Chapter Text
When Dick was twelve, Harley, who wasn’t yet free of the Joker but who was still better by far, intercepted him on the roof of the cafe that had been there since before Bruce was born.
“Birdie!” she squealed, bounding over to him, leashes in hand. Dick didn’t flinch, but he did react by dropping into a fighting stance, eyeing the tussling hyenas. “Oh, don’t do that, I’m not here to fight.”
“Then why are you here?” he asked warily.
“Well,” she said, drawing out the e, “I’m meetin’ up with Ives and I don’t got anyone to watch Bud and Lou for me…”
Dick blinked. Blinked again. Then a wide grin spread across his face. “You want me to babysit your hyenas?”
Harley matched his grin. She handed him the leashes, and Bud and Lou bounded over to Dick, sniffing his ankles. He let them, giggling when they nosed at him.
“I’ll pick them up by morning,” said Harley, and then she backflipped off the roof and left Dick with two curious hyenas.
.
He has been mortal before.
When his father murdered his son, he was stripped of his divinity and sent down for a year. He had served mortals before; he had assisted his uncle in building the walls.
But never has he felt such pain.
Pieces of his life float away from him, taking bits of who he is and who he was with them.
He doesn’t know why he thinks of Daphne.
He remembers her: beautiful and stubborn and filled with nothing but disgust for him. He can’t blame her. She’d been hit by one of Eros’s arrows, the same as he had been, and only because of him. He’d pursued her, and in doing so, had caused her death.
Death.
Did she really die? Or was her spirit still alive in that tree, aware and conscious? He has no way of knowing. He’s not sure he even wants to know.
What is death to a god? Gods fade, yes, with not enough prayers or belief, but gods don’t die. They get injured and they get scared (not that they’d ever admit that) but they are, by definition, immortal.
He’s immortal.
He can’t die.
Even if Python succeeds in taking his power for himself, he will still be here. A husk, perhaps, empty and mindless and drained of everything that made him him, but it would be a living, breathing husk with a heart that beats and ichor that flows through his veins.
A fate worse than death.
Maybe, if Python does turn him mortal, he’d be able to die for real.
.
He does not experience that all-consuming agony again.
Instead, Python leaves and does not return for a long time (hours or days, he doesn’t know). He’s alone.
He is wholly alone, with not even the afterimage of his former self to keep him company.
.
He thinks of Daphne.
.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, or maybe the words don’t come out at all; they hurt coming out. It’s millennia too late, anyway. It doesn’t matter anymore.
.
Please, sister, he prays. Find me. Save me.
.
He dreams a few times.
Once he dreams he is chasing a girl in the forest, and every time he catches up, the girl slips from his fingers. When he finally catches her, she turns into a golden visage, and berates him for being pathetic.
Once he dreams of the sun. It burns and burns and burns until he is nothing but dust and ash and soot.
Once he dreams of a man-shaped being, with white skin and black hair like it’s been electrified, and void-empty eyes with twin stars for pupils.
“You are being torn in two,” the man says, a deep rasp to his voice that makes Dick-Apollo-whoever-he-is listen automatically. “This is destroying you, Phoebus Apollo, son of Leto, brother of Artemis.”
“Help me,” he whispers. “Please, Dream Lord.”
The third-eldest of the Endless shakes his head; elsewhere, a raven caws. “I cannot. You must bring yourself together on your own, or it will be meaningless.” The King of Dreams leans forward. “We are all different aspects of ourselves, with facets as numerous as the galaxies. There is nuance that you refuse to see.”
“It hurts,” is all Apollo-Dick can whimper out.
“Yes,” Dream says, soft. “But I cannot stay your pain. You must leave the Dreaming, now. You are too fractured, too fragile to stay.”
“No,” Dick-Apollo gasps out, because this place is warm and soft and to leave this place means returning to a world of pain.
“Wake now, Apollo Pythius. Wake, and remember who you are.”
.
Dick lurches into wakefulness with a choked-off gasp that turns into a whimper. He doesn’t want to be awake. Gods, he’d do anything not to be awake. His dream slides away, as though it’s water falling through numb fingers.
