Author's Note

This one is sad.

Prompts: Infection | “How could I tell you?”

It’s a temporary camp. They don’t have time for anything else, this deep in unfamiliar territory, Damian’s hands shredded to ribbons and Tim starting to limp. The sun is going down.

Nothing good happens after the sun goes down.

“Guys?” Dick checks their little campsite, a bare patch of ground sheltered by leaning, dilapidated walls. The building’s roof is mostly gone, but enough is left to shelter them from wind, maybe even rain. They can’t be seen from outside. That’s the important part. Dick checks the corners. The shadows. “Where’s Cass?”

Stephanie looks up from Damian’s bloody hands, half-bandaged in her lap. Damian looks up, too, his eyebrows pinched together in a scowl. Tim glances up from their food bag.

None of them answer.

“Who saw her last?” Dick sweeps the campsite again, but it isn’t that big. If Cass was here, he would have seen her. If she was here, she would have heard him saying her name.

Tim raises his hand. “She was with us on the road.”

“And when we came inside.” Steph looks down again. She wraps the bandage around Damian’s fingers, one more time, and then starts to tie it off. “She checked the perimeter. That’s—” Her voice catches. “That’s the last time I saw her.”

“You think—” Tim stops. He watches Dick. He doesn’t say anything else.

Dick takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says. It sounds calm. “She checked the perimeter. Did anyone see her come back?”

Steph and Tim shake their heads.

“Has anyone seen her since then?”

No answer.

“Tt. Cain can take care of herself,” Damian says.

“Don’t call her that,” Steph says. Then she looks around the room, over her shoulder, as if Cass might materialize to fight her own battles. Steph’s mouth twists.

“Dick,” Tim says, his voice quiet. Dick doesn’t look at him. He looks at the wall next to them, the wall that separates them from the road outside.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You guys stay here. I’m going to look for her.”

“I’ll come with you.” Steph nudges Damian away and stands up.

Dick shakes his head. “No, you stay here—”

“You’re not going alone.” Steph folds her arms. She has blood on her still, splattered across her thin cotton shirt. She lost her jacket days ago.

Dick takes a breath. “I need you to stay,” he says. Tim and Damian can’t be left alone together, and they can’t go with him. Damian’s hands are out of commission. Tim needs to stay off of his ankle as much as possible. “Protect the camp.” Keep Tim and Damian from killing each other.

Steph frowns. She doesn’t like it. But she doesn’t argue.

“I thought we didn’t go anywhere alone,” Damian says. There’s a nasty edge to his voice. Dick would be happy if he never heard that edge again. “Breaking your own rules, Richard?”

Something breaks off jagged in Dick’s chest. He rounds on his brother.

“I don’t think you have any room to talk,” he says. “When you start following my rules, you can worry about enforcing them. In the meantime, you can stay here, and you can keep quiet.”

Damian twitches back, his frown fading to something like betrayal. Dick doesn’t have it in him to feel bad. Not now. If he feels anything now he’ll feel everything, and he’ll freeze, and he’ll fall apart. He doesn’t have time for that.

Cass is missing.

“Dick,” Tim says again. Dick shakes his head.

“I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” he says. “Stay together. Stay safe.” His voice doesn’t waver. He’s proud of that. He checks his escrima sticks, his knives. “Don’t follow me.” He looks at Steph. At Damian. At Tim. “Do you hear me? Stay here.”

Steph nods. Tim nods. Dick stares at Damian until, finally, he nods.

Dick turns and walks outside.

The sun is almost gone, spilling its final rays of light over the dead city. Ruins loom dark and jagged on the edges of Dick’s vision. He sticks close to the outer wall of the building. He keeps one hand on his knife. He moves through the shadows as quietly as possible.

He checks the perimeter of their camp first. He circles the outside of the building, looking for any sign of movement, any sign of a struggle. A shadow, a footprint, a drop of blood. He sees nothing. He hears nothing.

“Cass?”

He keeps his voice level, loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to keep from echoing. He can’t risk attracting any zombies, not when he’s so close to their camp. They didn’t see any on their way into the city, and Dick hasn’t seen any since, but he refuses to push his luck. They can’t take another attack right now. Damian and Tim are still recovering.

Cass is missing.

“Cass?” His voice carries a little way down the street. He follows it, stepping lightly and listening for any hint of a response. He doesn’t hear anything.

She’s gone. She’s gone. They took her. She’s gone. You’ll never find her. She’s already dead, she’s dying, she’s bleeding out—

He stops in the middle of the street. He takes a deep breath. His heart beats hard against his sternum. It weighs heavy in his chest.

