9840/Knightfall: The Return of Dick Grayson

Knightfall: The Return of Dick Grayson
Date of Scene:	30 October 2019
Location:	Library - Wayne Manor
Synopsis:	Dick explains he's not Batman and Batman disagrees.
Cast of Characters:	Nightwing, Batman
Tinyplot:	Knightfall

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Nightwing has posed:
Dick Grayson has made it home.

Bludhaven had needs. The onslaught from Blockbuster and the gangs he had brought to bear had nearly caused the city to topple. Not that anyone really knew about it. All of that was behind the scenes, in the dark city streets, in sweat and investigations and effort... and time.

So much time.

Time that meant Dick wasn't here. That he wasn't home.

But now he's in the hallway, and takes a long moment, using part of a wall, pressing his palms to the slightly cool wood paneling of the upstairs hallway leading to Bruce's sickroom. He can feel the sweat under his palms: a cold, clammy thing. The past wants to lurch forwards. Other family, laying out. He hadn't been there, either.

It takes a minute, but Dick doesn't rush himself. He slides his hands off the wall, leaving soft marks from the warmth of his hands, brushing his hands on his jeans once. Enough of that.

Ready, Dick enters the room quietly, easing the door shut behind him, and crossing towards the bed with his quiet confidence. He could move silently if he wanted, but he isn't. It isn't like he'd sneak up on Bruce anyway.

Batman has posed:
Nobody had really mentioned anything about the room Bruce has been convalescing in. He had been down in the Batcave's infirmary, but when he awoke from his coma, they moved him up to the master bedroom. The room itself has an odd mixture of Gilded Age opulence mixed with cutting edge technology, a four-poster bed surrounded by a cluster of medical machines not the least of which is a respirator and a heart monitor. The blackout curtains - there to help Bruce sleep during the day - remain drawn at all hours to plunge the room into a perpetual darkness that makes him barely visible on the bed save for the bluish glow put off by the monitors.

His eyes are watching the door already as it opens, faint and glittering pinpricks in the dark that follow Dick across the room. His head cannot turn, but his eyes strain to the side to keep the young man - maybe his first ever real friend - in his sights. One hand pulls a plastic breathing mask up to his face, drawing deep from the oxygen supply with a rasp before lowering it back down to his side.

"... Blockbuster?"

Nightwing has posed:
Blue eyes pull in the mechanical pieces to the room that aren't ordinarily in there. The rest of the room, though, those furnishings: familiar. It's the alien intruders with their beeps and humming, their leads piercing Bruce's flesh, even for their life-saving reasons, that are the odd things here. The glance took it all in with a flash; that was all that was needed, before all of the attention falls to the legendary man in the bed. Who has always been something rather different than a legend, to Dick.

It's that different thing that causes chilly sweat to continue, a nervousness from the stress. A child's reaction to seeing a guardian so injured. It hits a deeper, painful place. Even if the lid on that box is shut tight.

"Jail," Dick answers simply, his tone a mix of relief at the topic, and the tension caused by the severity that he can see. He's not a fool, and he's not in denial: he can see what's in front of him, and beyond that: what that means.

"After his hospital stay ends. He may win the race out of a bed, if you're not careful." It's not funny, not really. There's a worry in the joke.

Batman has posed:
"Good."

A single word, and Bruce seems to sag back into the bed with relief. That slight, almost imperceptible change in his body language enough to show that the Bludhaven situation had indeed been weighing on him. His eyes drift away from him, turning back to the canopy of the bed he lies in. Tracing the pattern of drapery, he has stared up at a million, million times. There's no clear reaction to the joke, not even that telltale twitch at the corner of his mouth that used to show when a jibe had found its mark.

"Doubtful. You're you, and I'm ... me."

There's a pause, his breath audibly rattles in his throat and he brings the oxygen mask up once more to take a deep breath. A small beep on the monitor warns of something for a moment before it relaxes once again, the man in the bed closing his eyes for a second and searching out his center.

"Gotham needs Batman," he says finally, the tone as flat and undramatic as if he were giving the time.

Nightwing has posed:
Dick comes over to the visitor chair, and sinks into it, facing Bruce's bed. He didn't want to stand over him. But somehow seated isn't 'better': it makes him feel restless.

There's an energy, that wants to somehow show that it's alive. Dick's very alive, strong, and hearty, in a place that feels like pain and decline. The scent of medicine and disinfectant makes him feel awkwardly healthy. And the guilt that comes with being able to form a strong fist. And the shame that causes the other hand to wrap over that fist slowly, out of Bruce's eye line, at the bed's side. The feeling of trimmed fingernails digging into palm helps center off of that strange guilt.

"It does. If you're looking for an argument, I'm not going to offer one. Gotham has always needed Batman," Dick replies. He isn't quiet, there's strength there, that willpower that both men have in spades. It helps that Bruce shut his eyes. There's less of a staring contest. Still, Dick would prefer them open. The level of injury that Bruce is suffering is hard to take in.

"But it can settle for Nightwing and company, for now," Dick says, a promise in the tone.

Batman has posed:
"It can't," comes Bruce's answer almost immediately as Dick finishes speaking, a sudden sense of urgency that wasn't there before, "Thought it was just a title. That I could put it on - "

There's another awkward, drawn-out pause as he lifts the oxygen mask to take a rasping breath. The forced flow of air compensating for lungs still to week to weak to sustain him on their own.

"- that I could put on someone else. Provide some sort of continuity. But that City is a snarling beast. It doesn't respond to intent. You need to know it. Feel it. In your bones. Through the soles of your shoes."