He clutches it as best he can, clings to the outline of the figure and the words he’d given Dick, but pain sears through him and he sinks into unconsciousness once again.
.
The next time Dick babysat Bud and Lou, he was sixteen and angry and needed to blow off steam. The fight had been bad, worse than it had been since Dick had left, and as he’d stomped out of the manor he’d seen Jason, pressed up against a wall and watching Dick with wary eyes.
It wasn’t Jason’s fault, and Dick tried not to take his frustration out on him; he was mad at Bruce, not at this tiny slip of a boy who flinched at raised hands and loud noises, who was boisterous and smart and kind. He tried to be a big brother—he took Jason out for ice cream, patrolled with him a few times, taught him the song Dick had made up when he was a kid. Jason liked him well enough, and Dick liked him back, but Jason didn’t trust him.
It was worse when he overheard the fights.
Dick tried his best to keep them out of Jason’s hearing range, but Jason was small and sharp and quick and knew how to eavesdrop; the inevitable result was that he’d shy away from Dick’s advances for a few weeks, or Dick wouldn’t reach out for a month or two.
He’d never flinched from Dick before, though.
It stung, worse than Dick had thought it would have, slicing through his bad mood like a knife through butter or like a Batarang through zip-ties. All Dick had done was turn to him, to grit out an apology, and Jason had flinched, eyes wide. Dick froze, and Jason flushed, and Dick turned on his heel and stormed out.
Harley found him on a roof, because of course she did, her hand closed around the leashes of her pets.
“Rough day?” she asked sympathetically, dropping down next to him. Her feet kicked the air, and Bud and Lou raced over to Dick, sniffing him and licking him.
Dick hunched over. “Understatement,” he muttered. He twitched when Bud nosed at his arm. He should have been surprised or angry or had some sort of reaction that Harley had recognized him even out of costume, but his anger had cooled into something numb. Why wouldn’t she recognize him, anyway? She’d watched him grow up, and she knew his mannerisms and body language, not to mention his height and build and the way his hair fell over his forehead in messy curls when he didn’t style them.
Harley hummed and knocked her shoulder into his. “Tell Auntie Harley about it,” she suggested. “I am a therapist, you know. Licensed and everythin’.”
“Psychologist,” Dick corrected. “And I’m pretty sure your license became obsolete when you became crazy.”
“Ooh, obsolete, fancy.”
Dick snorted. Lou curled up on his lap, and he petted the hyena absentmindedly. “Are you sure they’re not actual cats?”
“Sure as sugar!” Harley said proudly.
Dick smiled slightly before it fell. Abruptly, he asked, “Why are you here?”
Harley shrugged. “I need someone to watch my babies and I saw you.”
Dick squinted at her, but she just beamed back, and eventually Dick shook his head with a tired huff of laughter. “Sure,” he said dryly. “Okay. I’ll watch them.”
She squealed and threw her arms around his neck, and he patted her hand. She drew back, dropped a kiss in his hair, handed him the leashes, and backflipped off the roof, just like she had done the last time she’d left her hyenas with him.
.
“One,” Python says consideringly, “perhaps two more.” His fingers, long and thin and pale as the marble he once rested upon, squeeze Dick’s chin. Dick’s breath catches in his throat, too weak, too tired to mask his reactions. Python’s smile widens into something sharper. “Oh, you are pretty like this.”
Dick shudders. Poison, he thinks, you’re poison. Hush, cariño…
Python’s breath ghosts over Dick’s ear as he says, low and cruel, “I could take you right now, you know. You wouldn’t be able to do anything…you’re helpless like this. Easy.”
“No,” Dick manages to get out, hope rapidly slipping through his fingers.
