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Tim wakes up with a headache.
That in itself isn’t surprising-- Tim’s used to waking up with headaches on mornings after a bad night. His body feels heavy and it takes him a few moments to groggily come to his senses.
“Drake!” Damian’s voice hisses from somewhere
And there’s the cause of the headache. He groans and considers the pros and cons of telling Damian to be quiet.
“Drake.”
Something nudges him in the ribs. Then again. It feels like a foot. Tim decides the pros outweigh the cons.
“Shut up,” he mumbles. “‘S too early for this.”
Somewhere, Damian sighs deeply. “Drake, if my estimations are correct it is currently two in the afternoon.”
That properly woke him up.
“Estimations?”
Tim opens his eyes and seeks out Damian in the near darkness. He doesn’t have to look too far-- Damian is a mere three feet away from him. Even in the shadows, Tim can make out his scowl.
“We’ve been kidnapped, Drake,” he sneers. “I’ve been trying to find a way to escape while you were asleep.”
Tim looks around. The room they’ve been put in is square and void of any furniture. The only thing of interest is the large door in the center of one of the walls. There’s a thin shaft of light visible coming from the gap between the door and the floor. The whole place is cold and smells of earth and mildew, so Tim assumes it’s safe to guess they’re probably in a basement.
“Not many options for that,” he notes dryly, earning himself a kick in the ribs. “Quit kicking me!”
“Then stop making it so easy for me,” Damian snarks back.
Tim, being mature and above picking fights with thirteen-year-olds, chooses to completely ignore Damian as he tries to sit up with his hands tied to a pipe behind his back. Fortunately-- unfortunately, depending on how you look at it-- Tim has years of experience doing this. The concussion makes it hard enough that he has to lean against the wall for support. His previous slumped position had cut off circulation and he can now feel full-force the pins and needles in his aching arms.
“I can’t remember shit,” he mutters, eyes closed in hopes of making the dizziness go away faster. “D’you remember how we got here?”
The prolonged silence proves that Damian probably remembers about as much as Tim.
“Bits and pieces,” he finally grumbles out. “I remember seeing you getting hit over the head with a shovel.”
Tim scowls and feels a muscle in his face twitch. “That explains the concussion,” he says instead.
And the aching lump on the back of his head.
He tests his restraints. He’s surprised to find that his hands have been tied with rope. Pretty expertly, too. The rope isn’t thick, but it’s been looped several times around his wrists and the knot isn’t coming loose when Tim tugs at it experimentally. His gloves have been removed and the coarse fibers are rubbing the soft skin of his wrists raw.
“I could get out of these ropes,” he muses. “Might take a while.”
Damian huffs and opens his mouth. He doesn’t get the chance to speak, because Tim hears footsteps. He and Damian stiffen and exchange wary glances when the heavy metal door screeches open and someone flips the light switch, bathing the dark room in bright light.
Someone curses under their breath. “I hate this fucking door.”
Another person follows after. Tim squints at them in the sudden brightness. It appears to be a man and a woman, both about the same height. Her dark hair is loose down her back and there’s a jagged scar cutting diagonally across her face. The man standing next to her has a narrow face and pale hair and is actively avoiding looking at Tim and Damian.
“Looks like our guests are finally awake,” the woman drawls, looking entirely unbothered. “I was worried you’d given them too much, Jace.”
Tim glares at them, body tense and carefully studying the two. The woman seems to be perfectly at ease despite the fact that she has two Gotham vigilantes tied up in her basement. The man is nervously fiddling with the buttons of his coat and scowling at the ground.
“What do you want with us?” Damian snaps.
The woman steps forward and tilts her head, crouching so she’s level with Damian’s eyes. She smiles and it looks almost affectionate. Tim can see Damian recoil and scowl.
“I want the man you have in custody,” she replies simply. “And I want the blueprints and the box you found with him.”
Tim blinks, then matches Damian’s scowl.
“You want a prisoner exchange?” he asks. “You’d only need one of us for that.”
