Chapter Text
Here’s the secret that most civilians didn’t realize about nighttime vigilante patrol: It was generally pretty boring.
Crime in American cities had been falling for decades. Even in Gotham. Even in Blüdhaven. Yeah, shit still happened, and it was generally good to make a sweep of the parks and any particularly lonely or dark backstreets. But unless you were planning on taking out low-level, nonviolent drug deals—and in Dick’s opinion, that was causing more problems than it solved—you weren’t going to get much action, watching over the city from random gargoyles.
Not that he hadn’t spent a good chunk of his childhood watching over Gotham from random gargoyles anyway.
In Dick’s experience, real trouble came in two forms: the long-growing, entrenched, systemic kind that you had to scope out for months or years and dig out by its every entangled root; and the explosive supervillain kind.
Right now, Dick was several years deep into trouble of the former type. Turned out taking down a corrupt, violent police department was hard. Especially when your only real resources were a single informant on the inside and the stories you overheard tending bar at a cop joint.
But hard was no reason not to try, which was why Dick was currently tailing BPD squad car 7892, driven by Sergeant Mac Arnot. According to Amy Rohrbach, Arnot had a habit of planting evidence on suspects. If Dick could get footage of him in the act, he could pass it along to the DA’s office and to the Blüdhaven Journal. Maybe Arnot would go down, maybe he wouldn’t, but either way, it’d be another bit of root uncovered.
Unfortunately, Arnot had stubbornly refused to get out of his squad car all night. Right now, Dick was perched on top of an empty office building across from a gas station, watching him shoot the shit at the counter with three more of Blüdhaven’s (almost certainly dirty) finest. Just like he had been for the last forty-five minutes.
Which brought him back to his original point: the life of a nighttime vigilante? Pretty goddamn boring, a lot of the time.
Dick shifted his legs to let his feet dangle over the edge of the roof, relieving some of the numb tension in his ankles. He wanted to get up and do a few flips, to shake off the pins and needles, but that was just begging to have his back turned at the exact moment that Arnot left. He was 26; he’d been doing stakeouts for 16 years; he was a professional, in every sense except the one in which he got paid to do this. He could sit still for an hour.
His comm crackled to life in his ear. “Nightwing,” said Babs, all business. “You busy?”
“Define ‘busy.’”
“Are you currently in imminent danger or in the act of saving someone’s life?”
Dick watched through his high-powered binoculars as Arnot bought a pack of cigarettes from the gas station clerk, then took one out of the pack.
“Ah… no.”
“You should get to Gotham, pronto.”
Dick sat up, suddenly alert. “Did something happen to Batman?”
“No, but—”
“Did he ask for me?”
“What do you think?”
Even in the midst of his worry, Dick took a moment to be stung by that. It wasn’t like she was wrong, and he’d shouted at Bruce about the same thing plenty of times. But still. Nothing like confirmation that everyone knew Batman would rather drink Joker venom than ask for his help.
Barbara sighed. “Sorry. Look, whether he wants it or not, he’s going to need your help. He’s going to need everyone.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s Arkham. There’s been a mass breakout.”
Dick dropped his binoculars. “Well, shit.”
It looked like explosive supervillain trouble had reared its ugly head once more.
#
Sixteen Years Ago
The manor was the largest building Dick had ever been in, except the train stations in New York and London. But wandering through the halls, it felt more like those than like walking through a house.
His second day, he’d tried to count the rooms. He’d started with what the nice old man, Alfred, called the West Wing, and worked his way methodically eastward, examining each room as he went. He’d lost track halfway down the first corridor. There were rooms inside rooms, adjoining suites, and in one dusty old lounge, something that looked like it might be a secret passageway, although all it led to was an attic full of housekeeping records from the 1920s.
As cool as it was to live in a house with secret passageways, it was also lonely. Dick had been there a month, and had only seen his foster father twice. Alfred said that Mr. Wayne did a lot of business with Hong Kong and therefore kept somewhat nocturnal hours. He also said that Dick should call him Bruce, as Mr. Wayne himself had requested on the ride home from the Youth Study Center, but it was very hard to call a silent man in a suit who he’d only met twice “Bruce.”
Alfred was around more—enough that Dick felt okay calling him Alfred—but he was also busy, cooking and cleaning and doing mysterious other things that sometimes made him disappear for hours at a time. Dick had started helping with the dusting, and with stirring things in the kitchen. He didn’t really like cleaning. Cooking was more fun, although sometimes it was hard to keep his feet still while he did it. But mostly, he just wanted the excuse to hang around and talk to Alfred. You didn’t just sit there while someone was working and talk to them and not help.
So living with Mr. Wayne was interesting, and it was intimidating, and it was lonely. But mostly, it was frustrating. Because Tony Zucco was out there, somewhere, roaming the streets of Gotham. And he had killed Dick’s parents, and Dick knew it, and Dick felt… Dick felt…
Dick felt like shredding the smooth cotton bed sheets into tatters, and smashing the china against the polished hardwood floors, and ripping all the dusty old doors off their hinges. He felt like this whole overgrown house was sitting on his chest, sinking lower with every moment that his parents weren’t alive, and he felt like maybe he’d never sleep again.
