Renegade Part1: Chapter 1
Series Title: Renegade Part 1
Part Title: Denial or A Death in the Family
Author: cat_13145
Rating: Pg-13
Disclaimer: If I owned them, you think Battle for the Cowl would have happened?
Warnings: Character Death fic, I'm sorry, you're all probably going to hate me.
Author's notes: I'm hopefully going to post this to dcfreeforall as well.
Summary: What if Dick had died instead of Jason... (idea from ladyoneil)
I’m sorry Bruce. Should have listened you. Should have waited.
/Smash/
Can’t take him on on my own, you were right.
/crack/
Babs, I love you.
/Crunch/
Bruce .Jason. Alfred. I’m sorry.
/thump/
*
It had been a difficult patrol.
The Joker was still at large and he hadn’t managed to contact Dick since their argument at the hospital.
He had sent Jason back nearly an hour ago, and with no Batgirl or Nightwing, he was tired and worried.
The phone rang just as he passed the hall table. Without thinking he answered it.
“Wayne Manor?”
“Mr Wayne.” He recognised the voice, a cop, Harvey he thought his name was, not one of Batman’s biggest fans. “Would you please come to Gotham General?”
“What’s wrong?” He asked, his voice running through the worst scenarios, or what he thought were the worse scenarios.
“We believe we have the body of your ward, Richard Grayson here.”
*
They walked through the hospital towards the morgue, the whole thing feeling surreal in Bruce Wayne’s clothes. Harvey Ballock kept talking, but only snatches of what he said seemed to reach him.
“...Massive Explosion a warehouse...Playing card found near the scene...Dead upon Arrival...Massive trauma...” they had reached the viewing room and Ballock paused, his hand on the door and his face as near to sympathy as it could get.
“I should warn you. It’s not pretty.”
Bruce nodded, fighting Batman’s desire to tell him that he’d seen worse.
Because they were wrong. They had to have made a mistake. Dick couldn’t be dead.
O.K., they’d had an argument at the hospital, Dick wanting to go after Joker that second and Bruce Arguing that they needed more intelligence, and Dick had stormed off, but he would have waited. Dick obeyed orders.
Ballock tapped on the glass, and the attendant pulled the cover off.
He shook his head.
“No. That’s not Dick.”
“Mr. Wayne, if you would look again.”
“No.” His voice was firm. “That can not be my son.”
He could hear someone screaming, a wild animal sound lost of words. They should really tell them to keep it down in here, with the dead laid out in neat rows.
It was only as he felt Alfred’s arms around him, and heard the soft voice confirming what he was sure had to be a lie, that he realised the screams were coming from him.
TBC