She turns her dazzling smile on him, and it’s somehow even more offputting when he meets her eyes. They’re a deep, dark brown and unlike her warm, almost friendly smile, only contain cold calculation.
“Correct!” she says cheerfully, standing back up. “We only need one of you for that. We need both of you if we want the codes you found in the apartment.”
Besides Tim, Damian goes very still.
“I don’t know them,” he tells her, his voice carefully toneless, expression blank. “The apartment caught on fire and they’re gone. I never read them.”
The woman sighs like she expected that answer, then looks at her companion. Tim remains carefully silent.
“Well, that contradicts what I’ve been told, which means someone here is lying.” She grins at Damian, but it looks less affectionate and more predatory. A hunter that caught sight of its prey. “Would you care to try again, sweetheart?”
Damian’s expression sours and he bristles at the nickname, but Tim knows what that tension in his shoulders means. And he’s slowly realizing just how much trouble they’re in.
“The papers burned. No one but Batman saw them. I already told you,” Damian repeats. “I wasn’t aware your stupidity affected your hearing as well.”
Her grin falters and her eyes narrow and Tim tenses, trying to work out the knots of the rope faster. The woman crouches in front of Damian. The friction caused by his frantic escape attempts is irritating his wrists.
He expects her to hit Damian, maybe stab him or something along those lines. He doesn’t expect her to reach up and gently run her hand through Damian’s hair. He snarls and tries to pull away, but she grabs a handful of his hair and yanks his head back sharply. To his credit, Damian doesn’t even flinch, he just calmly meets her eyes.
“Don’t bother lying to me, brat,” she hisses. “I know you and the Bat both read those papers. I suggest you start telling the truth.”
“Or what?” he spits out.
She doesn’t say anything for a few moments, studying Damian’s face. And then she smiles and sharply flicks her wrist, her other hand still twisted in Damian’s dark curls.
The man-- Jace, Tim assumes-- who’d been silent the entire time, steps forward. Tim’s attention snaps to him and he watches the man warily. It only confirms his suspicions when the man steps not toward Damian, but toward him.
“What are you doing?” Damian growls, trying to twist out of the woman’s grasp.
It happens quickly. Tim only has time to catch sight of something glinting in the bright lights overhead before a blade plunges into the meat of his shoulder and twists before being savagely yanked out. Tim grunts and hunches over, trying to blink through the sudden tears of pain.
Someone grabs him by the hair and tugs his head up until he’s staring into the woman’s eyes. The narrow blade is in her hands, dripping red onto the damp cement.
“He knows nothing!” Damian shouts.
The woman tuts, smiling at Tim. “I know,” she says smoothly. “But you do.”
That quickly silences Damian and Tim snorts, catching the attention of the three in the room.
“That’s the quickest I’ve seen him shut up,” he says, grinning at Damian. “But seriously lady. No one’s gonna talk. ‘Specially not the kid.”
She only smiles wider, bringing the tip of the blade dangerously close to Tim’s eye. He briefly glances down at it before looking back up at her, matching her smile.
The two leave soon after that. The moment the heavy steel door slams shut, he sags and hums in pain. His head throbs bad enough that he can barely think and the bright lights are really not helping. He leans back and carefully rests his head against the cold stone wall.
“Shit,” he mumbles. “That sucked.” His head lolls to the side. “Care to clue me in on what the hell I was stabbed for?”
Damian glares, but even through the white lenses Tim can tell it’s only halfhearted.
“Do you not pay attention to patrol debriefs?” he asks, a note of familiar annoyance in his voice.
Tim shrugs. “Nah.” He eyes the door. “I remember B talking about a fire, though.”
It’s Damian’s turn to shrug. “We’ve been tracking down the group that bombed a precinct. We found one of the bombers and took him into custody. From what we gathered, one of their targets was Wayne Tower. Father thought the coded message could be the location of their next target as well as the time it’s supposed to blow.”
Tim blinks a few times. “Sounds like fun.”
Damian’s expression darkens. “We left the apartment to the police. They said the FBI would have to be involved. The next thing we know, the building burned down, destroying all the evidence.”
