always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2011-04-19 03:23 pm
irrelevant) wrote2011-04-19 03:23 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] reflective (DCU)
reflective
DC comics | AU | Batman, a Case | G | 306 words
warning: major character death
It doesn’t belong in the cave.
The colors are too bright, perhaps even too real for his endless night, but—
There is nowhere else to put it.
Not in the house. A dead boy’s clothes on display, even privately, would be too (wrong) strange. Even for Bruce Wayne, whose parents’ bedroom still looks the same as it did that night almost twenty years ago.
But the boy. That perfect shining boy—
He deserved so much better than he received. From life and from the Batman. But there is nowhere else. There is no one else.
Batman caught Zucco. Bruce Wayne paid for the funerals, and for everything else that needed to be paid for. In return, they gave him, them, the boy’s spare costume.
He lays his hand flat on the glass but he can’t feel the cool of it. His hands are gloved, as they usually are down here. His reflection is nearly opaque. Too dark against the red tunic, and he steps back, wanting to spare some ghost of a wish the taint of Batman’s shadow, and the plaque is dull bronze at the bottom of the case where his shadow was.
Richard John ‘Dick’ Grayson: Boy Wonder
One of the high wire artists called him that. He didn’t have to ask why.
Batman pushes his cowl back. He pulls off one of his gloves. Tentatively, he touches the pads of his fingers to the glass, slick and cool to his touch, and the tunic’s red pulses bright defiance of the cave’s darkness, of his own shadow thrown across it. The cape curls its golden wings around the tunic and the green leggings seem almost to sway, as though inviting touch.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” Bruce whispers, watching his mouth move in the glass’s reflection, feeling the glass slide away under his skin. “I can’t.”
Batman bears witness.
DC comics | AU | Batman, a Case | G | 306 words
warning: major character death
It doesn’t belong in the cave.
The colors are too bright, perhaps even too real for his endless night, but—
There is nowhere else to put it.
Not in the house. A dead boy’s clothes on display, even privately, would be too (wrong) strange. Even for Bruce Wayne, whose parents’ bedroom still looks the same as it did that night almost twenty years ago.
But the boy. That perfect shining boy—
He deserved so much better than he received. From life and from the Batman. But there is nowhere else. There is no one else.
Batman caught Zucco. Bruce Wayne paid for the funerals, and for everything else that needed to be paid for. In return, they gave him, them, the boy’s spare costume.
He lays his hand flat on the glass but he can’t feel the cool of it. His hands are gloved, as they usually are down here. His reflection is nearly opaque. Too dark against the red tunic, and he steps back, wanting to spare some ghost of a wish the taint of Batman’s shadow, and the plaque is dull bronze at the bottom of the case where his shadow was.
Richard John ‘Dick’ Grayson: Boy Wonder
One of the high wire artists called him that. He didn’t have to ask why.
Batman pushes his cowl back. He pulls off one of his gloves. Tentatively, he touches the pads of his fingers to the glass, slick and cool to his touch, and the tunic’s red pulses bright defiance of the cave’s darkness, of his own shadow thrown across it. The cape curls its golden wings around the tunic and the green leggings seem almost to sway, as though inviting touch.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” Bruce whispers, watching his mouth move in the glass’s reflection, feeling the glass slide away under his skin. “I can’t.”
Batman bears witness.