Title: Who Else To Hold As The World Falls Down?
Fandom: DC
Characters: Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Jason Todd
Warnings: AU, character death, blood, Post!Apocalyptic setting, unbetaed
Rating: IDK, PG13?
Summary: Dick made his way towards them in a whirlwind of blood and gore, screaming for his littlest brother.
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Damian was on the ground, had fallen, was laying in a spreading pool of blood.
He’d saved him.
Tim lost a fleeting moment to blank incomprehension. Sure, he’d known the little brat no longer hated him, but to sacrifice his life for him?
Dick’s scream rent the air, breaking Tim from his shock and allowing him to fall to his knees and press firm, futile, hands over the huge wound in Damian’s side. The sharp, precise cracks of gunfire telling him Jason had their backs.
Their eldest brother tore into the men around him with the kind of brutal fury Tim had never suspected him to be capable of.
Well, not before this long sucking drag towards the end of the world, at least.
Ecrisma sticks long since replaced by wicked long knives, Dick made his way towards them in a whirlwind of blood and gore, screaming for his littlest brother.
“Take care of him for me, Drake.” Their hatchling rasped out. Tim shook his head in denial.
“You’ll be okay.” Tim insisted. “We’ll get you to-” Tim fell silent. Leslie’s had been the last running medical facility in the city, and it had been ransacked and the doctor killed the day before.
Damian hacked out a laugh, a twisted counterpoint to the wounded, animalistic howls tearing through Dick’s throat, approaching, and the continuing barrage of gunfire as Jason dropped anyone who tried to attack them.
“Ex-actly.” Damian’s eyes fell shut briefly and Tim pressed harder against the wound, blood flowing through his fingers.
Damian let out a short cry, and glared up at Tim through pain glazed eyes.
“Take care of our brothers, Timothy.” Damian demanded, acknowledged, pleaded.
Tim could only nod before Damian was gathered out of his arm by a sobbing, whimpering Dick. He stood, tears flowing, leaving his littlest brother in the care of his eldest.
Furious, he dove back into the fray, his own bo staff long since replaced by a naginata, releasing his agony in an outraged scream as he kept these monsters from his brothers’ final farewell.
There was a thud behind him, but he didn’t bother turning. He’d long been able to sense any of his brother’s presences and he only felt the fierce, wrenching, heartsick joy that Jay had joined him to reap blood price for their brother’s life.
They were both panting and exhausted by the time they’d managed to drive them off and could return their attention to their brothers.
Brother.
Damian was gone.
Eyes open and blank, body limp, blood slowly congealing around him, and Jason and Tim felt the sudden wrenching as four abruptly became three.
And Dick?
Dick’s eyes were empty, in a way that neither Jason or Tim had ever seen them; not when the Tower went, not when they listened to the Titans last stand. Not when Garth’s final message from Atlantis expressed his love and regrets.
It took longer than was safe, but they finally managed to get Dick moving, though he still refused to release Damian’s body.
When they returned to the safe-house soaked in blood, icy-eyed and silent - Dick bearing their brother’s limp body, Tim cradling his sword, Jason looming behind them both like a protective shadow - no one spoke to them, and many scurried to get out of their way as they walked slowly to their room. A tide of silence rose throughout the base, the calm before the storm as everyone waited to see what would break.
The Bat-boys had never been the most stable people in the world, and here? At what seemed more every day like the ends of all things?
The levels of efficient and bloody violence their previously incapacitating manoeuvres were capable of with the right motivation and a slight shift in weaponry had been a horrifying shock to many.
Still, somehow, they had managed to keep each other sane. Somehow, the four of them existed, providing each other a stable foundation.
Now, one of them was gone.
No one wanted to think about what would happen now.
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