Chapter Text
His father is sitting in front of him, but he is not his father.
Or so he keeps trying to tell himself.
He sure looks exactly the same.
Well, mostly.
He has more grey hair on his temples, more visible wrinkles around his eyes. He carries himself with the precision of a panther—deceptively casual, indisputably on alert. There’s also the scar that runs across his left jawline, a thin, white line of raised skin that was not there before. In his black, knitted sweater that Alfred must have dug out from the storage, he blends in with the Manor’s living room, as if he never left.
“Dick,” his father’s lips say–and it sure is his father’s voice, but it’s hard to reconcile the man sitting there, on the green plush sofa, with the father he loved, the father he mourned, the father he fucking buried underground.
“I need to go,” Dick says, standing too quickly he almost knocks his chair over. Screw being casual. He can’t do this. “I—Titans stuff. I promised them that I’d be there.”
“Alright,” Bruce says. He’s steady. He’s so steady it’s driving Dick insane, because there’s nothing normal about this. There’s nothing normal about this entire situation.
Dick thought that getting Bruce home would be the hard part.
He was wrong.
He closes the living room door behind him and passes Jason in the hallway. His brother is carrying three mugs of hot chocolate, and he pauses when he sees Dick. “You’re leaving?” Jason asks, an eyebrow lifted.
Jason has been—he’s been lively. He’s been livelier than he has in a long, long while, and Dick should be happy. He should be glad that Jason’s no longer the kid whose heart had drained out of him, the teenager who cruised through life without a care, the tired young man with vacant eyes. In the past few months, there’s been a spark inside him that was long missing, and Bruce’s re-appearance has helped light it up into a fire.
Dick thinks that the renewed therapy sessions must be helping Jason, but this – this change to their routine. The appearance of Bruce on the Manor’s doorstep last weekend. It’s bound to shake things up. Never mind that Jason has not been anything but pleased, Dick’s still not looking forward to whatever the fallout of this will be. He’s not looking forward to be there on the other side, trying to pick up whatever will be left of his brother.
Not again.
It’s pure selfishness.
“Yeah,” Dick says. He shrugs and reaches for the blue mug on the tray. “An emergency. You know how it is. Thanks for the hot chocolate though.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jason says flatly. “Sometimes I think you use emergencies as an excuse to get out of things.”
“The last time I checked, Steph’s the one getting a psychology degree,” Dick replies, reigning his temper in. While he’s ready to admit that he sometimes has a short fuse, Jason can easily pick a spot and accurately drive his knife in when he wants to.
The problem is, Jason never does it on purpose. Jason doesn’t think that he can do something like that – doesn’t believe that he’s important enough to Dick. It’s the remains of days that Dick is not proud of, days when he thought independence meant making his own decisions at a distance. It leaves Dick stranded now, swallowing his feelings and his tongue – the things that he wants to say but can’t.
Dick’s probably going to live out the repercussions of his teenage choices forever.
One corner of Jason’s lips lifts into a mocking smile. “Maybe I did it when you weren’t looking. How would you know, with all your emergencies?”
Already, the presence in the living room is putting cracks into their new dynamic, the one they’ve been trying to nurture with patience and honest conversations.
“I’m not going to do this right now,” he says instead. Instead of, shut the hell up. Instead of, do you know what Bruce’s death did to me? He can’t say those things. Not to Jason, who carried his grief around like a shroud, who has only just started putting it down and leaving it behind.
Jason shifts his hold on the tray to free one hand and rub the back of his neck with it. He deflates. “Sorry Dickie. I just thought that we were finally going to talk.”
Dick inhales. Maybe it’s partly his fault. He had bailed from the Manor the second he saw Bruce there, and he tried his best avoiding it until Jason appeared in his office, arms crossed in front of his chest. “We will. You know we will.” Then, as a peace offering. “I’ll give you a call later, alright?”
There’s a tiny part of him that thinks–it’s the least that you owe me, after everything. But all the shitshow with Bruce’s return is not Jason’s fault, even when he tried to hide the truth of things. It’s just a thought from the part of Dick that felt hurt–that is still bruised and tender, hissing nasty things that are difficult to shake off.
“Yeah,” Jason nods, but he’s already looking away. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Great,” Dick says. The word falls empty and flat from his tongue. “That’s great.”
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continued in chapter 1 of house of storm.
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