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Bruce dreamt of blood.
His fists were bleeding. No. He was wearing his armoured gauntlets. The blood wasn’t his own.
His gauntleted fists blurred black as he threw punch after punch at his opponent. His boot finally connected to their face in a kick strong enough to send them flying off the platform and through a glass case on the lower level. A glass case. The glass case holding Jason’s Robin uniform.
He leaped down to the platform his opponent lay bleeding on. Their bare back glittered with specks of glass, rivulets of blood running down in their wake.
“You let them kill you.”
“You let everyone watch you die.”
His voice thundered as he approached the man still lying on the ground.
Batman kicked air as his opponent sidestepped and flipped over him with a fervent speed despite their open wounds. Nevertheless, he slammed his elbow into the side of their jaw in a resounding crack.
“I trained you to live, and I watched you die!”
Tears soaked through the lenses of his cowl at the admission, the familiar white-hot pain of grief rippling through his chest as he dodged a kick.
The next kick caught him in the gut and sent him sprawling back into the wall. He grunted as the cave wall tore at the open cuts all over his back. He smiled through the pain.
“Good. Fight.”
He got up as Dick flipped over him again.
“Fight like a man who can’t be captured. Who won’t be killed.”
Jason’s yellow Robin cape hooked around his neck, pushing the air out of his lungs as Dick tugged, coming back to back with him.
“Fight like you’re alive!” he ground out against the pain, hands clawing at his neck even as he felt the blood running down his back. Dick’s blood.
Suddenly, the body at his back was gone and the cape twisted tighter around his neck, causing him to gag as he was slammed backwards onto the floor.
Batman got up. He laid out his plan to fake Dick’s death and send him undercover as his hands relentlessly found objects around the Cave to hurl at his opponent. He sent a giant dice crashing into Dick’s bruised back as it cracked in half.
Satisfaction washed through him even as a giant question mark aimed at his midsection sent him skittering into a concrete beam. His boy was fighting back properly now. Just what he’d wanted.
He went on, arms and legs moving as he laid out the entire plan before him. They were on top of the dinosaur’s head now, Dick ripping out a tooth to hurl at him as he protested being sent away — at being forced to hurt his siblings like that.
In response, Batman sent him flying headfirst into the floor down below.
“I can’t,” Dick yelled, voice raw and strained as they threw each other around.
He chased him through the parking area. Dick vaulted over him, landing on a motorcycle as Batman tore through one of the older models of the Batmobile to reach him.
His fists missed Dick this time, meeting glass instead. The force behind his next barrage of kicks disemboweled the motorcycle, sending pieces flying through the air as his leg twisted in a roundhouse kick to Dick’s gut.
“They’re my family!” Dick’s voice was hoarse. “My family!”
Dick leaped up onto a narrow platform and he followed.
“I can’t do it to them. I just can’t.”
Oh, but he would, wouldn’t he? He would obey Batman. He always had. He was a good boy.
“I’m alive, Bruce!” Dick was cornering him to the edge of the platform now. “I’m alive!”
“Good,” was all he got out as Dick tackled him off the platform, sending them both crashing down into the Batmobile below.
Glass and metal scattered everywhere as Batman’s bare back took the brunt of the abuse this time. Dick’s grip was constricting around his neck as he rained down punches on him. Batman braced and kicked him off with both legs.
“How can you do this to me?” He could barely recognise Dick’s voice now.
Dick’s head connected with something hard with a sharp crack as he toppled to the floor. He spat blood and wiped his mouth before getting back on his feet. Good. This time, his boy would survive.
Batman circled him slowly. “Why do we fall, Dick? We fall so we can learn to get back up.”
“No.” Dick’s voice was venomous as he brushed the broken Nightwing mask off his face. “No, that’s not true.”
He swiped again at the blood streaming from every orifice of his face. “We fall because someone pushes us. We get up to push back.”
He let out a cry and held his ground as Batman started pounding again.
“Things can’t be the same.” He blocked a punch with his bandaged hands. “After this, Bruce, after asking this, between us — things can’t be the same again.”
“I know. I’m hurting you. My family.” Batman didn’t relent, his fists moving desperately even as blood gushed down his own face. “I’m making that sacrifice. Because I don’t give up. I don’t give in.”
He rained down punch after punch on Dick, Kevlar gauntlets dripping with blood and painting the floor crimson. “But what about you? Are you them? Or are you me? After the Crime Syndicate captured you, tortured you, killed you — tell me, Dick, my boy, after all of this — will you give up? Will you give in?”
The fist came out of nowhere, catching Bruce in the teeth, sending his head snapping to the side, blood splattering all across the floor as the Cave echoed with the sound of the impact.
Dick’s face was a furious shade of red, blood covering over half of his face, one eye swollen shut.
“I’m not your boy.”
Bruce jerked awake with a scream, his throat raw, tears streaming down his face, sweat soaking the back of his shirt.
Dick's face. Blood. Glass. I'm not your boy.
He couldn't breathe.
His hands were shaking. He could only see their outline in the darkness, but he could feel them. The scars. The calluses.
These hands had—
No.
"No."
The word came out broken. He said it again and again, like if he said it enough times he could unmake what he'd done.
"No. No. No."
A sob tore out of his chest. He covered his mouth with one shaking hand, trying to hold it in, but another came, and another, until he was rocking forward, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
Dick's face twisted with horror. Two weeks ago. The Watchtower. Clark's quarters.
Bruce had overridden the security, forcing his way in. He had found Dick curled up against Clark's chest like a child, tears streaking down his cheeks.
And Dick had looked at him like—
Bruce made a sound that wasn't human. He pressed both hands over his face, fingers digging into his skull like he could claw the memory out.
He wanted to call Dick.
He couldn't call Dick.
Dick wouldn't answer. Dick hadn't answered in three months. Dick had looked at him like—like—
I'm not your boy.
Another sob tore through him. His whole body was shaking now, the sheets twisted in his fists, and he wondered distantly if he pulled hard enough if he could tear them. Tear something. Break something.
He'd already broken the most important thing.
Fight like you're alive.
Bruce's nails bit into his palms. Drew blood. Good. That was good. He deserved worse.
His breath came out in ragged gasps, each one tearing through his chest like something alive, something with teeth, something that wanted out. He wanted to ask Zatanna to make it real. To turn his breath into wriggling, toothy creatures that would eat him from the inside.
It would be nothing short of what he deserved.
The darkness pressed in. He couldn't see his hands anymore, but he could feel them. Scarred. Calloused.
Bloodstained.
They'd saved Gotham a thousand times over.
They'd beat his son bloody after he'd come back from the dead.
They'd forced Dick to stay dead. To leave his family.
His hands. God. His hands had saved so many people. Children. Victims. The helpless. And they'd beaten Dick bloody. The same hands. How was that possible? How could the same hands—
"No."
Quieter now. Broken.
If Alfred had heard him screaming, he'd made himself scarce. Bruce was alone in the dark with his hands and his guilt and the phantom sound of Dick saying I'm not your boy on endless repeat.
He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, making himself small in a way Batman never could.
And he stayed there, shaking, until dawn broke through the window and he had to face another day of being the man who'd destroyed his son.