When it got so bad that Dick thought he might literally die, he took action. It was easy to slip out of his window and down the drainpipe, easy to climb over the wrought iron fence surrounding the property. Dick didn’t know Gotham very well, but he was used to making his way around unfamiliar cities. He’d find his way into town, and then he’d find Zucco. He had to.
This plan lasted 100 meters down the road, when a great shadow descended upon him. Dick jumped back, startled.
The shadow was a man, dressed in a costume that was reminiscent of a bat, if only vaguely. It should have been ridiculous, or at least unimpressive—Dick was very used to talking to people in costumes, and he knew full well that clowns were just guys, underneath the wigs and makeup—but something about the way the man wore the outfit, or maybe just the way he stood, looming so tall in the darkness, made Dick shiver.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked. His voice was a growl. It wasn’t his real voice; it couldn’t be. That didn’t make it less intimidating.
Dick shook his head.
“Have you heard of Batman?”
Dick shook his head again.
The man sighed, and knelt down. His head was just below Dick’s now. “I fight bad guys.”
Finally, Dick found his voice. Just a guy in a costume, he reminded himself. “Then why are you talking to me?”
“You’re going out looking for Tony Zucco,” the man said.
“So?” Dick said, his hands curling into fists. “He’s a bad guy! You don’t… You don’t know what he did.”
“He killed your parents.” The man reached out towards Dick’s shoulder; Dick took a half step back reflexively, and the man let his hand drop. “He deserves to be punished. But what are you going to do, if you find him?”
“I’m gonna kill him,” Dick said. He knew how ridiculous it sounded, especially staring at this great and terrible shadow man, but he meant it.
“You can’t kill him,” the man said, “and you shouldn’t. But if you work with me, we can make sure he’s punished for what he did. I can show you how.”
Dick wanted to say yes. He wanted help. He wanted a friend. But he also wanted to say no. He didn’t know this man, and he was scary, and he came out of nowhere and started telling Dick what to do.
“Why should I trust you?” he said.
“Because,” the man said, in a voice that no longer growled, “I’ve been where you are.”
With that he pushed back his bat-eared cowl, and for only the third time since coming to live with him, Dick stood face-to-face with Bruce Wayne.
#
Cass wasn’t used to working active crime scenes. Generally, she did her job behind the scenes, either long before or long after the police got involved. She wasn’t the… the public face of the family.
But an Arkham breakout required everyone’s attention, so here she was, slipping through the flashing police lights and the yellow cordone tape and the din of loudspeakers and sirens to where Batman stood, assessing the asylum from a corner of its parking lot.
He turned just as she entered his peripheral vision. “Batgirl. I didn’t call for you.”
His stance was tight, imposing, immovable. A fighting stance. Not a physical fighting stance, but still.
“Oracle told me,” Cass said.
Batman’s lips twitched almost imperceptibly. “Did she, now?”
“I’m sorry, Batman,” Barbara said over the comms. “Obviously, if I hadn’t told her, Batgirl would never have heard about the mass Arkham breakout.”
“She has her own cases to work on.”
“She wants to work on this one.”
Cass waited them out. One way or another, she was going to help; she wouldn’t be much of a Batgirl if she left Arkham rogues on the loose.
Maybe Batman realized that, because his face smoothed out. “Robin is surveying the perimeter,” he said to Cass.
“Spoiler?”
A frown. “We don’t need Spoiler on this.”
Cass matched her frown to his. She had heard stories of the last mass Arkham breakout. The more people on this, the better. Right? “Red Robin?”
“Maybe later.”
“How about Nightwing?” said a voice from above, and then Nightwing somersaulted from the branches of a nearby tree, landing lightly on the ground beside Cass.
Batman pivoted half a degree to face him. “Oracle called you too?”
“Of course she did, B, there was an Arkham breakout.”
“It’s handled.”
Nightwing crossed his arms. “Handled like it was last time?”
Batman mirrored Nightwing’s stance. “It’s handled.”
“Excuse me, but I don’t feel like standing by and watching you get your back broken ag—”
“Go back to Blüdhaven. They need you there.”
Batman spun around and stalked away. Nightwing stared after him, his body leaning in the direction Batman had gone, like he was about to run after him. Then he slumped backward.
“Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.” He turned to Cass. As always, his body language screamed awkwardness when he spoke to her. Even facing her, he angled his shoulders away, like he didn’t want to be in this conversation. “Is he letting you help him?”
Cass shrugged one shoulder, deciding that was better than trying to put the mess of hers, Barbara’s, and Batman’s stand-off into words.
"Well, he can say whatever he wants. I'm not leaving," Nightwing said. "Oracle? Do you have any rogue activity that you can share?"
Barbara must have said something to him, because his eyes went distant for a few moments, then he nodded.
"Got it." He eyed Cass. "I'm off to Robinson Park. You sticking around here?"
"For now," Cass said.
"Well. I'll see you around."
He patted her stiffly on the shoulder and vanished into the trees.