Tim hums. “Seems like someone didn’t want the FBI to get their hands on that evidence. Maybe that bomber guy’s friends.”
“That’s what we thought. Until--”
“Until we got kidnapped and are now waiting to be tortured for information about that coded message,” Tim finishes. “For once, I’m not the reason we got kidnapped.”
Damian snorts. Tim half expects him to snipe back. Nothing. Damian remains silent and Tim accepts it without complaint and goes back to trying to work through the rope. He’s halfway there and he’s mentally cursing whoever tied these fucking knots, because goddamn it’s irritating and slow going and Tim can’t even fucking see what he’s doing.
“How’s it going on your side?” he asks Damian.
He doesn’t really look up from where he’s staring, unfocused, at the rough cement floor. It’s quite literally the only place he can stare at for longer than five minutes without making his head hurt more. He really hates those lights.
Damian seems to hesitate. “Not well,” he finally admits, rather reluctantly. “The knots are intricate. It would be easier if they’d tied my hands in front of me.”
Tim hums distractedly. “Same problem here.”
They should get out of this place, like yesterday. Tim doesn’t know when the two will be back, but he does know that their window of opportunity is slowly shrinking. He’s working as fast as he can which is still unfortunately not fast enough.
Tim yanks his bound hands in frustration and meets resistance because of that fucking pipe.
“They tied you to a pipe, too?” he asks Damian.
Damian stares at him blankly for a moment before narrowing his eyes. “Do you really think me so incompetent--”
Tim interrupts him because he’s absolutely not in the mood to do this. “Okay, the answer to that is yes. Good to know.”
He looks at the closed door, apprehension chewing through his resolve.
When he regains consciousness, his bones ache and he can’t breathe right. He coughs and Jesus that’s a bad idea because it makes bright spots dance across his vision.
“Jesus fuck,” he rasps.
It takes effort to lift his head, but he thinks of Damian and the fact that he literally passed out on him. Damian’s eyebrows are pinched together, his lips pressed in a hard line. He can see how tense his shoulders are, the way he’s hunched forward.
“How long was I out?” he asks, choosing not to bring any of this to attention.
Damian doesn’t answer for a while. Tim simply rests his head against the wall, drifting. He doesn’t feel the least bit rested.
“Less than an hour,” Damian finally replies. “Just about long enough for me to--”
Tim watches as Damian’s expression brightens and he grins at Tim, holding up his freed hands. He sits up, ignoring the spike of pain in his hand.
“Hell yeah!” he exclaims. “Get me outta here.”
Damian kneels beside Tim and starts to untie him. His hands are free and he can actually see what he’s doing instead of simply trying to guess, making it quick work. Within minutes, Tim’s hands are free and he’s struggling to get to his feet. It’s hard with two stab wounds in each shoulder and three broken ribs.
Damian seems to hesitate for a moment and it even seems like he’s going to reach a hand and help Tim up. He seems to think better of it and instead quietly creeps up to the door. They both wince when Damian opens the door and it squeals loudly on its rusted hinges.
Damian instantly darts out of the room while Tim lingers behind, nausea and his spinning head slowing him down.
He steps out into a badly lit corridor and stops dead in his tracks when he comes face to face with Jace and the other man from earlier. The guy-- built like a fucking tank, looming even taller than Jason -- is holding Damian up against his chest, his thick arm wrapped around his throat. The kid put up a fight, judging from the split lip and the ghost of a bruise forming on his left cheekbone. Jace’s nose is bleeding and Tim swears he sees teeth marks on his forearm.
Tim scowls and decides there’s no time like the present to be an absolute idiot.
He launches forward and kicks Jace square in the solar plexus before kicking the second guy in the back of his knees.
He stumbles.
That’s it.
Tim pauses momentarily, dizziness making his head spin. Jace is gasping, trying to suck in a breath, and won’t be a problem for a while.
