Prompt Post - Part Nine [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!
Part seven here!
Part eight 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, ( Read more... )
He’s thirteen. It’s not his first time in Gotham or working in front of a sold-out crowd, but he can feel the energy, even back here. His mother, father, aunt, uncle and cousin are all waiting at the ring doors for their turn. When the lights go out, they have only a few moments to exit and haul ass to the platform while the riggers raise the safety nets. And, unfortunately, his little brother seems to have decided that now is the perfect time to space out.
“Come on, Dick,” he says, shaking his shoulder. He smiles a little bit at the way his brother nearly jumps out of his skin in surprise.
“Don’t do that, Damian!” Dick complains, puffing out his cheeks like an angry chipmunk and earning a chuckle from their sixteen-year-old cousin, John.
“I’m your brother, it’s my job to annoy you,” Damian deadpans. “What’s got you so interested anyway?”
“I thought I saw someone weird hanging around,” Dick says, frowning as he looks into the shadows between the ring doors and back yard area. “It looked like one of those guys Pop Haly tossed out.”
Damian cranes his head, squinting as he tries to peer into the shadows. He can see a few riggers, also waiting for their turn, but there’s no one there that isn’t part of the crew. And yet, he feels a shiver of inexplicable dread slip down his spine, as if something inside him is screaming helplessly for him to stop from a distant place. Shrugging it off, he turns away, herding his little brother back towards their family: “Come on, pal. It’s time to fly.”
Dick shoots one last furtive look over his shoulder and, seemingly satisfied, perks right back up, making a beeline for their father. “Dad, about the finale… can I-?”
“Not tonight,” their father says, as he does every time Dick asks.
“But Dad… Damian gets to do it!” Dick complains, while his older brother merely rolls his eyes. It’s practically a tradition, this little song and dance.
“No buts,” their father says. Dick’s the baby of the family. He’s only ever flown with the net, unlike the rest of them. It’s different without a net, scarier. You have to be perfect. Make a mistake and you’re worm food. That kind of pressure isn’t for everyone, and, as Damian knows from experience, Father won’t let him go up without a net until he’s sure Dick can handle it.
It ends as it always does: Dick pouts and then John reaches over, grabbing Dick and putting him in a mock headlock for a noogie. Dick struggles and squirms, telling him to cut it out, but John is a lot bigger and he just laughs as he messes up Dick’s hair before letting him go and saying, “Don’t worry, squirt, you’ll get a chance sooner than you think.”
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All that’s left is the finale.
Damian watches their father ruffle Dick’s hair one last time before pushing off over the now empty ring. Then their uncle goes, followed by their cousin, who laughs eagerly. They frame the wires, waiting until his aunt joins them before switching into a new configuration on the triple trapeze. Mother steps up, smiling, and goes next. Chalk puffs from her hands as they clasp onto Father’s wrists tightly. Damian catches the fly bar on the return and waits, watching as they all change positions again to a different formation.
It’s his turn.
He smiles at Dick and then pushes off. At the peak of his swing, he lets go into the tight somersault that will put him in the right place for his mother, now in the catcher position, to grab him.
He smiles at her as she says “Gotcha,” and then he sees it.
His eyes widen in horror.
The rope snaps.
They fall.
Everything goes black.
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That night, he and his brother lost everything.
He sighs. It’s as good a time as any to get a start on his day.
Propping himself up first on his elbows, Damian then lifts himself with his arms into a sitting position. He lifts one leg up with his hands and moves it so that it rests over the other. Then, using his arms to lift himself up, he slowly begins the process of transferring himself from his bed to the wheelchair. He lifts his legs one at a time, carefully lowering them until his feet rested securely on the foot pedals, and then leans back, his hands on the wheels. There was a time he’d have complained about all this, but he’s learned to put up with a lot since that night and, honestly, he’s more than a little pleased that he can now do this himself, instead of relying on assistance for everything.
He resists the urge to shiver once he gets into the hallway. Wayne Manor is huge and, for the most part, empty. It feels like a museum: there are rooms and rooms of antiques and weird rich-people stuff that neither he nor Dick are allowed to touch. It’s probably one of the coldest, emptiest places he’s ever known and, not for the first time, a wave of homesickness washes over him. He misses his family and home so much. They still have their uncle Rick, but he’s even worse off than Damian is and isn’t even able to leave the hospital. There’s no going back for any of them and knowing that is killing him inside.