Dick was the family member Cass had the hardest time talking to. Bruce and Barbara loved her, even if she often disagreed with them; she and Tim had bonded while they were working together to try to find Bruce, after his apparent death; Damian was guarded and aggressive, but he acted that way with most people, and Cass understood intimately why.
Nightwing, though. Cass knew why she was awkward with Dick, but she wasn’t sure why he was always weird when he talked to her. She would think that it was just general stiffness, but she’d seen him around other people, and she knew that he was very capable of loosening up. So she assumed that it was something about her that put him on edge. Her past, probably.
It was sad. A little bit irritating. But irrelevant, at the moment. Cass set off after Batman, to find out what he and Robin knew about the break-out.
#
Fifteen Years Ago
Stakeouts were boring. Dick loved a lot of things about being Robin—flying through the air on de-cel cable, catching bad guys, and most of all, the look Batman gave him when he did something great—but he hated stakeouts. Sitting on top of crumbly old buildings, staring at a dark warehouse for hours. What was the point?
Okay, fine, he knew the point, but he still hated it.
Dick glanced up at Batman. He was sitting as still as the gargoyle next to him; Dick didn’t think he’d so much as twitched in the past hour. How did he do that?
Dick wanted so badly to get up and do a couple of flips, but he knew if he did, Batman would glare at him, and say something about how maybe he wasn’t mature enough to be here. That’s what he’d done the last time. But Dick was mature enough to be here. He was Robin. He could do this.
He rocked back and forth a little. Don't get up. Don't get up.
Then, for the first time since they'd begun their stakeout, movement beside him. Dick looked over.
Batman's hand stretched out towards him. In his gauntleted palm, a single yellow M&M.
Dick looked up. Batman's face was unchanged. But the M&M was obviously for Dick, right?
He picked it up gingerly, as if it were explosive. (And given that it had come from within Batman's cape, who was to say it wasn't?) Eyes still on Batman, Dick put the candy in his mouth.
Just chocolate. No explosions.
Batman's hand withdrew back into his cape. A moment later it emerged with another M&M. Green this time.
Dick took it and grinned.
#
Steph would freely admit that investigation was not her favorite part of vigilante work.
Oh, she could do it—after years as Spoiler and stints as both Robin and Batgirl, there wasn’t much in the vigilante world that she didn’t have experience with. (She’d never been to space, though, which was totally unfair.)
But detective work was prolonged and nitpicky, and Steph preferred beating up the bad guys, which she thought was a completely defensible position. She would happily have gone the rest of her life letting Cass and Dick and Tim do the investigating while she came in for the takedown. Unfortunately, Cass and Dick and Tim “had their own cases” or “lived in different cities,” so generally, Steph buckled down and did her own detective work.
Which was a little harder now that she was Spoiler again, since the cops in Gotham had a real hard-on for Bats, and were less willing to let a supremely excellent vigilante in head-to-toe eggplant sniff around their crime scenes. Still, Steph had her ways. In this case, her way was to spy on the crime scene techs from the building above them.
Via this method, she had gathered the following facts:
- The dead body sprawled in the alley way below her was Willie Travers.
- Willie Travers had, in life, belonged to the Dockyard Dogs, a south Gotham gang with a very stupid name.
- Willie Travers' life had ended when he was shot with at least four armor-piercing bullets.
What the investigators below hadn’t said, but Steph didn’t need anyone to tell her, was that there hadn’t been a gang-related death in the city in over a year, since Black Mask had seized control of most local gang business, and that the gangs of Gotham did not typically throw around armor-piercing bullets.
So yeah, she was gonna stick around until she got a chance to check out the scene for herself.
“Spoiler.”
Steph flailed and spun around to see Cass, in full Batgirl uniform, less than a foot behind her on the roof.
“What did I say about sneaking up on me?” Steph said, without any real heat.
“Listen better," Cass said. Her voice had a certain smirking quality to it.
“Yeah, yeah. What brings you to the Bowery?”
“I was looking for you. There’s been an Arkham breakout.”
Steph’s eyebrows shot up. “Who?”
“Everyone. Except they caught Calendar Man on his way out.”
Well, shit. “How?”
“Someone broke in and opened all the cells from the guards’ station. The guards were knocked out.”
“So not an inside job, probably.” Steph consulted her mental catalogue of rogues. There was one obvious candidate. “Bane?”
“Oracle’s looking into it.”
Oh yeah, Oracle. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
Steph’s comm crackled to life. “Batgirl asked if she could let you know,” Barbara said in her ear.
“Aw, Batgirl,” Steph said, cracking a wide smile. “You don’t have to come up with excuses to hang out.”
It was hard to read Cass’ expression behind the mask, but Steph had a very strong sense that she was rolling her eyes. Hey, maybe Cass’ body language skills were rubbing off on her.
“I thought we could team up,” Cass said. “Track some of them down together.”
“That’d be fun. Who all’s on the case?”
“Batman, Robin, Nightwing.” Cass tilted her head. “Red Robin?”
“Affirmative,” said Barbara.
“Gang’s all here.” Steph glanced down at the crime scene three stories below. She really would like to take on some bad guys with Cass, but… “Look, I’ve got to finish up some investigation here, and I don’t know how long it’ll take. I’ll hook up with you when I can?”
