Ghost Radio
by TwinEnigma
AN: This was ultimately inspired by Mgnemesi's Pit Verse, but I've designed it so that if you do not wish to read it as reincarnation, you may take it as the power of suggestion on a sleepy mind or a light possession by a ghost.
It is the little noises, the whines and moans of distress, that cause a sleepy Damian to pause by his oldest brother's door and push it open. He drifts, whisper-quiet, to the bed and cranes his head to get a better look.
Dick's eyes move rapidly under his eyelids, his breathing pitched and erratic as he whimpers and claws at the sheets and pillows. He's noticeably sweating and with each miserable whine, it's easy to guess that this is one of Dick's rare nightmares.
Damian just listens, half-awake and uncertain of what to do. He thinks, maybe, he should help, wake him up or something. Instead, he merely sits down on the edge of the bed and listens, torn between the desire to help and the insistent need to sleep.
"Mom," the acrobat murmurs as he rolls over, "Dad."
Damian's eyes droop.
"Mom, Dad, please, don't go," Dick says into his sheets. His fingers twitch as if grabbing for someone. "The wire…!"
Damian wants to help, he does, but in his exhaustion his mind thinks in abstractions and instinct, and it is a mimicry of his older brother's voice that finally issues from his lips: "It's all right, Dick."
Dick's eyebrows furrow, but his fingers stop twitching.
He isn't even aware of what he says next until the voice, now deeper than Dick's but so similar, flows from his lips: "I'm not going anywhere, son."
"Dad," Dick sounds like a child, too small in his skin. His hands reach. "Please… you and mom will fall."
Through his sleep blurred eyes, he watches as his hand moves of its own accord, but it doesn't look right. His hand is suddenly too small and Dick's is too large, an inexplicable inversion of what should be. And then it clasps around a too-large wrist as it is supposed to, and his lips again move without prompting: "No, we won't. You know why? I promise that I will always be there to catch you, my little Robin."
In his sleep, Dick smiles and visibly relaxes. He murmurs something unintelligible and rolls over again. It isn't very long before he begins to snore.
Damian lets go, standing, and then quietly shuffles out of the room that blurs around him, down a shadowy hallway to a room that is both familiar and foreign. And then he falls, as if a line has been cut, into the blankets and pillows softer than any he remembers, and back into sleep.
He dreams of the smell of sawdust and gymnast's chalk, of happiness.
When he wakes, he remembers of his dreams only that he is where he belongs.
And if Dick should fall, he knows he will catch him.
It is as it should be.