“Jason’s alive,” Bruce says, like Dick hasn’t just lost his own life.
Alive, he says, like somehow Dick’s loss has driven Bruce into mania instead.
Like the words Dick would have given anything to hear three years ago now prove comparable to the 100,000 lives blinked out and the thousands more choking down their last toxic breaths.
“Come home.”
—
Sometimes, grief is mourning someone who's come back to life, mourning the space they take up now, and the life reconstructed in their absence that you’re now forced to leave behind. And sometimes, it is mourning half a city at the same time.
For @badthingshappenbingo: Grief/Mourning
Fandoms: Nightwing (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Rating: Teen
Words: 5.8k, 1/1
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Blüdhaven (DCU) & Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Teen Titans, Batfamily Members & Dick Grayson
Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Donna Troy, Wally West, Tim Drake (DCU), Damian Wayne, Teen Titans (DCU)
Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Angst, Dick Grayson-centric, Dick Grayson Whump, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Hurt Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dead Bruce Wayne, Resurrected Jason Todd, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Self-Sacrificing Dick Grayson, Blüdhaven (DCU), Chemo Destroys Blüdhaven (DCU), Post-Chemo Destroying Blüdhaven (DCU), Radiation Sickness, Character Study, Relationship Study, Passive Suicidal Ideation, Bad Things Happen Bingo
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Nightwing Reveals US Government Keeps Bodies of Chemo Victims From Families
May 26th, 2025
Written By: Piera Landen
Six years ago, on December 7th, 2019, the city of Bludhaven was nuked. 100,068 people died in the initial blast and resulting fires. Thousands more died in the wake of the attack from radiation poisoning, displacement, starvation, and disease. It was the worst tragedy to happen in the history of the United States.
The Justice League and the United States Government never gave a clear answer as to why the city was destroyed. They claimed it was “an act of immense cruelty and devastation perpetrated by a supervillain with a grudge,” but refused to clarify further, claiming it would bring dangerous attention to some of their operatives.
Chemo drops on Bludhaven, decimating the city. (Image Credit: Clem Dillon, Bludhaven Times)
This attack was so devastating that heroes such as Superman, with a natural immunity to dangerous amounts of radiation, were called in to investigate the ruins and search for people’s bodies. Not to search for survivors, but for corpses. Anyone left in the inner city by the time they arrived on the scene would have already perished. They were able to rescue the few people on the edges of the initial blast zone who survived, but there were only a handful of these.
The only reason we have a true explanation of the reason for the sheer destruction was because the elusive Nightwing, in one of the few confirmed appearances of the hero and one of the only moments undeniably proving his existence, stepped forward two days after the attack and took the blame. He explained that the bombing had been perpetrated by a villain named Deathstroke, who had been obsessed with him for most of his career, and decided to take revenge on Nightwing. Deathstroke then dropped another supervillain, named Chemo for perhaps obvious reasons, on the heart of Nightwing’s city. The hero refused to explain the exact reason this ‘Deathstroke’ wanted revenge badly enough to destroy an entire city, but restated multiple times that it was “an extreme over-escalation,” and that he had never expected the villain to take their battles so far. Nightwing assumed full responsibility for the attack and vowed to dedicate himself to hunting down and bringing Deathstroke to justice, a promise that was never reported on further.
Despite the best efforts of the heroes who came to help, Bludhaven was eventually placed under quarantine by President Jonathan Horne. A massive wall was constructed around the infected areas, isolating them and preventing everyone from entering. The government-sanctioned super-team named Freedom’s Ring took control of the inner city, ordering all remaining metahumans to leave the city limits. This Freedom’s Ring committed despicable crimes against the people remaining within “the Wall,” including internment camps, human experimentation, and executions of anyone deemed “an insurgent.”
In the wake of the attack, many citizens moved away from Bludhaven and restarted their lives elsewhere. But many more remained in the city, living on the edges of the infected territory, beyond “the Wall”, until the radiation dissipated enough for them to begin rebuilding.
After the discovery of these actions by the Teen Titans, who snuck back into Bludhaven, the sole surviving member of Freedom’s Ring, Major Victory, was prosecuted and charged with crimes against humanity. He is now imprisoned in Belle Reve Penitentiary. But before the wall could be dismantled, the superhero Captain Atom, abducted by the Freedom’s Ring, exploded in another nuclear explosion that destroyed the city for a second time. This further delayed the return of the public to Bludhaven, but eventually the wall was mostly torn down and the borders opened again. People began to return and rebuild their city.
The former members of Freedom’s Ring. Only Major Victory, center, survives. (Image Credit: Office of President Horne)
Rumors and a handful of police reports and blurry photos indicate that Nightwing himself moved away from Bludhaven in the wake of the destruction, choosing to operate in New York City instead for roughly three years. However, he appears to have recently returned to Bludhaven and reclaimed his position as the city’s primary vigilante.
