Chapter 14

AN Enjoy. :)

When I get to Bruce's study, I stop right outside his door, pausing before I push the door open, and when I do the breath is knocked from me, it looks just like it did when I left, except for a few small differences, which I know stem from Damian using this as his office.

But the pictures of us are still all over the walls, the books are still there, the armchair that he'd spent so many night reading to us when we woke from nightmares, each of us having a different preference for books, but all wanting the same thing when we had a nightmare. To sit in his lap as he read us a book, our blanket tucked around our shoulders as we lay our heads on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat and the rumble of his voice in his chest.

I know that all of us have done it, because Alfred had pictures of every single one of us, in almost the exact same position as he read to us late at night, they are in a photo album on the bottom shelf of the bookcase on the right side of the room, exactly where they were 10 years ago, and 3 years ago, and where I know they will be for many years to come.

I spend a few minutes walking through his study, thumbing the spines of books and looking at the pictures on the walls.

When i've gone through the room twice, I know I can't procrastinate any longer, and so as I stand in front of the clock, I force my hands to move the hands to the right positions, opening the secret door leading to the cave.

I take the steps carefully, my heart in my throat and tears stinging my eyes, although I don't let them fall.

I close my eyes as I go down the last few steps, not wanting to see what's waiting for me until i'm ready, although considering I don't think i'll ever be ready, I turn to where I know the glass cases are, opening my eyes as I let out the breath I was holding, dragging a considerably shakier one back into my lungs, the tears I had dried when I got to Bruce's study now starting up again.

I slowly sink to my knees in front of the cases, my eyes blurring with the tears, which are falling faster and faster as I stare at the suits, the most stark reminders of them.

It's then, and only then, that I let myself remember what really happened to my family.

"Tim! Let's go, we're gonna be late" Dick yelled up the stairs

"You do know that I can look for an apartment by myself, right?" I ask, my eyes widening as I see Jason at the bottom of the stairs, propped against the wall with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, and I smile as Bruce walks into the room, snatching the cancer stick from between Jason's lips and sticking it in his pocket, all without even looking at him, simply peering up the stairs at me.

"Nobody has anything to do today Tim, and you've been saying you want to move out for quite a while now, lets go" he encourages, his dad side coming to the forefront.

"Okay, but like, why is everyone coming?" I ask, still unsure why literally everyone is coming to help me pick an apartment.

"Bored" Jason says

"It'll be fun" Dick pipes up

"I told you I would help you pick one out" Bruce says

"And I am here to make sure you purchase an acceptable apartment" Alfred says, a twinkle in his eye.

"And i'm not coming" Damian says from behind me.

"You could" Bruce tells him.

"I'm grounded, if I can't go anywhere fun, then I am definitely not going anywhere boring" he says, defiance thick in his voice and posture.

"Alright" is all Bruce says, not giving him much to go off of as he spins around and disappears again.

We have fun, going to quite a few apartments, yet only finding one or two that were up to everyones standards, we got lunch and ate at the park, laughing when Dick took off to play on the playground of the abandoned park.

Jason and Bruce were getting along, despite the fact that Bruce keeps stealing Jason's cigarettes from his mouth and his pocket, although I don't think Jason's too mad about that, seeing as he's still sticking with us, and he seems to enjoy trying to steal them back.

We get to the last apartment of the day, and it's an open floor plan, basically an entire floor, it has everything that I would need to live here, and it's turning out to be the best apartment of the day.

I'm standing by the open window when I hear it.

"Get out!" Bruce yells from the couch, Jason is standing behind me and we both turn our heads to see Bruce kneeling on the floor, the top off the ottoman and a blinking red light is the first thing that catches my eye, the next is the C-4 and the rest of the bomb.

I can see the moment it clicks in Jason's mind, he turns towards me and I don't know what he saw that compelled him to do what he did next.

He grabbed me by the back of my head and shoved me out the window, his other hand landing on my thigh as he propells me out the large window, me yelling at him the entire time, trying to prevent him from getting me out the window.

I get through one flip, my hand almost making contact with the railing of the balcony a floor down, when I look up to see Jason looking down at me, an utterly terrified and resigned look on his face as he meets my eyes, like he was terrified of what was happening, but knew that it was going to happen. It's then that a deafening sound overtakes my world, and a blast of heat blows me backwards into a telephone pole, paralysing pain taking over my body as I feel something in my back crack upon impact.

It's the impact with the ground though that makes me incapable of getting up, I scream as burning debris rains down onto my back and legs, other pieces simply slamming into my body, cutting, gauging and piercing my skin.

Wanting, no, needing, to get up and look, some irrational part of me needing to see him, needing to look back towards that window, to see him, even though realistically, I know that he isn't there anymore.

I don't know how long I lay there before I lose consciousness, but the next thing I know i'm laying in the back of an ambulance, the EMT's standing over me talking quickly and before I know what's hit me, they've injected something into my I.V, making me fall back into the black abyss commonly known as unconsciousness.

I wake up hours later with a smaller hand slotted into mine, a shaking form huddled in a chair by my bedside.

"Damian?" I ask quietly, my voice rough.

"Drake?" he asks, snapping his head up, panic written all over his face.

"Are they okay?" I ask, dreading his answer, but needing to know all the same.

"They're dead Drake, they're all dead. I thought, I didn't think it was true when they called me, they have DNA and teeth records, i've run the tests myself, they're gone." he says, his voice breaking as tears stream down his face, and it's because his words haven't quite hit me yet that I can realise that my baby brother has never looked this young, this vulnerable, this broken.

"What?" I croak, tears streaming down my face before i've even processed the words.

"They're dead, gone. They aren't coming back." he says, even though I heard him perfectly fine the first time, and I would like to never hear it again.

I check myself out of the hospital the next day, having the League doctor come to the Manor to fix anything that might kill me, and on her recommendation, I go back to the doctor so that they can help me with my back, the burned skin and the damage that was done from the pole and the fall.

That first year was the worst, it was full of firsts and lasts, of death and grieving, growing closer to certain people and distancing myself from others. It was hell.

AN Thoughts? Good? Bad? Meh? Lemme know what you think. :)