.
“You said the same thing to Drake, but he was right. And so was I.”
Dick hums, brushing the snow from Damian’s head. “I guess you were.”
“I was correct about your return. That part is simple.” His next breath comes shorter. “But my behavior did not align with that conclusion.”
He huffs, annoyed. “Which is illogical.”
“I don’t think I’m following.”
“I reacted as though I’d placed faith in something uncertain.” Damian continues, “grief complicated the assessment. Which it shouldn’t have. I had already justified your survival as a valid possibility.”
He pushes forward sharply. “But I still felt—” He cuts himself off, jaw locking. “—as if I’d been wrong. And I wasn’t. You sitting here proves I wasn’t. So it’s— frustrating that I doubted myself.”
Dick doesn’t interrupt. Letting the boy continue on his own.
Damian exhales again, low and irritated. “I don’t appreciate when my emotions contradict my reasoning. It makes it seem as though my conclusions were compromised.”
It hangs in the air. Compromised. His baby brother thinks himself compromised for mourning. It can’t stand.
“You weren’t compromised,” Dick argues. “You were dealing with something bigger than any plan you could make.”
Damian only bristles.
“Look,” Dick continues, quieter, “you weren’t wrong to hope. A lot of people in this family have come back, you’re right, but you weren’t guaranteed anything either. Sometimes people don’t come back. Even when we want them to. You mourning was the right thing to do.”
His brother’s eyes flick toward him, questioning.
“That doesn’t make the hope stupid,” Dick adds. “But you can’t treat it like a strategy. Hope isn’t a plan. It’s just… something that happens when you care about someone.”
“I prefer things I can control,” Damian finally mutters.
“Yeah,” Dick says softly. “Me too.” Loss of control follows him like another one of his ghosts.
Damian looks away again, eyes flitting over the snowy landscape. “My assessment was logical,” he insists, but it’s quieter now, less certain.
“And I’m not taking that from you,” Dick says. “Just… don’t punish yourself for the part that wasn’t logic.”
Damian doesn’t respond, but the tension in his shoulders loosens, barely. A tiny, reluctant acceptance tucked under all that stubbornness.
“Dames?”
At the light prodding, Damian just shifts against his brother. Unanswering.
“I want you to know that I’m proud of you,” Dick says, voice low. “I’ve always been proud of you.”
Damian’s cheeks flush, and he holds onto his brother a little tighter.
“You’re good, Dami. You’re kind, caring. More than you give yourself credit for. And I love you no matter what you do. I mean that.”
“..Thank you.”
The simple words land with weight.
They sit together in the strange July chill, the silence settling warm instead of brittle.
Dick lets his shoulders ease, the cold air feeling fresh in his lungs rather than suffocating. It isn’t everything, but it’s something.
For the first time in a year, it’s like he can finally breathe.