Many residents of Bludhaven have not forgiven Nightwing for the tragedy. But many others have, and it is not the place of the Daily Planet to comment on this.
It is our place to comment on the government of Bludhaven’s massive coverup of the initial victim’s bodies and their egregious desecration of the dead.
Earlier this morning, Nightwing released a report to the wider public via the official Titans social media accounts, describing the details of an investigation he has been conducting for the last month and a half. His report revealed the long-standing coverup the Bludhaven government has conducted by lying to the public by keeping the bodies of those killed in the initial attack from their families and storing them in a charnel house just outside the city.
Three months after the initial attack, the United States government announced that they would be releasing the bodies recovered by heroes such as Superman back to their immediate family members. The family members were allowed to conduct normal death rites according to their beliefs, but they were expressly ordered to not open the caskets.
“Chemo’s radiation is different from most radiation,” President Horne explained at the time. “It’s different. As far as we can tell, it sinks into the human body and continues to produce dangerous particles. The coffins provided contain the radiation, keeping everyone safe.”
That was a lie. The documents that Nightwing just released online explain how the coffins were instead filled with weighted bags in order to simulate a human body. Those who requested for their loved ones to be cremated instead received regular fireplace ashes.
Every single body was kept and stored in a charnel house. Countless people buried an empty coffin, one they believed their loved ones were in. Instead, hundreds of thousands never received proper burial rights. They were stored in fancy filing cabinets, each one carefully labeled with a name.
The charnel house where the victims of Chemo’s attack have been stored without the knowledge of their families. (Image Credit: Nightwing)
“The space is almost endless,” Nightwing wrote in his description of the charnel house. “There’s thousands of bodies, just abandoned and left to rot. It’s horrific.”
But, not only were the public lied to in a devastating betrayal by their government, but these bodies have affected people even today. The Flyboiz recently moved into the charnel house, believing it to be empty. Unfortunately for them, as Nightwing explained, the bodies were radioactive enough to mutate Flyboiz further than they already were.
“The radiation reacted with their mutant physiology, changing them into mindless, raging monsters,” Nightwing recounted. “They were dying. If I hadn’t arrived when I did, they would all be dead.”
Current Bludhaven Mayor Grayson-Lin has refused to respond to our request for a comment, consistent with her two-week absence from any public events. Former president Horne has also refused to comment. People have begun to rally on the streets of Bludhaven, surrounding the mayor’s office and demanding an explanation for the lies they were fed.
Everyone deserves to know the truth of their loved ones’ fates. Everyone deserves the chance to perform their respective burial rights. Everyone deserves honesty from their government.
Nightwing has brought the truth forward. Now, it is up to us to ensure this horrific wrong is corrected.
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(Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #4): I've made it to the Cs on this Directory. Considering how long that took, I think i'll be here for months. Is it worth it to do this? I don't know. But I'm not stopping until I hit the Gs (I find A-G at least make a nice flow of letters). So here, representing the Cs, we have Cain of the House of Mystery, The Calculator, Calendar Man, Chemo and Chemical King.
Cain is a weird one; since he's incredibly funny, but he only shows up for horror comics (meaning i'll never get to really read about him). Chemo is another weird one, the living plastic shell that spews chemicals everywhere (with no moving arms, at least back in the pre-crisis days). Calendar Man and The Calculator are two old D-list villians I really like, and Chemical King is a character I wish I knew more about (and who I wish didn't die).
Dick makes the drive from New York to Gotham on April 27th in the pocket of time when the sun hasn’t risen and only the earliest commuters join him on the highway. Each passing car doesn’t bother turning off its highbeams, and each flashbang of light brings with it a flashback of green.
Only when the lights of the bridge come into view and the lamps overhead pass by in a flashing rhythm, like the rain of gunshots in a dark alley, does Dick remember he’s traveling to an empty grave. A twice a year tradition has been cut short after only three rotations.
He makes the trip anyway.
There are flashing eyes staring at him from between the trees. Dick wipes the dirt from his pants before it’s even six-thirty in the morning and decides to visit the memorial site outside Blüdhaven instead. At least then he’s mourning the actual dead.
Only two weeks pass before he's moving back to Gotham.
───
Heavy boots land behind him on a rooftop, and Dick half expects a flare of light and pain at the sight of Jason’s red helmet.
The modulation only serves to remind Dick he doesn’t remember what Jason’s voice sounds like. “Stop visiting my grave.”
I don't mean to. It's a habit. I still miss you. What right do you have to tell me how to grieve? All of it, probably. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” Jason asks, like his words weren’t an order, a command, like he wasn’t sure that only he had the final say.
“What did you expect me to say?”
Jason doesn’t answer. He turns around and grapples away.
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