“Oh, hush,” says Python, clicking his tongue, and Dick fights off another shudder, this one of helpless relief as Python draws away. “Your time as a mortal has weakened you, Apollo. Really, it’s a bit pathetic. The once mighty, how they fall…”
Dick, with what little strength he has left, bares his teeth at the snake. You’re wrong, he thinks viciously, the exhaustion slaking off with a suddenness that nearly stuns him. Being mortal—being human didn’t make him weak. It made him strong. It gave him something to fight for, and Dick refuses to let that be the thing that holds him back.
He was never just a human, no matter how much he wishes he’d been. He is a god, and if he keeps fighting it—if he keeps shutting out this part of him, shoving it down and pretending it’s not there unless it suits him—there will be nothing left of him by the time Python is through with him.
He can’t let that happen.
He can’t, because he promised himself, he told his kids, he’d be there. He’d be involved as much as he can, he’d visit and hang out with them and be their dad, and he can’t very well do that if he’s nothing but an empty husk.
The circlet around his head tightens, and he shouts as pain rolls through him—but this time he fights it.
He does not see himself glow, brighter and brighter, golden light spilling from every atom of his being, brighter and brighter and brighter. (The apparition, that he cannot see anymore, too much strength lost, smirks, and turns into a beam of light. It loops around his body and disperses as soon as it touches, melting into him.)
Python hisses, and the circlet’s intensity ratchets up, and up, and up—
Apollo yells, and the circlet shatters.
.
All Dick had wanted was to pop in and say hi, maybe join in on patrol. It was supposed to be a quiet night—but then it never stayed that way, did it?
The others had all gone back to the Cave, but Dick had opted to stay out. He needed to breathe, was all. The Cave was suffocating sometimes. Bruce was suffocating. Oh, sure, he’d gotten better and worse and better, fluctuating, but god, sometimes Dick wanted to scream.
He’s an adult! he wanted to snap. He had his own apartment paid for by him in a different city; Bruce couldn’t control him anymore.
“Hiya, Birdie.”
“Hi, Harley.” Dick laughed when Bud wormed his way onto Dick’s lap. He pet the soft fur, running his hand down the hyena’s back. “Need a babysitter?”
“Nah, not this time,” said Harley, throwing an arm over Dick’s shoulders. “You look like you could use some emotional support hyenas, is all.”
Dick snorted. “Oh, is that all.”
She squeezed his shoulder. “Wanna talk about it?”
Dick hesitated, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it’s—it’s just. I don’t know.”
“Inhale,” she said, and Dick, mildly annoyed as he was, obeyed. And again when she said, “Exhale.”
After a few repetitions of this, and also of Bud and Lou clambering on top of him, Dick felt some of the tension in his shoulders release. He buried his face in Lou’s fur, trying not to feel pathetic.
“I can’t tell ya how many times Ivy’s had to do that for me,” said Harley after a moment. Dick glanced at her. She shrugged. “It follows you, ya know? Don’t matter how little it was, anything can set you off. It can be as little as a color, or a shirt, or even just the weather.”
Rain, Dick thought, and then, out of nowhere, laurel trees and hyacinths. More confusingly, the flower he thought of when he thought of hyacinth wasn’t a hyacinth at all; it was an iris.
“It’s still a bit—pathetic.”
“Sure, but everyone’s a bit pathetic,” Harley said. “Bats is pathetic, Supes is pathetic…”
“Wonder Woman isn’t,” said Dick, a small, amused smile creeping up his lips. Lou nuzzled his chest and he stroked the bristly fur.
“Okay, but that’s Wonder Woman.”
Dick laughed. Maybe it wasn’t a very big laugh, and maybe it was a bit more tired than he’d have liked, but it was a laugh and it was his and it felt a little like the sun coming out from a sky full of stormclouds.
Harley beamed at him. “There he is. See? Sometimes all you need is a talk with your Auntie Harley.”
Dick grinned back. “Thanks, Harley. Thanks, Bud, Lou.” He stroked the hyenas’ a few more times and stood. He stretched, twisting to the side. Harley watched, still beaming.
“If you ever wanna babysit, I ain’t sayin’ no,” she said, also standing.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he promised her, and flipped off the roof with a sloppy salute.
.
