Chapter Text
The night Nightwing died was the worst moment of Dick Grayson's life. It obviously could be argued that Dick and Nightwing were the same person. However, Dick was raised on the contrary. His vigilante persona was an entirely new person. Nightwing was a figure, a symbol, yet another shadow for Bludhaven criminals to jump at. Grayson, on the other hand, was just a man. He didn't swing from rooftops and his smile wasn't magical, instead, Dick could be found doing paperwork at the local police precinct and gunning for the promotion to detective.
He wasn't in Bludhaven when it happened.
He was in Gotham. Batman was elsewhere dealing with classified Justice League business in Europe. So, Dick picked up the slack helping his brothers patrol at night. Dick could admit that he was homesick. Gotham didn't live under his skin the way Bludhaven did. Even if he'd spent his younger years swinging through Gotham's skyline with Batman's darker form beside him. Bludhaven was small, bright, and entirely overshadowed by its larger sister city. The satellite city consisted of a smattering of low and crumbling buildings, a barely functional police force (rivaling even Gotham in sheer negligence and underfunding), a crime rate almost higher than Gotham's, and of course The 'Nightwing', a shadowy legend of a hero. The little city was a shithole, but it belonged to Dick, that was what mattered.
Nightwing died on a rooftop in the Bowery.
Patrol wasn't harder than usual, easier even. Most of the Rogues were in Arkham. The few that weren't had either decided to lie low or were hero-adjacent enough that Dick figured they were fine without supervision. It might have been that Dick wasn't looking hard enough for crime. He was tired. Tired of Bruce's secrets and his nonsense and tired of his brothers’ inability to see that Bruce's emotional in-intelligence hurt him just as much. Jason called him the golden child. As if he wasn't the first to deal with Bruce's nonsense. As if he wasn't the first young superhero. As if every one of his responsibilities didn't pile on his shoulders like a sharp bag of rocks that poked him with every movement, every smile, every moment that he wasn't tending to them. How could he make them see he was just as scared and angry as they were?
He was looking out over Gotham, facing westward. Facing Bludhaven. Dick didn't hear anything but the near-constant whine of sirens and screams that punctuated the background noise of Gotham city. Didn't smell anything other than the mildewy, wet, grimy smell of downtown Gotham. Somehow Dick knew this was wrong. He should have been finishing his patrol route and returning to the manor. But he couldn't bring himself to push to his feet.
Something was keeping him here. It felt like he was quite literally glued to the concrete of this rooftop. If Timothy were to ever hear of this he'd simply say that Dick was being dramatic, that he just didn't want to deal with the chaos of the manor. It was more than that. Something drew him to this rooftop. And Nightwing sat on the edge of the building, staring towards his city with the buzz of his siblings chattering over the comms in his ear.
There wasn't any warning except for a quiet murmur of clothing against clothing.
There's no reason for his reaction either, at least not at the moment. But Nightwing was a live wire, pulled taut and humming with the guilt of these quiet moments to himself. So, Nightwing was up on his feet, escrima stick in his left hand as he stared into the darkness of this rooftop.
“Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you,”
And a small man stepped out from behind one of the AC units scattered across the roof of the building. The man was small in every sense of the word. Short, and reedy. The stranger wore clothing that enveloped his form like blankets, thinning black hair combed messily over a balding head, and small hooded eyes that stared up at him apologetically.
Dick felt silly. Of course it was strange that he hadn't noticed the man earlier, stranger still that the man had been able to scare him, but the vigilante found himself sheepishly putting away his escrima stick and holding his hands up in a reassuring gesture.
“I didn't see you there ,” Nightwing smiled. The man smiled in return. Oddly, it was the man's smile that gave Nightwing pause. Anyone who wasn't a Bat would have missed it. A smile half a second too late, lips stretched too thin. The man stepped forward and,
Oh
Nightwing stumbled back. It was wrong; it was wrong; it was wrong; it was wrong. People didn't move that way. Dick was familiar with metahumans. Several of his closest friends were metas. None of them moved like that. A strange loping motion, joints too loose. Too tight? And everything about the man suddenly seemed much more sinister. Instinctive alarm bells clattered in his mind. Nightwing forced his hands to his sides. Refused to flinch away from the inhumanity of the stranger. Dick saw the diminutive hunch of the man's shoulders. How he twisted his hands in anxiety.
