-When you hear my heart stop.

"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength." –Unknown

No one ever told Dick that the night could take so damn long. Even after patrol, tucking Damian into bed, and fielding Alfred's concern laced questions the first lights of dawn were still hours away. Every bat was nested in their respected belfry, sleeping through the last shreds of darkness. Dick however found his eyes incapable of shutting.

They gazed upward at the normally bleak ceiling. With every blink a new image painted itself behind his eyelids. Damian's limp body broken and bloodied on the concrete, Jason walking away, a red feathered arrow lodged in his chest, Tim lost in some backstreet of Paris, and the ever present look of disappointment etched in Bruce's long dead face.

How was he supposed to protect a city from itself?

How was he supposed to raise a child when, despite his mantra for independence saying otherwise, he was little more than a child himself?

How was he supposed to embody the darkness when for his entire life he'd been the light?

How was he supposed to be the Batman?


There was no handbook on how shut off your emotions. No one could teach him how not to scream when he saw his baby brother, his ward, his son toppling from seven stories up. It wasn't possible. They needed much more than he could give and demanded more than he was capable of accomplishing.

But he was Dick Grayson. He was the sunshine that now had to be the shadow too. And he would face the world with a golden smile and sleepless eyes, not because he could but because he wanted the burden to fall on no one else, to torture no one else.

Dick clutched at the covers and allowed the salty warmth of tears to dribble down his cheeks. Just as the clock struck two he told himself the same three words that he did every night.

Hold it together.

With staples and duck-tape or nails and glue, if he could make it through the emptiness of the night he was through the worst of it; all he had to do was hold it together.


"…you have to muscle on."

Jason could hear the words booming in his head, but they were of no relevance to him. Bits and pieces of memories, conversations he'd heard but not listened to. Not until now, not until his finger was poised over a trigger and no matter how hard he tried wouldn't move away.

"You're a joke!"

Every undeserved insult came flying back with shocking clarity. Anger rose in his chest, toward Bruce, and Roy, and Damian…and even himself, for being so damn blind. How much thinner had Dick become since taking up the mantle? When would they have noticed the bruises that never seemed to heal, or the shadows that never faded?

"That bullet was as much a warning to criminals as it was to you."

Jason had already received his warning, the message practically written on the manor walls. Blinded by what he'd thought to be Dick's personal incompetence he'd ignored the silent pleas for help, the lingering gazes that begged for one of them, any of them to stay.

"…you will never be your father."

A gentle, gloved hand took hold of his own. Thin lips pulled into a smile that even under the shadow of such pain glowed with a warm radiance. "It's ok Jaybird." His eyes screamed the contrary, royal blue depths cried dry. Jason couldn't stop him, his arm refused to move, even as it was being aimed toward his brother's chest. This time there wasn't any Armani or Kevlar, just a t-shirt, of no more use against a bullet than flesh.

"Just…just tell me when you hear my heart stop."

The request was simple, but fell with the weight of the world.

He tried, god Jason tried to pull away.

All he managed to do was pull the trigger.


AN: Um, so I'm not entirely sure how this chapter came about. Just thought someone needed to see just how badly broken Dickiebird is, but we all know Jason would lose his street cred if he rushed to comfort his older brother. Soooo, prepare for some major Roy and Dick angst/hurt and comfort action. Thanks go out as usual to you amazing reviewers, though there isn't much to review this time.