Ghost King Meets Batman

June 24th

[Edited July 27, 2022]

[Bruce's POV]

Bruce Wayne didn't sleep well on the night of the 23rd. It took him a long time to fall asleep and nightmares haunted him every time he managed to close his eyes. He hadn't been plagued like this since Jason had died and it wasn't something he had missed. Especially not these dreams.

He was dreaming about Jason's death again, over and over. Every time he closed his eyes he'd see it again. The only constant in the dreams was Jason's death, but he'd die in a different way each time and at the hands of a different villain. In one dream Jason was drowned in a puzzle built by the Riddler that Bruce just wasn't fast enough to solve. In another, a building fell on top of him, brought down by Clayface. Each time Bruce was too slow, too weak, or otherwise unable to save his son. Every few hours he was waking up in cold sweats.

Most people who have never had PTSD believe that the dreams unfolded exactly how they had in the real world. That the nightmares were a play-by-play of the trauma. And they were-- to an extent.

Something else about dreams is that laws of matter, motion, and mass don't apply. Sometimes he found that he'd forgotten how to use his grappling hook, that his punches lacked any real power to hurt his attackers, or that he couldn't move at all. People's faces would become distorted and voices wouldn't sound quite right. In the dream, he didn't question these changes, usually, but when he woke up he was able to realize just how little sense the dream itself made. Piecing them back together after he woke up was nearly impossible but that didn't stop his heart from pounding.

This last dream was different, though. It was almost like he was watching himself have the dream as if he were a POV camera following everyone else around. He couldn't remember having ever had a dream like that before.

He was in the Bat Cave, heading towards the computer. He saw Nico sitting in the chair behind the computer where Tim usually sat. He seemed to be doing some complicated encoding which didn't strike Bruce as strange at the time. When Bruce got within about 6 feet Nico turned to him and Bruce's heart rate skyrocketed. Who he had thought was Nico was actually Jason, whose eyes were cold and lifeless just as he had been when Bruce held him in his arms that night. The night of the explosion that took his life.

The billionaire rocketed awake, sitting up suddenly and gasping for breath. When he realized what had happened, he collapsed back on his bed and took deep breaths to try and get his breathing under control again. He felt bile rise in the back of his throat so Bruce scrambled to the bathroom to throw up. It had been a long time since he had actually thrown up. Usually, he had a very strong stomach.

After he had lost his dinner, he sat back against his vanity and put his head in his hands. This was too much. It was all too much. First Jason died at the Joker's hands and now Nico was lost to literal Hell. He was lucky and he got Jason back, even if he wasn't the same. Nico wasn't even sure that souls could find their way to the afterlife from Tartarus and he had definitely made it clear that he wasn't planning on surviving. The likelihood of him seeing his son again was slim to none and Bruce had to find a way to come to terms with that. It just wasn't fair.

Maybe it would have been easier if he could have known what was happening in the pit. Maybe then he'd have some closure or maybe he'd never know peace again. There was no way of knowing what Nico's fate was. Not knowing what happened was going to drive the vigilante crazy. There was no way to know if the demigod was even alive at this point. If he isn't, Bruce would never know what had killed him in the end.

Bruce left for the cave, knowing that he probably wasn't going to be getting any more sleep that night. Instead, he'd do some training to try and distract himself. He knew it wasn't healthy, but it was all he could do for now. He had to be at the top of his game if this monster war came to pass. He wasn't going to let Nico's sacrifice go to waste if he had anything to say about it so he had to be ready to put up a good fight.