The First Vision

//Dick stared at the edge of the Lazarus Pit, watching the bubbles rise to the swirling surface of the pool,  very much aware of the shadowed onlooker he had.


"What troubles have dragged you here, little bird?" hissed Ra, the ruler of the Pit.


"I have come to make a deal. Give me back my mother, and I will let you live." Dick couldn't believe what he was saying, but before he knew it, his gun barrel was pressed into Ra's throat. What had gotten into him?


"GIVE HER BACK TO ME!" Dick screamed in his face. But instead of refusing like Ra typically would, Ra just laughed.


"Little bird, how can I give a dead person life if she was never dead in the first place?" Ra laughed, and before Dick knew it the ground started to swirl under his feet and it cracked open, revealing red-hot molten earth that he plummeted towards.//


Dick woke up panting, unable to process the dream he just had.


But the dream wasn't a dream. Because the night after that and the night after that, he kept hearing the same sentence whenever he shut his eyes.


"Little bird, how can I give a dead person life if she was never dead in the first place?"


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Damian had seen the visions too. So when Dick came stumbling out of his room on the seventh night with a look of terror and confusion on his face, he knew that his eldest brother was seeing the same things that he was. "Grayson." he gestured for Dick to follow him around the corner for more privacy. 


"Yes, Baby Bat?"


"You're seeing it too, aren't you?"


"Seeing what?"


"The Pit. My Grand- um, Ra. And you press a sword to his neck and demand to give us 'Umi back. And then he says-"


"Little bird, how can I give a dead person life if she was never dead in the first place? Dami- you're having these dreams too? So I'm not crazy!" he rejoiced.


"Shh, keep it down, you oaf!"


"But in my dreams, I press a gun to his neck," Dick mused absentmindedly.


"Gun?" Jason popped into the scene as if appearing from thin air. "What about guns?"


Damian gave Dick a look. Don't tell him about the dreams.


Dick went ahead and told Jason anyways. Damian mentally facepalmed. "Whoa, so Tim isn't crazy!" Jason muttered, ignoring the glares of the youngest Wayne.


"What?! Tim too?!" Dick nearly yelled, but was stopped by Damian's hand clamped against his mouth. "Sorry-" Dick whispered.


"Yeah, I talked to him after he came out of his room looking very spooked. He told me he saw the same thing for four days straight, and I just called him crazy. Guess that all three of you guys are going insane. Hum, what a coincidence."


"So why isn't Todd seeing these things too? It makes sense that he's inadequate to receive messages from the Fates themselves but-"


"Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there, demon spawn. Messages from the Fates? Are you sure that's not just your severe schizophrenia acting up?"


"Maybe your dementia has caused you to forget the time that I rammed an umbrella into your nose and I'm willing to do it again-"


"GUYS!" Dick stepped in between them. "Fighting won't get us to understand what the heck is going on with all of us!"


Tim turned the corner and walked up to the three boys, chewing on a piece of toast. "So I'm not crazy..."


"I mean, either we're all okay and Jason's not or Jason's the only one that's sane. And the latter is impossible." Damian replied. 


"The Ra guy told me that Mama was alive. Alive. Do you think-"Dick started.


"No way.  I saw her first. She was all.... burned up a-and very clearly dead." Jason bitterly said, ignoring the questioning looks of Alfred, who'd just passed by.


"But what if someone just planted the ring?" Tim piped up, eyes glazing over in thought. "The body was unrecognizable, but the only way we identified it as Mom was because of the ring. And there is a high possibility of someone making a replica and planting it at the office."


Dick stared at Tim."Should we really be grabbing back onto Mama after we just let her go?"


"Tim's got a plausible point though!" Jason stood straighter than before.  "Can we just, y'know, check it out for a bit and if nothing changes, then nothing changes."


"We shouldn't be doing this." Damian stopped the impending conversation, staring at the floor. "What if we find out that the ring was the original? What if 'Umi really d-died that night and these visions, these implications that we're seeing and feeling, what if they're just there to toy with us? There's a 98% chance that we're wrong- considering the hundreds of investigations into 'Umi's d-death that deemed it a cold case- and everything we're doing right now will drag our hopes up, only for it to be crushed again."


"Dami, we've been seeing the same things for days on end. Some supernatural or otherworldly force is telling us, quite literally,  that Mama's alive. How do we ignore that?" Dick countered.


Tim spoke, not letting Damian talk.


 "There's still that 2% chance we're right. We're talking about our Mom here. What if she's really alive, and she has been for the past four years, fighting for her life everyday? What if she's out there somewhere, hidden away for God knows what, but still breathing? It doesn't matter what the outcome of our investigation will be. All that matters is that we do the investigation in the first place, for our Mom."


"Timmy's right. It's the least we can do for Ma, considering everything she's done for us in the past. Heck, I was a street boy,  Dick over there was a freaking clown-"


"I WAS AN ACROBAT!" Dick huffed, but Jason ignored his outburst.


"Timmy over there has been through hell and back, and Demon Spawn was raised by ruthless assassins.  Look at the places we came from! Now look where we are today! Who do you think brought us so far?" Jason continued, ranting. 


Dick stared at his younger brother, amazed at his sudden perceptiveness. Usually, Jason was an immature, dirty-minded brat to his brothers. But whenever it came to the topic of their Mom, Jason was a completely different person.


"'Umi did. " Damian breathed in deeply, blinking back unnoticed tears. " You all are correct. The outcome doesn't matter. The fact that we looked into this for her,  that matters. We've got to do this on our own, though. If we even bring up the idea of 'Umi being held captive in front of Father, he'd lose it."


"Lose it?"


"Oh, come on, Dick. Have you not seen the way he acts whenever 'Umi's name is said?The way he looks at his marriage ring whenever the Kyle woman pops by? If he even had the slightest clue about what we're seeing and what we know, he'd go crazy to find her. And if the outcome of all our digging was just a deeper grave to put our mother into, he'd shatter. He's already broken enough."


"Let's do this then. Silently, under the covers." Dick murmured. "But, to be honest, I never really liked Selina anyways. She sugarcoats everything and baby-talks us."


Jason nodded. "She's just, so fake. Ma was real."


Tim smiled, watching his brothers start to bond over this shared motive. Finally, his brothers didn't bicker for a full twenty minutes. Finally, the brothers had begun to relate to each other over something. 


Slowly, their brotherhood was being mended, and Tim was the first to sense that.


***************************************************


A/N: Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and everyone in between! This is your author speaking! Well, typing. Reading. Idfk.


Some quick notes on the story I should've added sooner but was too lazy to:


* ISLA- pronounced (I-Lah) or (Eye- Lah), ((It means island in spanish, or 'rocky island' in Scottish, but I really chose this name was because of a really cool Danish legend, yall should check it out, just search us Isla danish legend or somethin))


* Selina is kind of like, a fling that stuck around. And I am going to antagonize her sooner or later- ooh, to create some drama ooh la la 


*IF Yall got any ideas for memories/flashbacks for the batfam, comment 'em below!


FINALLY- Thank y'all for reading this, I acc hope y'all like it, comment anything below (please attempt to keep it clean, if u are gonna comment) 


Now, ONWARD WE GO!


-JumpyBox13 (Nyssa)

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