Prompt Post - Part Seven [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]
THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.
Part one here!
Part two here!
Part three here!
Part four here!
Part five here!
Part six here!
Feel free to reprompt posts from parts one, two, three or four in part five once. If you do so, I'd recommend leaving a link to your fill on the original prompt, in ( Read more... )
(Discounting, of course, the times where he was simply refusing to understand his older son, stifling, old-fashioned, and all the other things teenagers said about their parents.)
“Well, head’s up that I’ll probably still crash with Artemis for a week.” He nodded towards his injury. “Her I can explain a stab would to. Uncle R., not so much.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Bruce began, to which Dick’s eyes flashed a protest. Clark remembered that look from one of his earliest conversations with the young Robin. He’d given it alongside an impassioned and absolute declaration that joining the fight had been his own desire.
“And I mean this particular stab wound, before you start telling me off for doubting you. The one my son inflicted.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Dick said, drawing out the final vowels in a kind of singsong that suggested he’d been saying as much for quite a while now and was desperate to break up the monotony.
“Should never have believed Talia when she told me she’d miscarried,” he continued, and Clark’s chest constricted, because Bruce’s voice shook the slightest bit on that final word. It was barely perceptible to one who wasn’t on high alert for mood shifts, but it was clear as day to Clark and sharp as a gunshot to Dick, if the speed with which he reached out and grabbed his father’s wrist was any indication.
He squeezed. “You couldn’t exactly call her a liar to her face, either. Too much of a risk, especially if she had gone through something like that. It just would have been cruel, and that’s not who you are.”
“I didn’t see Talia for over a year afterwards,” Bruce argued. “Nearly two. I found out around the sixth week, and she told me it had ended right at the start of the tenth. Why else would Ra’s hide her, if he wasn’t letting her rest, recover, and take care of the baby? She’s one of the greatest advantages over me that he has, especially if I’m overwhelmed by the fact that she’d just lost my child. I should have realized then that she’d lied and that something was wrong.”
“So you’re going to beat yourself up because the World’s Greatest Detective isn’t the World’s Most Perfect, Nearly Psychic, and Hyperaware Knower-of-All-Things?” Dick demanded. “Give me a break, Bruce.”
“’Knower’ isn’t a word.”
“Yeah, I put that in there so you’d have something negative and not related to the topic at hand to say afterwards.”
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Anyway, this continues to be beautiful and brilliant. I think my favorite thing here is the image of Bruce as an aging Atlas. This is exactly what I was craving. THANK YOU! And I like Dick trying to make the best of a bad situation. He's a wonderful source of support and reason. Not to say that Bruce's guilt isn't reasonable. He didn't know (and couldn't have know, Dick is right) but still, the guilt is understandable. And Dick's use of the word knower? Wonderful.
I continue to enjoy Superman. I think Supes as reader-avatar works on a very meta level. Aren't readers all voyeurs? Voyeurs infringing on the lives of fictional characters, non-persons, but voyeurs nonetheless?
Thanks for writing this fantastic story. As always, looking for the next part.
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