How could he call himself a hero if he raised his fists at an innocent man because of instinctive fear? It wasn't fair to the meta. Dick was sure that many people have been afraid of the stranger in the past. Nightwing would not be one of them.
This was the vigilante's mistake.
A mistake because the man was on him in a blink, and unnaturally strong arms pinned him down to the concrete roof. A surprised yelp slipped from Nightwing's lips. Dick's reaction was just as instinctual as his fear. The vigilante planted the heels of his feet into the concrete surface of the roof and bucked his hips, twisting his body out of the other man's grasp. The stranger grabbed his ankle. Nightwing slammed the heels of his free foot into the man's fist over and over and over and over again. The man's grip only grew stronger. Nightwing could feel his bones creaking underneath the stranger's grasp.
A fear he'd never felt before ratcheted through him then.
He kicked and kicked and kicked, and he could tell he was doing damage. Dick could feel the familiar give of bone underneath his feet. Nightwing could hear the small cracks and pops as the stranger's fingers became more and more mangled. Still, somehow, the stranger held fast. This wasn't working. Nightwing aimed for the man's face instead. The other man’s nose crunched beneath Nightwing’s boot.
Finally, the stranger let go.
Nightwing was on his feet and running before he knew what he was doing. There was this horrible rushing sound in his ears, like the white water of a river. How had the stranger managed to drag him so far from the edge of the building? Gotham’s skyline grew more visible as Dick ran closer to the edge. His right hand found his escrima stick; Nightwing thumbed over the button that activated the grapple line.
He didn't quite know why he was running. He could fight. He could fight well. But something in the back of his mind screamed to run from the thing chasing him. Nightwing's foot brushed the edge of the building. Fingers closed around the edge of Nightwing’s collar.
And then he wasn’t on the roof anymore.
The stranger threw Nightwing over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. Dick flew across the roof in a blink. Air left his lungs in a raspy gasp. Dick’s back slammed into the metal of an AC unit. The machine protested behind him with a loud screech. Dick slumped forward, eyes wide. It felt as if there was a tight fist around his lungs. Dick’s chest stuttered as he struggled to breathe. His eyes skittered across the rooftop, searching manically for the small form of the stranger. And Dick noted, Gotham was still. The city waited with bated breath, alongside its hero. The screams, the sirens, they had come to an abnormal silence.
The other man seemed to materialize from the sudden quiet of the night. Nightwing panicked at the sight of the stranger’s face. The stranger's sclera were black, his irises reduced to slim brown rings. Veins slithered under the skin of the man's cheekbones like snakes, toppling over themselves and sinking into his waterline. Freshly healed bony fingers stabbed into the flesh on Nightwing's biceps painfully. The Stranger's black eyes stared into Dick's with a quiet power.
"Don't move a damn muscle,"
Nightwing's attempt at a scathing retort reduced to an exhale as his body relaxed. As his mind clouded with a superficial calm. As the stranger's face became a hazy mist before his eyes. The stranger's fingers curled around Dick's jaw and wrenched his head to the side.
Nightwing didn't scream when he died.
He couldn't scream. He couldn't blink. He couldn't breathe. But the fog around his thoughts didn't hide the wet feeling of the other man tonguing Nightwing's jaw, moving down to the hollow of Nightwing's neck.
Please, please please no.
The fog didn't prevent the feeling of the stranger's thin fingers digging deeper into his arms, popping through the kevlar, through his skin. Dick could hear his heart thumping in his ears. And he could hear the wet sound of the stranger's mouth opening over his throat. Dick's mind was a blinding white. No muscle could move, weighted by the unnatural fog of the stranger's oppressive words. Move, move, move, Dick begged his body.
Nightwing's prone form didn't shift in the slightest. The fog persisted.
How did this happen? Some sort of cosmic karma? The universe's last laugh at the fabled Nightwing? A punishment was what Dick decided. I'm being punished . Teeth, smooth and frigid like porcelain closed over Nightwing's throat.
Then pain.