Chapter Text
The funeral has a big turnout. There’s tons of heroes, all out of costume, who stand grimly around the memorial that’s been constructed in a quiet field outside of the city. Since the fire was huge, there was really no body to bury, and the bones left aren’t put at the memorial. Everyone acts as if they are anyway, and Jason shows up for only a few brief moments before he has to leave. He can’t stand the sight of unfamiliar faces weeping, can’t stand the way Bruce’s shoulders are drawn up as if he’s in agony. So Jason goes to the funeral, but he doesn’t stay. His goodbyes are said afterwards.
Afterwards, where the remains actually rest in an immaculate wooden box under a headstone constructed in Bruce’s own personal graveyard. The funeral was for everyone who knew Nightwing, but this private ceremony with Bruce, Tim, Alfred, Jason, Cass, and Barbara is for the people who knew him beyond the mask. The family.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” Damian shrieks at the headstone, aiming a well-placed kick into the center where the words ‘Beloved son, brother, and friend’ are carved. It’s childish and full of misplaced anger, but Jason can understand where it’s coming from completely. He almost wants to do the same thing, because how could Dick have died such a mundane, useless death?
It wasn’t useless, a voice whispers in the back of Jason’s mind, but he shoves the voice away and focuses a sharp glare on the tombstone, hoping Dick can feel the look from the grave. Not even a body left, which is the real kicker because if there was, there was the possibility that Dick could’ve used the Lazarus Pit. Jason mentally flips off all of fate, before turning his attention to the broken remnants of the family.
Barbara has her head bowed and her fingers dug into the grips of her chair, blood bleeding where she’s caught her lower lip in her teeth. Jason had vaguely heard something about how Barbara and Dick’s on-again-off-again relationship was in an on-again phase, and he thinks the way her eyes shimmer with unshed, angry tears might prove it. Though even when they were in their off-again phase, they were still all moony-eyed over each other.
Cass stands beside Babs, frozen stock still, and not a single movement gives away what she’s thinking. Jason can guess anyway, because he knows she loved Dick’s bigger-than-life persona and the way Dick was one of the very few people who said exactly what he felt. He doesn’t know if Cass has ever really lost someone so close—he knows she lost a few short-lived friendships in the Bludhaven disaster—but now definitely isn’t the time to ask.
Bruce is watching Damian with a weary, defeated expression, and the hand Alfred has on his shoulder seems like it’s holding him up from collapsing. Dick had become independent from Bruce with his own persona, but Bruce was still obviously wracked with guilt over the fact that he’d brought the kid into the lifestyle. Alfred, for his part, isn’t bothering to wipe the tears leaking down his face as he grieves like he’s the only normal, functional person left.
Tim has one hand over his face and is taking deep, shuddering breaths, and it’s to Tim that Jason finally makes his way over to, slapping a hand on the back of Tim’s neck while the boy tries not to break down. For all his analytical, brilliant mind, Jason can see Tim’s having a hard time dealing with the fact that his hero is gone and turned to dust. It hasn’t even been a week and the dust’s already settled into the ground, as if the world just expects them to move on after something like this.
Jason observes all of this with a distant, odd feeling, as if he’s no longer inside his own body. He can feel dark anger simmering just beneath the surface, but he’s too far away for it to take hold of him yet. All he knows is that the one person who knew how to comfort each and every member of the bat family is no longer there to comfort them, and isn’t it ironic that that’s the person they’re grieving?
Jason squeezes the back of Tim’s neck lightly, then picks his way over the tombstone. He crouches on the balls of his feet, ignoring the harsh look Damian’s shooting his way, then reaches out to brush his fingers over the dates. Dick hadn’t even hit twenty-eight.
“You screwed up this time, Golden Boy,” Jason murmurs, grimacing. “Left us all here alone without you. That’s pretty fucked up for someone who’s usually concerned about other people’s feelings.”
There’s no answer but the wind, and Jason reaches out to tap a fist against the rough, cold stone.
“You’re lucky you have me to clean up after you.”
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He robbed Ra’s’ secret stash a couple of years ago, grabbing whatever he could get his hands on because you never knew when the random shit Ra’s kept stored would be useful. It hadn’t been heavily guarded, and he’d managed to be in and out with four or five freaky looking boxes before anyone even noticed he was there. When he’d opened them, he’d found out why the creepy warehouse wasn’t too guarded; though all the artifacts had interesting powers, they were labelled ‘Broken’ and pretty much tossed away like useless junk.
All the better for Jason, who’s now sliding what looks like a trashy watch onto his wrist. There are a few buttons you can use to adjust the time and it looks pretty basic, but the archaic writing it’s taken Jason a year to crack says it’s anything but. It’s some interdimensional, time-bending watch from who the fuck knows where, and it’s what Jason’s going to use to stop Dick Grayson from dying. It should be easy—the instructions say all you have to do is punch what universe and time you want into the watch, and the watch will bring you there. You’ll be standing exactly where you were when you set the watch, and you can do whatever you want in the space of an hour. After an hour, you’re brought back to your own time and universe where you can see what effects your actions had.
Jason ignores the niggling voice in his mind that sounds suspiciously like Dick, which is telling him there’s probably a reason the watch was labelled broken. He doesn’t give a shit if the world’s broken, he’s going to bring Dick home no matter what it takes.
Standing in front of the scattered ashes where he last saw Dick, he has to take a deep breath. It only gets stuck in his throat for a second as he remembers the desperation in Dick’s eyes, damp strands of hair clinging to his face as he yells ‘There’s still a kid in there!’ Then he pushes the thought away, because that’s not a reality that’s going to exist soon. Jason will stop the fire before it happens, and Dick won’t sacrifice himself to save one little blind girl.
He starts punching the numbers into the watch. Six days ago, at ten in the morning, in universe number zero—he doesn’t know what the instructions mean by other universes, but zero is the default for the universe of whoever’s using the watch, and he has no desire to check into other worlds. When he finishes, he waits, and for a moment nothing happens. It’s like a punch to the gut; what if ‘Broken’ meant it didn’t work at all, and now he’s stuck in a world without the ray of sunshine that’s Dick’s smile?
But then, things begin to distort, and Jason experiences the weirdest feeling of being in two places at once. Before the houses around him fade away, the ashes in front of him begin to morph into an orphanage, and the world as he knows it disappears.