“It’s a plan,” said Cass. She shot a line to the neighboring building.
“And, you know. Call me if you really need me!”
The sharp salute Cass tossed off as she leaped away certainly looked sarcastic.
“Oracle," Steph said. "Tell her she knows she needs me.”
Barbara, with the air of a mother refusing to take sides, laughed.
#
Fourteen Years Ago
Dick had messed up. Dick had messed up so bad.
Leslie had stopped the internal bleeding. His ribs and arm were nearly healed, the concussion had cleared up, and the bruising was finally, finally starting to fade. Dick was physically resilient and always had been, brushing off falls and fistfights easily. But no trapeze training injury or scuffle with a rogue had ever left him in as bad of shape as Two-Face had.
And that was just the physical stuff. His nightmares always matched the fall of Two-Face’s bat with the splash the judge made as he hit the water below the gallows, sentenced to drown. That was Dick’s fault. He’d played Two-Face’s game, and he’d lost, and lost, and lost again, but no one had lost as badly as the judge.
The worst part—the worst part was that the judge’s death wasn’t even the worst part. It was Bruce’s face when he’d told him he’d failed. It was his fault. He was fired.
Every time that image crossed Dick’s mind, he did ten more sit-ups. Maybe if he worked harder, healed faster, the memory would fade.
Maybe Bruce would want him again.
Dick kicked his tennis shoes into the closet by the manor’s family entrance, still breathing hard from his run. He needed a Gatorade and a shower. And a hug.
Alfred was in the kitchen when he went to get his Gatorade.
“Did you have a good run, Master Dick?” he said, cranking dough through a pasta press. For tortellini or ravioli, based on the bowl of seasoned ricotta waiting on the counter.
“It was fine.” Dick took a long gulp of orange Gatorade. “Is Bruce going to be here for dinner?”
Alfred did something with the pasta press that seemed to take an extraordinary amount of concentration. “Not tonight,” he said, without looking up.
Making tonight just like last night, and the night before that, and the night before that. Dick hadn’t seen Bruce in a week. There was always some convenient Batman- or Wayne Enterprises-related excuse. Dick wasn’t keeping the same nocturnal schedule as him anymore, but, well. It didn’t take a genius to realize Bruce didn’t want to see him.
Dick finished his Gatorade. He should go upstairs for a shower. He should do some homework. He should stretch.
God, he didn’t want to hang out alone in his room again.
“Can I help make the tortellini?” he said.
Alfred looked up from the dough and smiled. “Certainly.”
The two of them set up at the counter, each with their own round dough cutter, and folded tortellini in companionable silence. Dick had learned how to do this years ago, when he first arrived at the Manor. When he would help Alfred out, just to have an excuse to spend time with him. Before he got busy. Before he was Robin.
It looked like if he wasn’t Robin, he wasn’t anything. Not to Bruce.
Dick had thought… Well, it didn’t matter anymore what he’d thought. Bruce was only keeping him around at this point out of a sense of obligation.
And just like that, it occurred to Dick: Just because Bruce was keeping him around, didn’t mean Dick had to stay around.
He never used to stay in one place when he was a kid. When you were done with a town—when a town was done with you—you moved on. Four years in one house would’ve been unthinkable. He could leave, just like he and his family used to.
It didn’t matter where you were, as long as you were with your family. And Dick didn’t have any family here.
#
No apparent rogue activity in Robinson Park. Tim was a little surprised. You could usually count on Ivy to gravitate towards the greenery.
“The park is clear,” he said, for Oracle’s sake.
“Oh, good, I’ll tell…”
“Hey, Red.”
Tim swiveled around to find that Nightwing had joined him on the roof of the picnic shelter. “You and Batgirl, I swear,” he said. “You could make some noise one of these days, just as a courtesy.”
“And deprive you of the chance to hone your situational awareness? I don't think so,” Dick said, grinning.
“I was just about to tell you that Red Robin has cleared the park,” Oracle said, presumably on a shared channel with Dick.
“Oh. Well.” Dick’s grin drooped a little. “Do you want to go check out the docks?”
“With you?” Tim said. He didn’t mean for it to come out aggrieved, but yup, look at that. Aggrievement.
“It could be fun.”
There was something both admirable and irritating about how Dick pushed through as though Tim had responded in a normal tone. Admirable because it demonstrated patience—and also because, well, Tim really hadn’t meant to sound like that, so it gave them the chance for a do-over.
Irritating because it made Tim feel like a little kid being forgiven his trespasses by a Real Adult.
In an effort to be a little more of a real adult himself, he said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.”
Dick’s grin was just starting to really get going again when Oracle stopped it in its tracks. “Uh, guys? I think you should put a pin in the docks. There’s trouble with Batman.”
#
Fourteen Years Ago
It was weird to be back home. Not because he'd been away for that long, but because for the first time, Dick was realizing that the manor really was his home. He'd missed it when he was away. He'd felt almost physical relief when he returned.
Dick had spent more time in the manor than he had in any country before his parents died. He knew exactly how many rooms it had, now (45, unless you counted the walk in closets, in which case, 57). He knew where all of the secret passages were (he was pretty sure). He knew which rooms Bruce actually used and which ones he never touched.
