Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The manor had been quiet before.

After missions gone wrong.

After Jason died the first time.

After Alfred died.

But nothing ever made it feel this hollow.

This silence wasn’t emptiness.

It was the absence of him.

It had been 337 days since Dick Grayson died.

Eleven months since they had buried their brightest light

Dick Grayson, The first robin, Nightwing, Eldest ward of Bruce Wayne, The first protege of batman. the golden boy, their sunshine.

Eleven months since he lost the fight none of them could see. Not truly. Not deeply enough to stop it.

Eleven months since he died, finally at peace.

Not in battle. Not to a bullet or blade.

Not in the way that heroes die — in a blaze of glory or under the weight of a collapsing building.

No. Dick’s death had come like the quiet snap of a thread. Silent. Final. The kind of death you feel before you ever see it, because something in the world just shifts.

The Talon—the monster the Court buried in his brain—had taken everything. It had whispered poison into his thoughts for years, sometimes softly, sometimes like thunder.

There were self-inflicted scars hidden beneath his suit, voices that laughed in his mind when he smiled for the team, and a slow, brutal war inside him that none of them had been able to win with him.

Until, one day, it just… stopped. And so did Dick.

And seven days later, a little robin arrived.

A real one. With bright blue eyes and a cocky tilt of its head.

It chirped loudly every morning, tapping on windows until someone let it in.

It perched on shoulders during breakfast. Sang during training.

Sometimes it followed them on patrol, invisible to others.

It had been 330 days since they stopped questioning it.

Since they'd started whispering “hey, Dick,” whenever the bird swooped in.

And 300 days since they accepted what none of them dared say aloud.

That little bird was Dick.

Or at least what was left of him.

Today was different.

Jason hadn’t slept in his safehouse since the funeral.

He had taken up semi-permanent residence in the manor, sometimes crashing on the couch in the den, sometimes the floor of Tim’s room.

Grief turned them into magnets, clinging in weird, dysfunctional clusters.

But this morning…

Something felt wrong.

Jason felt it the moment he woke up.

He sat upright in bed, chest tight, eyes scanning the empty room as if something had been taken from it.

No chirping outside his window.

No talon-feathered flash swooping through the curtains.

No song echoing from the hall.

The manor was too still.

He padded down the hallway in sweats and bare feet.

Damian stood near the stairs, brows pinched.

Tim was in the kitchen with a cold cup of coffee, eyes darting to the glass doors every few seconds.

Cass stood motionless in the corner, head tilted, listening.

Steph sat on the steps, hugging her knees, expression unreadable.

Bruce… Bruce was standing by the grandfather clock with his fists clenched, jaw set.

He knew. They all did.

The bird was gone.

“He didn’t come back,” Damian said softly, not looking at anyone.

Jason swallowed the lump in his throat. “He never missed a day.”

Cass nodded once. “It’s been hours.”

They all stood there like statues, anchored by the weight of absence.

Cass crossed the room and touched Jason’s hand.

Jason didn’t even realize he was crying until she did.

The silence cracked suddenly.

A scream.

The robin’s voice.

Not chirping.

Not humming.

Not singing.

But crying.

Desperate. Broken. Like its small heart was being crushed. The sound echoed through the halls, bouncing off old wooden walls and deep into their bones.

Jason jumped to his feet.

“What the hell—?”

Cass was already moving.

Bruce didn’t speak, just followed.

They found it in the main hall. The robin.

It was flailing on the marble floor, wings twitching violently, one foot curled oddly, body jerking like it was seizing. The cries were so human it made Tim cover his ears and Steph back away with tears spilling out.

Damian knelt first. “Stop—shhh, stop,” he whispered. “You’re okay. You’re—”

He reached out, and the robin flapped away violently, crashing against a wall and falling. More screams. Blood. Tiny drops of it against the white tile.

Jason crouched beside Damian. “It’s... hurting. Something’s wrong.”

“What the hell is happening?” Steph breathed. “It’s never done this. Never...”

The bird let out one final cry—a sound Jason would never forget—and then went still.

Gone.

Again.

Steph covered her mouth. Tim turned away. Damian’s lips trembled, and Cass gripped his arm to anchor him.

Jason stared at the tiny still body, the snow beginning to fall gently over it.

He finally spoke, voice low and hoarse. “What does it mean?”

No one answered.

Until Damian.

He dropped to his knees, brushing snow from the bird’s wing.

“He’s gone,” he said quietly. “This time… for real.”

And the snow fell. Quiet. Cold.

No chirping. No songs.