Think.

The voice in his head sounds like Bruce. It makes his throat ache. He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He would give anything to have Bruce here with him. To hear his voice.

He can’t think about Bruce right now.

Don’t react. Think. When did you last see her?

Cass was with them on the road. She brought up the rear of the group, watching their backs as Dick got them away from that last pack of zombies and into the relative safety of the ruins. Dick saw her then. In the ruins—

She was with them. She was there. She helped Tim walk, she got Damian to sit down and stay still, she double-checked the perimeter. She was everywhere, and she was nowhere, and by the time Dick realized she was gone, it was too late.

They didn’t take her. If someone had attacked the perimeter, Cass would have raised the alarm. There was no alarm, so it wasn’t an attack. Cass went out to check the perimeter, and then she just… didn’t come back. She walked away without a fight.

Why would she walk away?

Dick’s stomach drops.

He starts running. He runs back the way they came just a few hours ago. The road widens. Buildings grow smaller, more spaced out, as Dick approaches the edge of the city.

In the fading light he sees something on the side of the road. A kit bag. A black jacket. Small, sturdy boots. A bo staff. A pair of vambraces.

Cass’s supplies. And Cass’s weapons.

“Cass!”

Dick runs into the open. He runs out into the middle of the road, between lines of dense, overgrown brush, where a small figure stumbles over asphalt.

He runs to her.

“Cass!”

She turns. She reaches out. Dick sees her hand—the flat of her palm, pushing back at him. Stay away.

He stops.

“Cass,” he says.

“Don’t.” Her voice is quiet. Dick moves closer, holding his own hands out, as if to stop them from meeting. In the blue shade of the evening, he sees his sister’s face.

She’s crying.

“You,” Dick starts. And stops again. What is there to say? “You can’t—run off like that, Cass, you scared me half to death—scared us—”

“Dick,” Cass says. He can barely hear her. Dick steps closer, so their hands almost touch. Cass steps back. “Look.”

She turns halfway, and pulls the short sleeve of her shirt up to show him her bare, bloody shoulder.

The ring of tooth marks. The grey rot spreading out from the wound.

What is there to say?

“No,” Dick says. “No, you were—you were fine—”

After the skirmish. On the road. In the city. She was there the whole time. She was dying, and Dick didn’t even notice.

“I had to help,” Cass says. “While I could. But it’s worse now. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her stance is uneven. The rot must be attacking her nervous system, making her jittery and lethargic, slowly stealing her control over her own body.

“You should have told us,” Dick says. His voice breaks. He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He can’t stand here and watch another member of his family die. “We could have helped—we have medicine, we have—Tim, he’s a genius, he could have come up with something—before it got bad—”

He’s crying. He can’t hold it back anymore. Not with Cass standing in front of him. Dying. “You should have told us.”

“How could I tell you?” Cass says. “No cure. You can’t fix it. It would hurt you.” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t hurt you.”

Dick’s heart cracks down the middle.

He sobs. Cass stumbles away from him, down the road. And keeps walking. Her movements are uneven. Erratic. She won’t be able to control them for much longer.

She won’t recognize him for much longer.

He follows her. He doesn’t know what else to do. He can’t just leave her—he can’t go back and look his siblings in the eyes and tell them that Cass—that she’s—

She looks back. She stops. “Dick.” She holds out her hand, but this time Dick doesn’t stop. He lunges forward and catches her in his arms, and he pulls her close against his chest and he holds her.

He never got to hold Jason. He never got to hold Bruce. This time, he will. He doesn’t care if it kills him.

“Cassie. Cass.”

Her skin is cold to the touch. The muscles in her back twitch. Dick buries his face in her hair and cries.

It feels like an eternity, and it feels like no time at all, before Cass pushes him away. She steps back. She holds out her hand.

She looks into his eyes.

“Take care of them,” she says.

I can’t, Dick wants to say. I can’t do this anymore. How could you do this? How could you leave me alone? He wants to scream.

What is there to say?

“Cass…”

“It will be okay.” She looks at him with the same determination she’s always had. The look she gave him the first day they met. The look that says I know what I have to do. “I love you.”

She walks away.

Her steps are slow and shambling. Her arms and shoulders spasm and jerk. In the quiet, her breathing is labored and uneven.

Dick stands in the road and watches his sister walk away.

Dick stands in the road and cries.

The moon rises.

Dick stands in the road. Then he turns around and walks back the way he came. His throat hurts. His face is wet.

He doesn’t look back.