So this was home. And Dick was home. And he was Robin again. And all he’d had to do in exchange was promise to never question Bruce’s orders again.
He could do that. He could be good enough.
“Hey, chum.”
Dick looked up from the book he hadn’t really been reading for the last ten minutes. Bruce stood in the doorway of his bedroom, looking awkward in that way that he sometimes did where he managed to project the concept of fidgeting without moving so much as a fingertip.
“Hey,” said Dick. Bruce visiting his room hadn’t been all that common even before the whole Two-Face disaster. Seeing him here now made Dick both nervous and warm. And the nickname—that was nice.
“Are you done with your homework?”
Dick pushed down the urge to snap that of course he had, that he could at least be trusted with that. It was just a question. A normal guardian question, even. “Yeah,” he said.
Bruce’s mouth made a minute shift that was the equivalent of a normal person rocking on their heels. “Alfred made kettle corn.”
So that was what Dick had been smelling. “Oh,” he said, not sure where Bruce was going with this.
“I found a documentary. On forensic accounting.”
Dick frowned. Bruce liked to get his information from books and journal articles and, if possible, in-person interviews. Not documentaries.
Then he put the two last sentences together. Documentary + kettle corn = ...
“Bruce, do you want to watch a movie with me?”
The shift of Bruce’s mouth got deeper. No, wait—that was a smile. “A documentary.”
Dick’s own smile, he was sure, was much easier to see than Bruce’s. “Whatever you say,” he said. “Let’s go get the kettle corn.”
#
“What happened?” Drake said. He and Richard were the last ones back to the Cave. Cain and Brown had arrived even before Damian did, and called Barbara Gordon on the large screen above the Batcomputer.
“Batman. Is being controlled. By the Hatter,” Damian said. Hopefully the depth of his disdain was evident to Drake. “Did you not listen to Oracle?”
“I meant how did it happen,” Drake said, his teeth bared in irritation.
“It’s not my fault!” Damian said, although of course it was.
Richard stepped forward, into the center of everyone's attention. “No one thinks it’s your fault, Damian. We just need to know as much about the situation as possible.”
Damian took one last moment to drive his glare into Drake’s idiotic face, then turned to Richard. “We were scoping out Gotham Cemetery, and we found the Mad Hatter hiding with a group of brainwashed victims inside one of the mausoleums. I went for the victims while Batman focused on the Hatter. I’d freed one person when four of the victims, in coordination with the Hatter, managed to fit a helmet on Batman’s head. Batman attacked me, and I had to flee with the victim I’d freed.”
“You fought Batman?” Richard looked him up and down, as if some major injury might appear out of thin air.
This was a waste of time. “I’m fine,” Damian said, crossing his arms. “I can defend myself.”
Richard and Brown shared a look—as if Damian couldn’t see them, as if he weren’t perfectly aware that they were communicating about him right in front of his face—and then Richard said, “Okay. What happened to the victim you freed?”
“I delivered him to the police station.”
“Did he say anything about the Hatter’s plans?”
“I don’t think he was with him long enough to know anything.”
“That’s assuming he even has a plan,” said Brown. “With Tetch, it’s 50/50 whether he’s got an elaborate scheme or he’s just doing the world’s creepiest LARPing.”
"What kind of helmet was it?" Gordon asked.
"A motorcycle helmet, I think."
"Well that's going to be annoying to get off of him," Brown said.
"Babs, do you have eyes on the Hatter?" Richard said.
"Not directly, but I asked Huntress to keep an eye on the cemetery. She says no one's gone in or out since Damian left."
"So he's still there, probably," said Drake.
"The question is,” said Brown, “do we go after him now, and take the chance of being low on information, or do we try to find out more about his plan and risk letting him slip through our fingers?”
Damian couldn’t believe they were still standing here. “We have to go after Father now!”
“Are you trying to get the rest of us taken by the Hatter?” Drake said.
It seemed that Richard saw Damian’s hands twitching into fists, because he stepped between him and Drake. “Everybody cool off, okay? I agree that we need to go after Batman as soon as possible.”
Damian stuck out his tongue at Drake.
“But I also agree,” Richard said, turning to Drake, “that we need a plan before we go rushing in.”
“Batman, the Hatter… How many civilians?” said Cain.
"Ten, now," said Damian.
Cain narrowed her eyes. “Twelve versus six.”
“We’re a pretty good six,” said Brown.
“Batman’s a pretty good one,” said Gordon.
Cain smirked. “I’ll take Batman.”
Richard nodded. “And Tim, you can take the Hatter. Stephanie and I will handle the civilians, and Damian… While Cass is keeping Bruce occupied, you focus on getting him free.”
And that, Damian thought, was correct. He’d been the one to let Batman get taken. He should be the one to set things right.
#
Twelve Years Ago
“I saw you on the news,” Bruce said, the moment Dick got back to the cave. He didn’t seem happy about it.
And I was just so proud, Dick thought. “Well, you know, giant disembodied body parts start attacking the shoreline—people take notice.”
He brushed past Bruce and into the changing rooms, shedding his cape as he went. When he came back out, showered and changed into jeans, Bruce was still standing right where he had been, his arms crossed.