The big guy scowls at Tim and he raises his fists, ready to try to fend him off. The man doesn’t step forward. Instead, he squeezes Damian until he’s squirming and clawing and until it dawns on Tim that he’s trying to suffocate the kid.
“Let him go!” he snaps, bouncing forward and attempting to punch him in the face.
The man’s meaty fist intercepts him and it takes one punch to knock him into the wall and drive all the breath out of his lungs.
He slides down the wall, more aware than ever of every single injury he’s sustained thus far. He tries to stay conscious, to move, to do something.
He can’t. Everything hurts too much. His senses are overloaded, his brain is shutting down. His vision fizzles out and his last thought before passing out is that this is now the second time he’s passed out and left Damian to his own devices.
The lights aren’t so harsh when he wakes up.
Tim doesn’t move for several minutes, instead focusing on breathing as deeply as he dares and taking stock. He doesn’t think he’s sustained any more injuries while unconscious. His back hurts like hell, though, from when he was thrown into a wall. Nausea is rolling in his stomach. Every other ache in his body is starting to become background noise at this point.
Prying his eyes open takes some effort.
The first thing he notices is the lamp sitting on the table in the middle of the room. It’s the only source of light now, bathing the room in its orange glow rather than harsh fluorescents.
The next thing he notices is everything else laid out on the table that wasn’t there before. Namely, all the tools laid out. A bone saw, pliers, scalpels. Not Tim’s idea of a fun time.
“Hey,” he says, breaking the heavy silence. His voice sounds a bit hysterical and he hopes Damian can’t hear it. “Do you think the others have found us?”
Damian’s expression is oddly calm, but Tim’s learned a long time ago that the kid’s distressingly good at pretending nothing is falling apart.
“These idiots are incompetent enough. I expect Father to be here soon,” he says confidently.
Tim hums. “He’d better be,” is all he says.
Neither of them dares acknowledge the elephant in the room sitting a few feet in front of them. Tim tests their new restraints, finding himself once again tied to the same fucking pipe but with wire this time. Getting out of that will be more challenging.
The nausea is steadily getting worse, to the point where Tim clenches his teeth and has to make a conscious effort to not throw up.
“How’re you--” he swallows thickly “--how’re you holding up?”
Damian shrugs. “The damage was minimal. I only passed out for a few minutes.”
Tim stares, raising his eyebrows. “He choked you until you passed out?”
Damian’s white lenses are annoyingly void of any sort of emotion. “He did. I’m fine.”
Tim would like to argue that, by definition, Damian is anything but fine. And then he stops and realizes with mounting horror that he sounds like Dick.
“I was awake when they brought in the tools,” Damian says after a beat, voice quiet.
Tim shudders and pointedly doesn’t look at the table. At that bone saw. They both know they’ll keep torturing Tim until Damian reveals what he knows. Tim’s already plagued with terrifying mental images of teeth pulling, bones breaking, dozens upon dozens of ways to torture him. And Damian, less than three feet away from Tim, will be unable to do anything to stop it.
“Sorry I keep passing out on you,” he says, failing to lighten the atmosphere.
Tim can’t take a breath without his stomach contracting and trying to expel its contents. He takes measured breaths, trying to breathe through the nausea. He’s clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw aches.
“Drake.”
Tim looks over at Damian. The room is bathed in a dim, yellow-orange light that strains his eyes and is absolute hell on his pounding headache. Still, it’s hard to miss how small Damian looks, with the vivid bruising on his neck, the dry blood crusting on his chin, the bruise on his cheekbone. It’s swollen and his domino mask is cutting into the inflamed skin.
“You can’t tell them,” Tim says, trying to sound as stern as he can manage. “You know this.”
He’s surely failing miserably. Damian remains stubbornly silent.
“Don’t you dare tell them anything, Damian,” he snaps. “They’re only focused on me, so it’s up to you to get us out of here, okay?”
Damian tilts his head slightly away from Tim, his jaw set. It’s not something he sees him do often, but Tim still recognizes it as his way to keep his composure from cracking. He’s so used to seeing the kid scowl at him most of the time that it’s easy to forget that Damian is just thirteen. He’s been Robin for three years when Tim at that age was still only training to become Robin.
