Prompt Post - Part Six [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]

[yj_anon]

THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.

I am so sorry for the delay, guys. Life has been hectic lately (exams, haha) and I lost track.
Part one here!

Part two here!

Part three here!

Part four here!

Part five here!

Feel free to reprompt posts from parts one, two, three or four in part five once. If

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catastrophe and the cure [5/6]

[anonymous]

It’s almost two weeks before Superboy finds him. Bruce comes back from patrol to see him sitting in Robin’s chair. He has to resist the sudden urge to throw him out of it, but Superboy stands up when he walks in anyway.

“Wally told me where to find you,” he says unnecessarily.

He takes a good look at Superboy and the resemblance to the older version is more astounding than ever. They’ve always had similar appearances, but now Superboy has the same look in his eyes that Superman did just weeks before. His eyes look emotionless and haunted all at once, and Superboy is clearly ready to break something.

“You haven’t found him,” he says, and it’s not a question.

Bruce tries to ignore him and he goes to the computer to check if anything has changed.

“Why isn’t he coming back if he’s not dead?”

Bruce almost chokes. He turns around and Superboy is glaring at him curiously.

“Why isn’t he coming back?” he repeats.

He’s not dead, Bruce says in his mind. He knows that’s what he’s supposed to say, what he tells himself everyday, but it isn’t working anymore. Superboy’s question keeps repeating itself in his mind.

“Everyone else says he isn’t coming back. Wally doesn’t say anything to any of us and M’gann stays closed off. Artemis doesn’t stop training and Kaldur tells me it’ll get better, but he’s lying. Roy came in the other day too. He looked…defeated.”

Bruce had noticed that Roy had stopped looking. He’d lasted the longest out of everyone. But eventually he’d come to the conclusion that everyone else had.

“Are you still looking?” Superboy asks.

“Yes.”

Superboy nods. “Don’t stop. We need him back. We can’t be a team without him.”

Bruce stares at the chair Superboy had vacated. Robin’s chair. Dick’s chair.

Bruce isn’t sure anymore if he can be Batman without him.

----------------------

It’s two thirty in the morning and he’s still awake. This wasn’t too unusual before, but now it’s almost a guarantee that he’ll be up around this time. Most nights he can’t get to sleep, and when he does, he has nightmares.

The most common one is one he hasn’t had in years. Bruce is eight again and he watches his parents get shot down, but now Dick is there too, with them, and he always wakes up with Dick’s bloody image imprinted on his eyes. Every time he wakes up to that, something breaks inside him.

He can’t lose Dick too. He can’t.