This is going to be labeled completed for now because I'm not sure if I'll ever expand on it. Got the idea from Owl City's Plant Life.
Has it really been five years? Damn. The pain still felt fresh like it had all happened yesterday. But visiting here, the tombstone, somehow felt refreshing in a stinging, sort of cringing way. He would describe it (and had just that morning) as putting alcohol on a wound that never closed. It hurt, but it kept away infection.
Dick thought back to that day, the one he'll never forget. He was eating a light dinner when Damian came in from the bunker wearing his Robin garb, excluding the mask.
"Hey D, you're dressed up early. The sun hasn't even gone down yet."
Something was off. It was in the way the kid was standing, the way his hands were fidgeting, how his face was screwed up like he was trying to form words. Dick turned to face him fully. "Damian, what's wrong?"
A sharp intake of breath, "Drake is dead."
What did he say? "What?"
Damian started to yell. "I didn't do it though! I just found him in the chair like that!" He had backed up to the wall, hunched over defensively like he was expecting Dick to attack him.
Was this a joke? He automatically moved into the secret elevator that went down to the Bunker. Damian was freaking out. Damian almost never does that.
Dick could practically hear his own heartbeat as the elevator doors opened to the dark room, the only light coming from the computer monitors. He began to cross the space but stopped halfway after making out Tim slumped unnaturally in the computer chair that was turned slightly to the side. No no no no no no no...
He didn't need to get closer to check a pulse. Tim was a light sleeper, so if he had passed out at the computer he would have surely been woken by the sound of the elevator. Not that Tim ever fell asleep at the computer anymore.
Dick was on his knees now, his brain shutting down parts of his body in an attempt to process what was happening. It was all he could do to keep from expelling his dinner on the cement floor. The only thing that kept him from having a complete breakdown was the small voice beside him.
"What do we do?"
He shook the memory from his mind. It was a brain aneurysm. A brain aneurysm had killed Red Robin, the former Teen Wonder, Tim... Dick still couldn't figure out if it was better that he hadn't died in the field. Would it have hurt any less? Or maybe it just would have been a different kind of hurt that could have been mended by revenge.
"You've been out here for hours. You'll get sick if you stand out in this snow too much longer."
Dick turned to see Damian bundled in a overstuffed winter coat.
"Why do you just stare at it, anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, you don't even talk to it like some people do..." Damian grumbled out.
Dick smiled at him. He knew the kid came out here and talked to the grave sometimes. Similar to how Tim used to talk to Jason's glass case. "Well, I did a lot of the talking when he was here. Maybe now he just wants to talk to me."
Damian screwed up his face. "That doesn't make any sense."
"No, I guess not. Come on, let's go get a warm drink."
So Dick left the graveyard with his youngest brother, his open wound clean once again.