He lifts the oxygen mask again but seems to think better of it and drops it to his side. His brow knits with a look of grim determination. His eyes open once more, still staring up at the drapery above.

"Do you know why I want it to be you? Why it has to be?"

Nightwing has posed:
Dick's palm hurts badly. He uncurls the fist, and roughly rubs the palm against his other wrist and fingers. His muscular forearms are bulky with the tension in them. He doesn't like this discussion, and drops his head to look down between his forearms at the floor. His shoes. And tangles of various cords related to Bruce's health. There's nowhere to look that isn't glaringly informing him of the truth.

"It--" Dick starts to parry, about 'Batman' not being a title, but he lapses out of it, as Bruce explains. Dick is quiet, even after the question is asked of him, and keeps his eyes down. Maybe if he doesn't reply, he doesn't have to hear the answer that he suspect he already knows.

"Tell me," Dick says, though. There's an edge of anger in it, suppressed. Rebellion, but it's only rebellion against Bruce admitting he's hurt. Dick prefers it when Bruce is invincible.

Batman has posed:
Bruce takes a moment, regarding Dick as he struggles with the reality of their situation and the weight of what he knows is coming. The long silence might suggest Bruce himself struggles with it, though none of that plays out upon his face. Even doped up with painkillers he is a picture of stoicism. He learned it from the best, after all.

Just like everything else.

"Because you don't want it," he explains at last, "Of all of us, you're the only one who ever ... moved on. Saw life for what was in it, not what was missing."

He succumbs once more to the oxygen mask, holding it up to his face but never letting his eyes leave Dick's.

"Because you won't let it do to you what it did to me," he continues, "When the time comes you can be ... whole."

Nightwing has posed:
These explanations (lectures, another young Bat would call them), are something Dick has grown very used to over the years. There's a comfort in them, of being talked to with a sort of harshly realistic wisdom. Dick has never taken it personally, and he doesn't now. Still, he releases a slow, thick breath through his nose as Bruce explains that Dick doesn't want the job.

No kidding. Dick doesn't; he wants Bruce to be Batman.

The breath felt like it came out of his throat more than his lungs, as if he wasn't quite breathing deeply enough. Or he's just breathing in time with the breath machine: it's quite coaxing, and it's hard to not breathe in time with it. He makes an effort to clear his throat and breathe on his own, as if doing so would get Bruce to do the same.

"If I end up whole, that's because of you, too. I didn't teach myself that."

Batman has posed:
The grim reality of Bruce Wayne is that he can be intensely caring, yet when such affection is returned it has as much obvious impact on him as waves upon rock. Certainly, it wears at him in the geographical sense of time, but in the here and now he always seems unmoved. That is his response to Dick's words - an almost automatic receipt and filing of information, placed with an impeccable eye for order in a cavernous and nigh-endless palace of memory.

"This isn't just for Gotham. They need you, too. Barbara is performing well - better than I ever would have expected after what happened with Stockholm - but this isn't a weight she can carry. At least not alone."

He lets this sink in for a moment, eyes closing once more as though the energy spent simply talking has sapped something vital from him.

"I always thought Robin brought light to the dark," he muses, words a little more slurred than they had been a moment before, "Maybe ... Damian ... other way 'round."

Bruce's hands fumble for the oxygen mask, his arm seeming impossibly weak as he heaves what would be an effortless weight as though it were a led barbell. He takes another breath.

Nightwing has posed:
There's silence from Dick, now, and as Bruce closes his eyes, Dick also looks down, again. The broken eye contact breaks other things, too, though nothing that can't heal. The medicated rambling of Bruce is as hard to handle as the physical injuries. Worse, maybe.

Dick chews on the sense of loss and worry like a palatable thing. He doesn't lean in to help with the fumble; he won't stomp on Bruce's dignity in that way, not unless it's clearly necessary.

"I'll continue to bring light," Dick says, though his voice feels weirdly raw. He ignores it, though. "In whichever role is necessary." Because Dick will give what needs to be given for the family.

Batman has posed:
"Batman."

The word seems to slip out of Bruce unbidden, his eyes still closed like he is waking from a dream. But as they open, that chemical fog seems to lift from them, and clarity takes hold. His hand is weak, it struggles to shake off the breathing mask that rests on it before sending it clattering to the floor.

"You have ... to be ... Batman."

He begins to move. It isn't the precise motion of a man who has trained for years to have total control over himself. They are sloppy, as though whatever connects his mind to his body has been partly severed. Indeed, looking at his medical records that is roughly true. But he moves now, pushing himself up just a few inches but enough to slump back against the head of the bed.

"Go ... the Armory. Say ... your name."

Then he sags once more, sinking back into the pillows. The strength that momentarily inhabited him leaves just as quickly. His breathing is steady, the beat of his heart on the monitor suggesting sleep as the space between each beep grows longer.

Nightwing has posed:
Dick can't manage any words for a while. He bends to pick up the lost breathing mask. The strength clearly gone from the older man gives Dick permission, in some way, to help now. He adjusts a tangle of lead out from around one of Bruce's hands, and returns the breathing mask in place.

"I'll keep it warm for you. Until you're ready for it again," Dick says, to the sleeping Bruce, standing over his fallen friend. It feels like he's standing over a grave for just an instant, and he shakes the horrible chill off. He can't think that way, he won't let the darkness in.

For himself, and for the rest of the family.

"Just heal. For all of us." Dick doesn't reach out, but he does brush his hand on the sheet. After a long time standing there, listening to the beeps, Dick finally leaves - though, much like many a visit from a Bat, nobody witnesses him go.