Prompt Post - Part Eight [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]
THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.
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Part two here!
Part three here!
Part four here!
Part five here!
Part six here!
Part seven here!
Feel free to reprompt posts from previous parts once. If you do so, I'd recommend leaving a link to your fill on the original prompt, in case somebody ( Read more... )
Room 2011
It’s not the sound of the doorknob turning that wakes Rick up, no. It’s the sudden, unnerving sense that someone is there. His eyes flicker open and he nearly has a heart attack when he sees the slight, shadowy figure stooping in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he demands, reaching for the call button with his only functional arm.
The figure steps forward into a shaft of moonlight, revealing the familiar, tear-streaked face of his nephew.
“Dick,” he breathes, eyes widening. “What’s wrong? What are you doing here this late?”
Dick doesn’t reply at first, instead reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out something on a silver chain. He turns his hand over, revealing an all-too familiar fob watch, and Rick instantly feels his heart plummet to his stomach.
“I opened it,” Dick says before he can even ask.
Rick sighs heavily. “So, you know, then.”
“Yes,” Dick says, drawing closer and glaring at him through unshed tears. “But there are things I still don’t understand. Why did my father pick your family? Why Haly’s?”
He looks away.
Dick is dead. The boy standing there is the orphaned son of his best friend and brother, one that he’s never met. He doesn’t even know his name.
“Please,” the boy begs. “Uncle Rick, please. I have to know.”
Rick closes his eyes, tears spilling unbidden from his eyes as he hears his nephew in every syllable, and words about those stupid watches he’s tried to forget come rushing back. He just wishes that maybe that stupid idiot had warned him it’d be this hard, that it’d hurt this much, or maybe that he’d made him open that stupid watch ages ago, warnings to wait until the all-safe signal be damned.
He sniffs, rubbing his face with his one good hand, and, shakily, speaks up, “You know the truth now. Why still call me uncle?”
Dick sits on the edge of the bed, sniffling, and draws his legs up to his chest like a little kid, hugging them as he rests his head on his knees. “Because you’re my uncle. You’ve been my uncle since I was eight. I’ve never known you as anything else.”
Rick remembers John saying that his son was young - just a child, really. But he’s never really believed it until now, not when he knows John’s people measured their lifespans in millennia. He’s just always assumed that John had been referring to an equivalent age in Earth years, but for the boy to really have been only eight years old back then? God, if that was true, his nephew’s spent almost half his life living in this guise! Being Dick is probably just as real to him as being, well… who he really is.
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