Apollo tears off the chains easily; Python’s alabaster skin pales further to a deathly white. He stumbles back on two feet and falls to the floor, slithering back as a snake. Apollo bares his teeth in a smile that stretches across his entire face and turns it into a bow, drawn and taut with the threat of an arrow in his eyes.
“I really should be thanking you,” he says, stalking forward. Python backs up, hitting the door. Apollo snaps his fingers, and the door explodes outwards. Python slithers as fast as he can, but Apollo pursues him through the small building. He feels it now, the power that thrums in this field of ruins. He bursts out into the sunlight, and nearly staggers for how it pours into him.
Power, so much power, power he’d not felt in what seems like eons. He spreads his arms, soaking it in, and matches the sun glow-for-glow.
His hair, white-streaked black, fades to a brilliant blond spun from golden threads. His skin tans, and his clothes wrap around him, not quite a toga but not quite modern, either.
Python is making desperately for the ruins that remain. Apollo catches up easily.
“You’re the reason,” he continues, “that I can be like this. Otherwise, gosh, I might have just never realized what an idiot I was being!”
He makes a motion of drawing back a bowstring, and as he does, his bow appears in his hand. He reaches behind his back to draw out an arrow from the quiver that materializes. He nocks the arrow as Python grows; Apollo grows with him, until they’re the size that would be appropriate for the throne room on Olympus.
“Your power is a lie,” hisses Python. “I hold it now, it is mine—”
“Most of it,” Apollo agrees with an easy smile. “I thought you were smarter than this, honestly. Why would you lead me right to where you’re keeping it?”
Python’s eyes flash with panic, and Apollo grins. He can sense it, like he can sense what used to be here, in this place, years upon years upon years of sacrifices and worship all dedicated to him.
“This is my temple,” he says. “You brought me to my temple and you—what? Thought I’d just give in? Let you have my power?”
“You cannot kill me,” says Python, “the laws—”
“Oh, fuck the laws.”
There.
Apollo aims the bow; releases the arrow; a crack in the ground opens, widens, and he reaches down and closes his hand around his lyre. The bow is hung over his back, and he cradles the lyre and he strums, and oh, he thinks, finally.
He loses track of what happens a little, lost in the ocean of power that threatens to drown him in its radiance. The rays of the sun wrap around him like a hug, and his skin buzzes, and music flows from the lyre.
When he’s next aware of himself and his surroundings, Python is small, small enough that he can pick up the snake. Apollo levels him with a look that isn’t a glare, not really, but still makes Python’s squirming increase in effort.
“Good try,” says Apollo, “but you’ll have to do better than if you want to kill me.”
“Don’t,” says Python, “don’t kill me, I don’t want to go back there—”
“Whoops,” says Apollo blandly as he squeezes his hand around the snake.
Python screams and disintegrates into dust, and Apollo watches as the dust slowly fades out of existence.
He stays there, in the ruins of his temple, breathing in the air. He’s missed this place. He’s missed his oracles.
Rachel.
A thought, distant at first, grows in his mind.
What has his family been up to?
What have his children been up to?
…Have they been working together?
It’s probable, Apollo thinks, sighing. He knew it the moment he found out Ra’s had taken Tim, Will, and Kayla. His lives are slamming into each other, and there’s no way to stop it.
He wouldn’t if he could, he realizes. He likes being Dick Grayson, but he can’t let it consume him. He can’t let himself sink too deep into mortality, unless he wants something like this to happen again. But…that doesn’t mean he has to distance himself completely.
He’d been doing fine, he’d just…not really let himself breathe. He’d gone to Olympus what, twice? He’d kept the biggest secret of his life from his family, and he’d gotten himself shot, for fuck’s sake. He can…he can have both. Right? Doesn’t he deserve that much, at least?
Well. Either he stays here and loses himself in his thoughts, or…
He stretches. His clothes morph into a black hoodie with the Nightwing symbol, and his pants are a warm sun-bright yellow. His hair flickers before settling on black.
“Right,” he mutters to himself.
Time to face the fire.