“You were sloppy,” Bruce said.
“Oh, please. Tell me what I did wrong this time.”
“Wonder Girl and Kid Flash had to keep you from being crushed half a dozen times.”
Dick rolled his eyes and started up the stairs. Bruce followed him.
“The point of a team is to watch each other’s backs,” Dick said. “Or should I tell Clark to let Amazo zap you next time?”
“Your team is making you careless.”
Dick spun around on the steps, so suddenly that Bruce nearly crashed into him. “Don’t insult the Titans!”
“You should be spending your time training, not partying with—”
“We do train. Or is it not training if you actually enjoy spending time with people?”
“Don’t interrupt me!”
“Then why don’t you say something worth listening to!”
“150 pushups. Now.”
Dick snarled, which he thought he might feel bad about later. “Are you kidding? I just changed!”
“Now.”
For a moment, Dick stared Bruce down, appreciating the extra height that being on an upper stair gave him. But in the end, he blinked first. He always did.
“Fine.” He stomped past Bruce, down the stairs towards the workout mats. “Asshole.”
“And 200 sit-ups!” Bruce called after him.
On second thought, Dick didn’t feel bad about a single thing.
#
In Tim’s experience, plans never lasted past the first thirty seconds.
That didn’t mean you shouldn’t make them, of course—at the very least, forming a plan meant that you had to do the research to account for all the variables, which meant that when the plan did fall apart, you knew where to go to fix it. But still, it would be nice if one day, everything just went the way it was supposed to.
In the case of Operation: Unbrainwash Batman, Step One (Cass distracts Batman) had gone pretty well. Step Two (Tim takes on the Hatter) hadn’t been terrible either. And Step Three (Dick and Steph free the civilians) had seemed to be on track to go even better than predicted when Huntress had agreed to stick around and help out.
Until the civilians started fighting back. Like, competently.
Tim had locked one side of his handcuffs around the Hatter’s left wrist when one of the civilians—male, Black, early 40s, wearing a pair of earmuffs—grabbed him by the wrist and threw him over his hip in a textbook kokyunage.
Tim rolled and came up on his knee. “What the hell?”
The man stomped towards him. As he crossed into Tim’s reach,Tim swept his feet out from under him and pinned him to the ground. He had six inches on Tim and clearly knew how to escape a pin, so Tim wasted no time plucking his earmuffs off.
The man’s eyes went unfocused, and he slumped underneath Tim’s pin. “What…”
“You’re okay,” Tim said, helping him up. “Just get away from the fighting.”
He gave the man a gentle shove towards a nearby cluster of gravestones and turned back to the fight. Dick was taking on a petite but shockingly flexible blond woman in a top hat, Stephanie dodging a vicious low kick from a built man in a beanie, and Huntress avoiding… was that a literal karate chop?
“What’s going on?” he shouted to Steph, boxing in her opponent from the opposite side. “Hatter’s tech has never given people fighting skills before.”
Steph whipped an elbow into the man’s solar plexus. He stumbled back, but kept his feet. Tim yanked him down while his balance was off.
“I don’t think this is the tech,” Steph said, holding the man down with both hands and a knee so that Tim could get rid of the beanie. “I’ve seen this guy before. He runs a Muay Thai gym.”
“Are you kidding me? He brainwashed a bunch of martial arts experts?”
Steph shrugged. “I guess he got tired of losing fights.” She sat back to let the Muay Thai instructor up. “Why don’t you come with me, sir?”
While Steph led the boxing instructor over to join the man whom Tim now suspected was some kind of aikido master at the gravestone, Tim turned his sights back to the Hatter. He was hanging back by the door of the mausoleum, the cuffs dangling off his left wrist, while the rest of his victims had doubled up on Nightwing and Huntress.
Dick and Helena could take most civilian martial arts experts, could even take them two- or three-to-one, but the combination of superior numbers and not being willing to seriously hurt their opponents put them at a real disadvantage.
Tim threw himself into the fight beside them, trying to keep an eye on the Hatter. Getting back to Tetch to keep him contained was his primary goal; the last thing they needed was for another one of their own to get brainwashed.
But two minutes later—an eternity, for a fight—they still hadn’t freed anymore of the victims, and Tim still hadn’t gotten within five feet of the Hatter. Off to the side, he could see Cass fighting Bruce to a draw, but Damian didn’t seem to be anywhere near getting the helmet off.
Tim fell back, catching his breath. “There’s gotta be something to help us even the odds,” he said, to no one in particular. “Knockout gas?”
Dick took a right hook to the jaw and spat out blood. “Not gonna be effective in the open like this.”
“Maybe Catwoman—”
“In New York!” Steph said, as the woman she was trying to grab took hold of her head and threw her. “Fuck.”
“Let us help.”
Tim spared half a second’s glance from the fight to see that the Muay Thai instructor and the aikido expert had joined him at the edge of the action.
“You guys should stay out of danger,” Dick said.
“We know what we’re doing,” said Aikido Guy.
“But—”
Tim rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Nightwing, we need the help!”