A heavy silence follows, and Tim doesn’t know what words could fill the empty space.
“Drake. Timothy.” And this time, Tim can hear the way his voice wobbles, and Jesus he sounds so young and so small. “We’ve failed our first escape attempt. You know there’s no chance of us escaping a second time.”
Damian’s eyes slide over to the table and he flinches.
“Whatever the code says, it’s not worth this.”
Tim scowls. The anger is familiar and easy to fall back into. “Absolutely not. Damian these guys bombed a precinct. Batman and the others will come. And you are not fucking allowed to tell them jack shit, you get me?”
Damian matches Tim’s scowl.
“They worked together,” he hisses. “Whoever sent that coded message will probably send it again and they’ll find out about it with or without me telling them. Telling them won’t matter.”
“Damian for once in your life please just fucking listen to me!” Tim finally shouts, maybe a bit too loudly.
He catches a glimpse of Damian’s expression before he starts coughing, the force of them rattling his broken ribs. He struggles to breathe for a few terrifying seconds. When his breathing settles, the room is silent, filled only by a slight wheezing sound every time Tim inhales.
Damian is still and refusing to look at him.
He thinks that he should maybe apologize, or assure Damian that really, Tim’s been tortured dozens of times before. This is practically a walk in the park. He decides better of it, knowing it’ll only further fuel the fire.
He remembers a time when he used to get mad at Bruce for downplaying his injuries for Tim’s sake, back when he was just a year or two older than Damian.
It’s painfully ironic now when he thinks about it.
So, Tim says nothing. He’s tired and wrung-out and yes, actually he’s in quite a lot of pain and he’s enjoying not being tortured. He closes his eyes. God, he’s so fucking tired.
The silence is uncomfortable, heavy, and loaded with frustration and worry.
“We didn’t decode it,” Damian says quietly, startling Tim out of his slight trance.
“Hm?”
“Batman and I looked over the code back in Adam Gideon’s apartment. Father didn’t recognize it and we tried to figure it out before he said--” Damian’s voice falters and Tim doesn’t say anything about it. “He said he would ask for your input.”
Oh. And isn’t that a loaded sentence right there.
“How long have you two been working on this?” he asks, because damn, he really did not remember ever hearing about them chasing down fucking terrorists.
“Todd was helping us,” Damian replies, eyes fixed on the ground. “We’ve been working on this for a few weeks now.”
Tim hums. Their conversation is cut short by footsteps. Tim looks at Damian and steels his own resolve.
“Don’t you dare say anything,” he hisses. “You understand, Robin? Not a single fucking word out of you.”
Damian’s face was stony and he said nothing. It was enough for Tim. It had to be.
“Good evening gentlemen,” the woman greets cheerfully. “Are we feeling more talkative?”
Tim glowers. “Go fuck yourself, lady.”
She scoffs, striding into the room. Her heels clack dully on the wet cement.
“Honestly, it would be so much easier for all of us if you just talked,” she says, and has the nerve to sound disappointed. “We wouldn’t have to resort to this.”
“Torture?” Tim sneers. “Don’t sound like you’re not enjoying it.”
She smiles brightly at Tim and makes a show of taking off her jacket and rolling up the sleeves of her blouse. His eyes quickly flicker over to Jace, who marches right up to the other side of the table, standing far too close to Damian for Tim’s liking.
The woman takes her time striding over the table, her fingers hovering over the tools, occasionally picking one up and inspecting it before setting it back down. Finally, she settles on a blowtorch. Apprehension and dread settle thickly in his stomach.
“I hope your little friend is feeling as chatty as you.”
She picks up a fire poker. Suddenly, the blowtorch is starting to make an alarming amount of sense.
“I already told you,” Damian says, and any vulnerability he shared with Tim earlier is gone, replaced by a derisive tone. “I never looked at the codes. Batman looked them over, not me.”
The woman sighs, then gestures to the big guy, standing to the side.