Damian rolls down the hallway, pausing at Dick’s door. It’s closed. Sometimes on nights like this, he can hear his brother crying. Other nights, he finds the door open and Dick sitting perched on his bed, unable to sleep. Lately though, Dick’s door has been closed through the night and it worries him a bit. There’s always something reassuring in just seeing that he’s there, alive and well, especially after dreaming about that night.
It’s not the only thing about Dick that’s changed lately. He’s gotten moodier and less talkative around him and has begun to miss Damian’s physical therapy sessions, ones he’d promised to go to for moral support. Dick has also seemed to warm up to their socially awkward recluse of a foster parent by leaps and bounds, like they’d reached some kind of understanding.
“-TT-“ Damian hisses through his teeth, disengaging the brake, and makes his way to the elevator Bruce had installed for him.
It’s not like he didn’t understand if Dick didn’t want to hang around him. Damian’s injury rendered him incapable of even sitting up without assistance for months. Even with the physical therapy and reduction of swelling, the odds were he’d be in this chair the rest of his life. It was frustrating and sometimes he’d lash out verbally, because, dammit, once upon a time he could fly and now he couldn’t even do things that most people took for granted. Worse, he’s supposed to be the older brother and now it’s his kid brother who’s doing most of the looking after him.
It’s just…
He doesn’t like the idea that maybe his brother is leaving him behind. Dick’s all he’s really got left.
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And then he hears something from the library. It almost sounds like hushed voices, but it can’t be. No one’s up at this hour, not normally, and there’s no TV in there. The doors are slightly ajar, allowing a narrow splash of light to cut across the darkened hallway.
Damian slows down, stopping just outside the doors. Dick and Bruce are inside, near the clock.
“…Not ready. I’m sorry,” Bruce says.
Damian can’t hear what his brother says. It’s too soft, but he does recognize the whiny tone - Dick’s not getting his way.
“Zucco will pay,” Bruce hisses with a frightening fervor. “I promise.”
Zucco? As in Tony Zucco? The guy that had threatened Pop Haly? The man everyone suspected had been the mastermind behind the tampering of their family’s lines on that night, but for some reason no one could get the charges to stick directly to Zucco, even with Dick’s testimony that he’d seen some of Zucco’s men hanging around. It was circumstantial at best.
Damian looks down at his useless legs. He wants Zucco to pay, too, but he doubts even someone as rich as Bruce Wayne can get the charges to stick to anyone other than the triggermen. It’s good on Bruce to try and assure his brother though, even if it’s an empty promise.
“But we do this as a team or not at all,” Bruce says sternly.
Dick’s still too quiet to hear properly.
“What about names?” Bruce asks.
The question is absurd. Damian frowns. What on earth are they talking about? And how did they get from Zucco to names? And why would it require a team effort?
Maybe they were talking about the trial or new evidence. Could Dick have remembered something that would crack the case?
He can’t hear Dick’s response, but Bruce’s next question makes his stomach drop: “What about your brother? Are you going to tell him?”
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Jealous? Damian narrows his eyes. Why would he be jealous?
“…And hurt because…” Dick adds and suddenly trails off. “Oh, I’d never thought about that. He’d probably never speak to me again.”
This is definitely not about the trial, Damian concludes.
“It’s up to you,” Bruce says. “Choose wisely.”
Dick moves away again. “…don’t… not fair… You don’t understand! He’s hurt enough, already! Flying was… If he sees… furious… can’t do this… ugh, I’m going to bed. We’ll talk later.”
Damian quickly disengages the brake and wheels down the hallway, hastily turning the corner in the foyer. Another quick burst of speed and he’s in the TV room. Scooping the remote into his lap, he executes a hasty parking job, tosses a blanket over his legs and turns on the TV, quickly lowering the volume.
A few minutes later, Dick appears in the doorway. “I saw the light on. Can’t sleep?”
“I was there again,” Damian answers.
“Me too,” Dick says, approaching. The nine-year-old crawls into the armchair closest to him and curls up with his knees to his chest. “Do you think it’ll ever get better?”
Damian closes his eyes, ignoring the smell of fresh shampoo coming from his little brother and the sight of new calluses on his knuckles. Dick’s been training, probably that night judging by the evidence of having taken a fresh shower, but Damian doesn’t know any kind of training they’d have done back home that would add calluses to the knuckles like that.
He sighs: “I don’t know, I just don’t know.”
Whatever it is that his brother’s up to, he’s going to find out.
He owes it to his parents. Dick’s his responsibility now.
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If one Grayson has found the cave, the other is sure to follow, in Bruce's paranoid logic.
Thanks for giving me a chance.
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'm definitely looking forward to more, so keep the awesomeness up!
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