Big Damn Item Post

[goldeneyedflash]

Christmas morning was one of the few days they really couldn't afford to sleep in. No training, but for some reason, any day the rest of the world was celebrated tended to make the psychos come out in force. He tried not to think about it too much, because if he did, he'd end up brooding about who wasn't around to share the holiday smackdown with

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[cantstopmoving]

It's been more than two years since the day Kon died saving he and Cassie and the rest of the Earth. They'd only been close in the too-short hours before it happened, bonded in a desperate fight to save everyone they loved. He'd lived to enjoy the victory. So had Cassie, even though she'd gone...wrong...since, and Dick is determined to see that the things that had broken her at home didn't get to her here.

He's paid his respects, held his quiet vigils the way Bats do. He's over it, as much as it's possible to be over the death of a friend, family member, who shouldn't have had to die. Maybe it's that it's Christmas or that Tim doesn't need this, or Bart doesn't, or maybe it's just been a really long two months, but the sight of the statue and Bart crumpled beneath it, on his way home from an early morning get-a-jump-on-the-psychos patrol pulls a startled sob from him, too.

Dick pushes a gauntleted hand through his hair and sucks in a slow breath. "Fuck, Kon. You were way too young to die. No matter how cool it was."

[goldeneyedflash]

Bart hadn't actually heard Nightwing approach, hadn't been listening to anything but the pounding of the blood in his ears, the sure knowledge that Kon was gone because, once again, he'd screwed up. That had motivated him to lie to his friends, his family, about his powers being gone, pretending for a year that he was just like other people. It had cost too much. He'd never wanted to make a sacrifice like that.

Dick's words cut through him as he struggled to pull himself together, numb inside and out. When he spoke, his voice wasn't quite even, didn't quite hide the edge of grief and anger that this reminder pulled back to the surface, just as strong as the day it happened. "He shouldn't have had to. I should have been faster."

[cantstopmoving]

"You weren't there," Dick says sharply, a little too sharply, but Bart's constant bemoaning not having done enough while sitting at the base of this statue of a hero grates on him. His arms come up across his chest, Bat-style, but his voice softens. He understands it hurts. "You couldn't have stopped him even if you were. He'd have done exactly what he did. What he was born to do."

[goldeneyedflash]

"No, I wasn't. Because I spent four years trying to keep Prime under wraps with Wally and Grandpa and Max..." Bart hated how his voice caught at the memories, how much he'd given up, and then Kon died anyway. "You don't understand, 'Wing. Every detail's the same as the day it happened. Except for what happened after I went into the Speed Force with Wally and Jay with Superboy-Prime, before I came back, my memories are always like that. I can't let go, the reminders are there, and it's like it's happening again.

"Maybe I couldn't have stopped him, but he would have had backup. More than he had."

[cantstopmoving]

"Do you think I don't remember every detail of my parents crashing to their deaths in front of my eyes?" Dick shakes his head, disgusted with them both. Bart for insisting on making Kon's death less meaningful by making it about him. Him for lacking the patience to be gentle about this.

"Bart," Dick says quietly, dropping to a crouch beside him. "Do you know what he said, right before he died?"

[goldeneyedflash]

"Can you really? How many people did you take photos with besides Tim? Do you remember what they looked like? Smelled like? How they moved?" Bart spat, before he could stop it. It wasn't the same, they didn't really understand, couldn't understand, anymore than he could understand what it was like to not remember everything precisely, perfectly.

"It wasn't just him I let down. I left Wally and Linda and the twins for dead when I didn't remember what had happened. The day this statue was unveiled, I lied to Jay. Started lying to all of you. What do you want me to say?"

[cantstopmoving]

His mouth fills with the taste of sawdust, tears and blood. He remembers...and locks down. Hard.

He puts a hand on Bart's shoulder and forces it to be gentle. "When Cassie told him he saved the Earth, he said 'I know, isn't it cool?'" Standing, Dick gives himself a minute to look at Kon's shining likeness, then exhales slowly. "I'll get Tim and Cassie."

And then he'll go find Roy.

[goldeneyedflash]

Bart tried hard not to cringe under that touch, hurt too badly by the pain of his own memories that it felt like his only defense was to lash out. He closed his eyes, tears barely starting down his face before the cold turned them to ice.

"Dick...I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking." He had to put that out there. That he really hadn't meant the brutality. Except he had. He'd wanted someone to hurt as much as he did right now.

[cantstopmoving]

"I know, Bart," he says, voice as warm as a lie can make it. His fingers trail gently through Bart's hair, as soothing as he can be when Bat questions of how these items get here, who is doing it, and why they're trying to weaken the Titans and Exiles are all he will let himself see in the pale green snow from flipped down lenses.

"But I'm still going to get Tim and Cassie." Not him. Not this time.