Just silence.

The final echo of the robin’s last cry.

Chapter Text

It had been exactly three days since the robin died.

The garden where it fell was still untouched, a thin layer of snow softening its edges but never erasing the quiet grief that hung over the manor. No one had the heart to move the small body. Alfred had laid flowers in the snow, and beside them, a single candle that burned through frost and wind alike.

Inside the house, the silence clung like dust. Laughter, once easily shared, now sat awkwardly in rooms like unwelcome visitors. The sound of cutlery scraping plates, of footsteps in the hallway...each seemed too loud, too forced, too careful.

No one mentioned the bird.

But all of them felt the absence.

They pretended. They went on with drills, with patrols, with late-night watch shifts. They barely slept, and when they did, their dreams were haunted by blue eyes and soft, pleading chirps.

Three days.

That night’s patrol should have been routine—evacuating orphanages along Gotham’s East End after a fire set by Riddler’s latest maniacal game. Smoke and flame licked at the windows, red against the black sky.

Bruce moved with practiced precision, entering rooms, guiding children out through side doors. His eyes scanned every corner, trained to catch danger—but something else caught him.

A small figure.

Half-conscious, covered in soot and ash, slumped near the staircase. Bruce’s gloved hands slid beneath the boy’s shoulders, lifting him gently. The child’s messy black hair curled at the edges, soft despite the dirt and smoke. His face was streaked with soot, but the skin underneath glowed with an otherworldly fairness.

The boy stirred, eyelids fluttering. His eyes—

Blue.

Hazy, ocean-deep blue.

For a heartbeat, Bruce’s breath stopped. He felt the world pause, the fire’s roar fading into silence, the screams of the other children becoming a distant echo.

He knew there were still other children in nearby rooms, he should save them, he should be quick, but he could not move...

The eyes.

The eyes he had seen before.

Not in nightmares. Not in memories.

In life.

"Dick...? " Bruce’s voice cracked, raw and unused.

The boy’s gaze met his for the briefest second before it slipped away, lashes falling closed as unconsciousness claimed him again.

Bruce’s arms tightened involuntarily around the child’s slight frame. He stared, frozen, unable to move. The same soft blue. The same softness at the corners of the eyes. The same trusting look even with his own life at sake. 

His chest tightened with a grief so fierce it almost doubled him over.

His son, his first born, his life, his light, back in his arms...

Just like the day he first saw him, this boy in his arms barely looked a day older than when he saw 8 year old Dick Grayson, reaching out for his falling mohers extended hand, desperate, frightened.

Barely looked a muscle different than when that same boy was bought to Wayne manor, his wide blue eyes looking around the grand walls with awe and the purest innocence. 

Bruce could stay like this forever, lost in blissful memories, with his son back in his arms.

Only Tim’s sharp shout yanked him back to reality. 

"Batman! Buildings burning! We need you out here immediately!"

The roar of collapsing beams, the smoke thickening around the alley, the frantic cries of volunteers—everything crashed back into place.

Bruce inhaled sharply. His jaw clenched. The boy remained limp in his arms as he rose, eyes still locked onto the small face.

"Dick? " he whispered again, barely breathing.

But the fire, the children, the mission— they called louder.

He stepped back, glancing once more at the boy’s peaceful, soot-stained face before handing him over to paramedics.

The image burned into him.

That night, Batman fought fires and pulled children from crumbling walls. But his heart battled something far more dangerous— hope.

A dangerous, forbidden hope.

Back at the manor, after the mission, Bruce sat alone in the Batcave’s dim light. The others waited, unaware of the storm building inside him. He held his head in his hands, eyes closed, trying to steady his breath.

But the blue lingered behind his eyelids.

The boy.

The eyes.

The possibility.

His first thought— impossible. 

Rebirth, incarnations, all of it were stories, or miracles. And miracles don't just happen to normal people...

His second thought— what if?

But Dick was anything but a normal human Being, every time he fought the greatest threats with no magic, but sheer willpower. Every time he walked into dangers humans were not meant to survive, he would always walk out breathing, alive. 

As if the gods themselves had vowed to protect him until he can spread the good around him.

Dick could challenge the impossible, and he would always stand victorious... He was the impossible.

And somewhere deep inside, beneath years of guilt and restraint, something in Bruce Wayne — a father who thought he had lost his son forever — whispered softly...

Maybe he’s not gone. A different body but the same soul.

The house, so numb these last days, felt like it inhaled.

Someone Something was coming. Something new. Something dangerous.

Something that could heal or destroy them all.