Dick didn’t respond; he was doing a back handspring to get away from one of the three people he was fighting.
“Let’s go,” Tim said.
With the numbers slightly more even, the fight started to turn their way. Tim and Aikido Guy together managed to take out a woman in a bowler who he was pretty sure had trained in Krav Maga, and a minute later, she rejoined the fight on their side.
Tim took another moment to survey the fight, trying to get a sense of the big picture. Off to the side, Damian had finally gotten a hand on Batman’s helmet—but Batman threw him off before he could remove it.
The Hatter was only six feet away, closer than he’d been in the last five minutes. Tim tried to edge towards him, only to be intercepted by a baseball-capped woman who seemed to be some kind of mixed martial artist. Tim tried for a leg sweep and almost lost his own balance when the woman hooked his ankle.
“Spoiler!” he called. She and Dick were teaming up on the flexible woman in the top hat, which was probably the only way they were going to get her free without hurting her. But at this point, keeping Tim’s path to the Hatter clear was the more important objective.
Steph hurried over and stepped seamlessly into Tim’s place in the fight. Freed up, Tim started back towards the Hatter when a feral yell from Cass and Damian’s direction turned his head.
Damian was hanging around Batman’s neck, screaming his head off, while Cass held Batman in a wrenching elbow lock. Batman’s free hand batted at Damian, who was a second away from losing his grip.
As he started to fall away from Batman’s neck, Damian snatched a batarang from his belt and stuck it directly into the helmet. It dragged down the glossy black surface, pulled by Damian’s hand as he fell.
A trail of sparks followed the batarang. Batman stilled.
“Batgirl,” he said.
Cass let go of his wrist. He didn’t attack.
The Hatter, Tim reminded himself. He turned back around—but the Hatter was gone.
“The fuck?” Tim ran to the mausoleum and checked inside it. No Hatter. Where could he possibly have gone in the five seconds Tim’s head had been turned? “Oracle. What’s the closest camera to the cemetery that you have eyes on?”
“There’s a security camera at the entrance.”
“Check it, will you?”
A moment’s silence, during which Tim shot a line and swung himself on top of the mausoleum. He used his new high vantage point to check the surrounding areas. Nothing. Hatter wasn’t in sight.
“The security camera’s clear,” said Barbara.
“Where did he go?”
But Barbara, of course, didn’t know.
With the help of Batman, Batgirl, Robin, and their growing cadre of freed martial artists, they managed to free the rest of Tetch’s victims in under two minutes. Steph and Tim volunteered to accompany the whole group to the police station.
Steph clapped Tim on the back as they led the way out of the cemetery. “Nothing like a good fight to get your blood pumping, huh?”
Tim couldn’t really see her face, but he'd heard her sound like this a thousand times before. He knew that underneath the mask and hood, she was bright-eyed and exhilarated. He, on the other hand, just felt tired.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
#
Nine Years Ago
The fight started out like dozens of others they’d had in the last few years: Dick came home from the Titans, Bruce said something critical, Dick responded with something snide, and it was off to the races.
Usually, Bruce snapped after a few minutes and ordered Dick to run laps or reorganize the case files or something equally unnecessary, and Dick either rolled his eyes and did it or—increasingly, lately—ignored him and stormed off to his room. Once, last year, Bruce had gotten really worked up and told Dick he was forbidden to see the Titans for a month, but since that had ended with Dick turning around on the spot and heading right back to New York, he hadn’t tried it again.
But it seemed like they were headed in that direction again, because Bruce wasn’t calming down, and neither was Dick.
“They’re giving you a bad attitude!”
“As opposed to your sparkling personality.”
The Batcomputer’s screen tinted Bruce faintly green, flashing off of the face of his watch as he clenched his fist on the back of the desk chair. “This isn’t about me,” he said.
“No, it never is. It’s always what I’m doing wrong, isn’t it?”
“You’re insubordinate, you’re sloppy, you’re never here when I need you—”
“When you need me? You want me here all the time! I’m sorry, but standing around on gargoyles watching gang members loiter does not outweigh aliens attacking New York.”
“It’s not your call!”
“If it were up to you, I would never see the Titans!”
“If it were up to you, you would never be here!”
“Well God, I wonder why that is?”
Bruce froze, going from red-faced and furious to motionless and cold in an instant. “I have no need,” he said, “for a partner who doesn’t listen to me.”
“Well, I’m sorry I can’t be—”
“You’re fired.”
It was so sudden that Dick was several words into his sentence before he processed what Bruce had said. “I’m… what?”
“You’re fired. You can give me back the suit when you’ve washed it.”
Dick’s mouth gaped open. “You can’t…”
But, of course, he could. He’d done it before.
“Bruce… Batman, please.”
Bruce was turning around, heading towards the stairs. Dick darted around him, trying to make eye contact. “You can’t fire me,” he said. “I’m your partner. I’m Robin.”
“Not anymore.”
He stepped around Dick and continued on his way.
“Bruce! Bruce!”
But Bruce didn’t turn around.
Dick was… Dick was… Dick was dying, he was pretty sure. This was what a heart attack felt like; it must be. He was sweating, and shaking, and he could swear that his chest physically hurt. And, oh God, he was crying. He willed himself to stop, but instead he doubled over, heaving with a sob.
