so we’re all in agreement that “Bruce dies and the Batman mantle is actually an eldritch curse from Gotham that passes immediately to his heir and that means Dick wakes up one night and instantly knows that Bruce is gone, and can suddenly feel all of Gotham and all of Bruce’s memories and has to grieve silently with his brothers because otherwise he’ll open up his mouth and tell them exactly how Bruce died because he can feel it and it’s kind of like Bruce is still in his head, and Gotham is even deeper, and the last thing he wants to do is put on that cowl or be anything of Gotham’s but people start noticing, those with magic and Sight and other powers, they see this mantle hanging over him he keeps denying and Gotham sabotages Nightwing every time he tries to step a foot out on patrol and drowns him in Bruce’s memories until he can’t really tell who he is again, he’s just a tool, and maybe Bruce was too, maybe that’s why he was always Like That, having a city in his head and generations of Wayne memories in his head and now the fear that one day it might pass on to Damian, and that fear becomes Dick’s fear, too, until somehow a Bruce comes back - Tim saves him, Gotham saves him, something yanks gravity backwards and says absolutely not, and Dick looks his father dead in the eye and realizes they’re both like this, this is a curse that can never be lifted from either of them, passing away was Bruce’s only respite but even that was taken from him (because of love, and family, and a duty that runs so deep it shakes the foundations of Gotham) and now they’re two men but they’re really dozens, and they know what the other is thinking, feeling, seeing, because it’s their eyes too, and when they do part a fraction of an inch, Bruce’s guilt flows over the cracks, sealing him in with it. Dick flees to Blüdhaven, but it’s not enough. Bruce collapses in Gotham and coughs up blood, Her price for losing a knight, and Dick comes back on feet that don’t touch the ground, in Bruce’s mask that has become molded to his own face, and when Bruce opens his mouth and bares bloody teeth at Dick, at Gotham, at the curse between them — all Dick sees is himself. because that, too, is Bruce’s” would be a cool fucked up fic, right?
