a/n: Okay, so I've mentioned once or twice that all of these ficlets are spawning from a twenty day challenge between me and my roommate. This is the part where you guys suffer for that very reason. My roommate doesn't know how to deal with all of the Damian feels I'm throwing at her, and she tried to find a prompt that would make it impossible for me to write any angst. Doesn't that sound like a challenge to you guys?

Prepare for the angst, you guys.

6. Rainbow Sparkles

Damian was curled up on his bed, still in his dress pants and button down shirt, despite the fact that the ceremony had ended long ago. He had sneaked into his bedroom halfway through the reception—though it hadn't been hard to slip away unnoticed in all the commotion—because he had begun to feel too claustrophobic. The living room was undoubtedly still crowded with his brother's friends and family, despite the late hour; Damian could hear the alternations between raucous laughter and loud sobs as they recounted old stories.

Damian had no inclination to listen to it. It was a pointless exercise anyway. It wouldn't bring his brother back.

The young man lay back across his pillows, closing his eyes for the first time in days. Sleep refused to come, but his eyes itched with tiredness, putting him on edge. He tried to slip into meditation, to find some comfortable middle ground between wakefulness and sleep. When that failed, Damian reached up and pressed his palms against his eyelids, hard. Splotches of color burst across the wall of blackness, and all Damian could think of was how the spectrum of colors would fit into the rainbow.

There was a rainbow stretching across the horizon the day Grayson had died. Fucking typical.

Irritated, Damian rolled to his side and curled in on himself. The tired itch of his eyes magnified to an insistent burn, and Damian felt a stab of shame as he sniffled. He was acting like a child, and the only man that had ever embraced that sort of behavior wasn't even here to witness it. The thought formed a lump in Damian's throat.

The rainbow was what had alerted him of it. The stupid, pointless rainbow. It had been so clear, so large, and Damian new that his former mentor took a stupid amount of pleasure in seeing such meaningless sights. He had been napping for a couple of hours, and Damian knew that he'd grouse about missing such a sight if he somehow found that he'd slept through it later. Damian had approached the couch and given Grayson a harsh nudge, then a slightly rougher push, and then a frantic shake. The man couldn't be woken.

An aneurysm, the family would be informed later. It was an aneurysm that had finally gotten the best of Dick Grayson. Undetectable. Unpredictable. Quick. Painless.

Grayson had been fifty two years old, and Bruce Wayne had outlived one of his children yet again.

It was funny, Damian thought to himself as he sobbed quietly into his pillow, in the kind of way that wasn't funny at all. With the amount of danger in their lives, it was funny that it was Dick's own body that had been his downfall. Another round of laughter echoed from downstairs, and it felt like a slap in the face.

Bruce had retreated into his study almost immediately after the ceremony, carrying a variety of liquor bottles. No one made an attempt to retrieve him. Grayson wouldn't have approved, especially with Bruce's advancing age. Of course, maybe that was the whole point. Grayson wasn't there to stop him.

It was the worst kind of loss. There was no villain to blame, no revenge to seek. No hope that Dick would make another miraculous recovery. It was a natural death, a painless death. A civilian's death. Maybe that was the hardest part to swallow. Damian allowed his father to lock himself up with only his grief for company, because he knew there was nothing else to distract the man. Hell, there was nothing to distract Damian. He knew, because he'd looked.

His bedroom door creaked open, but Damian made no effort to compose himself. Today was a day of remembrance, and Damian would embrace the humanity that Dick always told him to express. He could go back to being a heartless bastard tomorrow; tonight he would let himself be ruled by his emotions. His own quiet vigil to his brother.

Damian knew it was Steph before she spoke. She was the only one left in the family that was comfortable to scoot close and run a hand through his hair. When she tugged him up into a sitting position, he let himself be guided. When she wrapped her arms around him and began to coo, he let himself be coddled. However, when she handed him a cupcake, he merely stared.

It was a large chocolate cupcake, covered in a mountain of bright yellow icing. The icing had been dusted with glitter that winked merely up at Damian, even in the dim room. The sparkles were enchanting, and Damian couldn't resist studying it a little closer.

They were rainbow sparkles.

Damian suddenly had the urge to hurl the treat across the room.

"They're just for family," Steph whispered, still carding her fingers through his hair. "I just thought it would be a good tribute, you know?" Her voice stayed steady, but it had the sort of tone that indicated that she was close to her breaking point. Warm tears flowed down Damian's cheeks. "He…he was like the sun. Warm and bright and always so goddamn special. He had his own flare, something in his genetics that just let him change everything he touched." She sniffled. "He was a really good person."

Damian didn't respond, but he clutched the cake a little tighter. Steph's words were true, of course. It was why there was such a large gathering taking place in their living room. Hell, it was why Damian was allowing himself to feel so strongly. The words were true, and though they were all still reeling from his loss, those words would bring comfort one day.

Until then, Damian would comfort himself with his memories of sunny smiles and yellow frosting and rainbow sparkles.

See? Angst.

I'm a little obsessed with the idea of one of the Batclan dying a really normal death. I just think that the family would take it so much harder, because they gear themselves up for the possibility of death every time they go out, but they never think of things like heart attacks or strokes. It would particularly hurt Bruce and Damian, I think, because instead of taking time to grieve, they try to seek revenge. How do you get revenge on natural causes?