Bruce had to be able to hear him, and that was embarrassing, but if he could hear him, maybe he’d turn around. Maybe he’d understand what he’d done, and he’d come back, and say it was a mistake. Maybe…
The click of the grandfather clock shutting at the top of the stairs rang through the cave.
It was over, then. Robin was done. He and Bruce were done. Dick would wake up tomorrow at a normal time, and Bruce would still be asleep from patrol. He’d do his homework while Bruce tracked down leads on cases, and he’d eat dinner with Alfred while Bruce stared at the Batcomputer and ate from a tray, and he’d go to bed while Bruce suited up, and he’d wake up and do it all over again.
No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Bruce didn’t want him, and if he stayed here, he’d have to face that every day. Dick knew from experience that he couldn’t handle that.
So, fine. A plan. Dick breathed in for four, held for four, breathed out for four, held for four. In, hold, out, hold. He box-breathed until the tears stopped, and then he headed up the stairs. He had a bag to pack.
#
Dick’s whole body sagged in relief when he drove back into the Cave without a reappearance from the Hatter. Fights against brainwashed heroes were the worst—and he didn’t just say that because he’d been the brainwashed hero often enough. There was nothing more physically and emotionally taxing than having to fight a highly trained vigilante who you cared about.
He was the last one in. Cass and Damian had ridden with Bruce, and it was hard to beat the Batmobile for speed. Alfred was checking Bruce over in the infirmary when he joined them.
“Anything serious?” Dick asked, leaning against the dinosaur next to Cass. Damian inched over from his spot by the currently-turned-off heart monitor, trying to make it look like he wasn’t moving to get closer to Dick.
“Not for lack of trying,” Alfred said. “You could do an old man’s heart some good, Master Bruce, and get into situations like this just a little less often.”
“And miss out on your chicken soup?” Bruce said, sliding back into his shirt.
“Yeah, Alfie,” Dick said. Damian had crept all the way over to the dinosaur’s tail. Without looking at him, Dick snuck an arm around his shoulder. “If you want us to stop getting injured, you should save the comfort food for the days we’re healthy.”
“If that’s how you both feel, then perhaps I’ll cancel tomorrow morning’s French toast.”
Dick held his hands up in surrender. “Forget I said anything.”
“You’re staying, then?” Bruce said.
“Just until things settle down a little,” Dick said, shrugging. “If that’s okay with you.”
He held his breath. He was really too tired to fight this out right now.
“Good,” Bruce said. He stood, heading towards the computer; he would be up until dawn, Dick knew, creating a case file and trying to track down any rogues he could.
On his way out of the infirmary area, Bruce stopped by Damian. “Good work, Robin,” he said.
There was very little Dick liked more, he thought, than seeing Damian smile.
“Hey,” he said, squeezing Damian’s shoulder. “What do you say we go upstairs and decompress with a little Mario Kart?”
Damian gave him a hard look. “I get to be Gold Mario.”
“Okay,” Dick said, laughing. “Just gimme a sec to get changed.” He turned to Cass. “Want to join?”
Cass shook her head. “I’m heading back out.”
Dick ignored the little bubble of inadequacy in his gut. It had been a long night, he wasn’t going to be any good on the streets anymore, and Damian deserved some fun after the day he’d had.
Also, it wasn’t a competition.
“Good luck,” he said.
Cass smiled, ruffled Damian’s hair, and disappeared.
An hour and a half later, Damian had beaten Dick on every track, and fallen asleep with his head on Dick’s shoulder. Dick was debating whether to wake him up to go to bed, or just find a blanket to throw over him.
“Hey.”
Dick looked up. Tim stood slumped in the doorway of the lounge, backlit by the hallway light.
“Hey,” Dick whispered. “I thought you’d head back to your place.”
Tim sat down next to him and let his head tilt back against the couch cushions. “I’m thinking I’ll work from here for the next few days. More centralized, better infrastructure, and I’ll know quicker if something’s going down.”
“Yeah, me too,” Dick said. “What about Steph?”
“She took off after the police station. She’s working on some gang murder.”
“Really? It’s been a while since Gotham’s had one of those.”
Tim shrugged, which in his position was more of a half-hearted flop. “Least of our problems right now, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Tim closed his eyes, the way he did when he was thinking hard. It made the dark circles underneath them more visible. “I don’t like the way the Hatter just disappeared.”
“Me either,” Dick said. “And I really don’t like that we don’t know who did the breakout.”
“You think it’s Bane?” Tim rolled his head over on the cushion so he was looking at Dick.
“Maybe, but…”
“But why would he repeat an old act?”
“Yeah.” Dick fiddled with the joystick on the controller that was still sitting in his lap. “I think this might be someone new.”
“I think you might be right.” Tim sighed. “Great.”
They sat for a moment, letting the anxiety and exhaustion of a brand new threat wash over them.
“Wanna play Mario Kart?” Dick said. He could mute the TV so they wouldn’t wake Damian.
Tim picked up the spare controller. “Only if I get to be Gold Mario.”
Dick rolled his eyes. Brothers.