“Hold him down,” she tells him, sounding bored.
He doesn’t miss a beat, striding over to Tim, grinning at him. He’s untied from the pipe and hauled to his feet. Tim struggles, trying to twist out of his grasp. With how disoriented he is, it doesn’t take much to subdue him, pinning his arms to his side.
The woman slowly walks around the table, and Tim watches the metal glow under the hot flame. He squirms uselessly, trying to get away.
“I’ll ask you again, Robin,” she says slowly, stopping once she’s standing in front of Tim. “the coded message?”
Damian is silent. His face is sheet white. His mask of indifference is slipping, his composure rapidly unraveling and Tim doesn’t blame him.
“Hopefully, this will jog your memory a little.”
She stabs the poker into Tim’s leg and then immediately pulls it out. His knees buckle and the agony is so raw, so sudden, that he doesn’t scream, just sucks in a hoarse gasp as his brain short-circuits, white-hot bolts of pain lighting every nerve on fire.
Time crawls. The agony lingers. His vision comes back, swimming, his head is filled with static. Damian is shouting, bucking wilding, held down by Jace.
Then, the poker is back, stabbing into his side again, and his vision blurs and whites out. His entire body is shaking, and breathing is suddenly the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. Inhaling brings sharp, horrible pain, exhaling brings burning agony. His head is spinning like a carousel.
He opens his eyes and he’s staring up at the ceiling.
He doesn’t remember anything except the agony in his side, in his leg, in his head.
When the ringing subsides, Tim hears the sound of gunshots. His pain-addled brain tells him they’re being rescued. Tim is floating, and everything feels like a nightmare.
Nightmares end, this agony feels endless and all-consuming.
He wishes for the darkness creeping along the edge of his vision to claim him.
He breathes, and it rattles in his chest. Colorful spots dance across his vision. There’s a face in front of him, but he can’t focus long enough to recognize the person.
Someone moves him, and it jars the burning pain in his everywhere. He screams. He must be screaming. The pain is so complete, his throat feels raw.
And finally, the darkness he’s been longing for finally claims him and he accepts it with a sigh of relief.
Waking up hurts.
The aches are dull, but they’re everywhere, and they’re persistent.
“Hrm,” he mumbles, trying to get his bearings.
Blinking hurts because his head hurts.
“Hi,” Steph says, leaning over him.
The tip of her braid tickles Tim’s nose and he tries to swat it away. His ribs hurt and sneezing would just make his existence more miserable. His hand barely obeys his command, and instead would’ve smacked Steph if she hadn’t caught it.
“Hi,” he croaks, then groans.
“Here.”
A glass of water appears in his field of vision, held up by Dick. Steph helps him sit up while Dick helps him with the straw. He’s too exhausted to feel embarrassed about it.
The water is bliss on his dry throat. It helps clear his head and he feels more awake.
“Thanks,” he says, now sounding a bit less like he gargled rocks. “Where’s Damian?”
He tries to sit up but hisses when it pulls at his ribs. He wraps an arm around his abdomen and stops moving.
“Sleeping,” Steph tells him, sitting back down in her chair beside Tim’s bed. “He’s been practically glued to your side.”
Tim blinks. “And… how long was I out? Did you guys get ‘em? The bombers?”
Dick huffs a laugh, but Tim catches sight of the look of guilt on his face. “Three days. Alred and Leslie are positive you’ll be fine with plenty of bed rest. And yes. Trust me. They’ve been taken care of.”
He scowls, eyes flicking down to the thick padding of gauze wrapped around where the poker stabbed him. Tim turns to Steph, raising an eyebrow.
“Jason killed one of them,” she says. “The other two are alive, but I’m sure they wish they weren’t.”
Tim hums and nods. “Good. Assholes deserved it.”
Dick huffs. “They did. And now you’re gonna go back to sleep. Doctor’s orders.”
Tim glares at him. “I’m fine.”
Dick raises a dubious eyebrow. Tim chooses to ignore it and simply shifts until he finds a comfortable position and allows himself to relax.