Chapter Text
Dick smiles as Tim soars through the air, a bright speck of color against the pitch-black backdrop of Gotham’s night sky.
He follows suit, chasing the silhouette from one building to another, vaulting over electrical lines in blind ecstasy.
“Look!” Tim crows, doing a complicated range of flips he’d only perfected a couple days ago, showing them off with precision.
The praise falls from Dick’s lips, almost on autopilot. “Well done, lil’ wing!”
Dick almost misses the next step, falters, and nearly face plants into a wall, pulling sharp on his grapple line at the last moment so he’s skidding over a gravel laden rooftop instead of being a bloody splat against somebody’s window.
He still bangs rather forcefully against an array of pipes stacked against a couple bricks, the impact reverberating through his skull like a drumbeat to herald the impending headache.
“Nightwing? Are you ok?”
The voice sounds tinny over the comm, and much too loud right now.
“Yeah” Dick replies, trying to cover for the strangled tone with a cough. “I’m good, Robin.”
Dick waves at the kid fretting a rooftop over, giving an enthusiastic thumbs up he’s not really feeling.
“You never ‘slip’” Tim replies suspiciously, his frown an almost palpable thing as the short figure crosses his arms in a poor imitation of Batman’s scowl.
He remembers somebody else, also trying their damndest to be intimating and failing spectacularly and Dick can’t- he can’t-
Dick laughs even as his throat constricts painfully. If he looks at Tim any longer he’ll start seeing somebody else.
“Go ahead baby bird, yeah?”
“B said-“
“I’ll circle ‘round” Dick cuts him off, feeling slightly bad for the kid’s crestfallen silence and secretly vowing to make it up to him by taking him into the city tomorrow. “I’ll just do a quick sweep and skim the fringes of crime alley.”
Silence.
Then, hesitantly “ok” quickly followed by “but if you’re not at the checkpoint on time I will tell A!”
Now, that’s just mean. That practically compels Dick to be there like he said. Not fair.
Robin vanishes into the night, a speck color of somehow blending seamlessly into the black, and Dick exhales, body slumping slightly so his head faces the starless sky.
Stars are rare in Gotham. Rarer still with all the light pollution.
But sometimes, during the witching hour, in the deepest part of Crime Alley where all the street lamps are broken, the tiniest dot of light appears amidst the void.
“How cute.”
Dick closes his eyes and wills them to stop burning before he turns around.
“Hey, Jay.”
The boy, no, the man in front of him is older than the child that had died in Ethiopia. More filled out, taller, with a shock of white running through the dark hair they all share. Yet it’s still so undeniably Jason that Dick can’t help the pained smile.
Jason sneers. “What, that’s it? No ‘welcome back’?”
Dick laughs, a wet sound in Gotham’s polluted air, and makes an aborted attempt at reaching out before jerking his hand back. “Little wing-“
“What, I thought the replacement got that name, too.”
“Not a replacement,” Dick says absently, trying to commit this image of his little brother to memory. A specter of what could have been, if Jason hadn’t died. If Dick had been home. If he’d been better.
“You grew up, Jay.”
“No thanks to you.”
Dick snickers, trying desperately to keep the tears from falling and not quite managing. It feels like there’s not enough air. Somebody’s used it all up.
Not Jason.
Because Jason is dead.
His little brother, buried under tons of dirt, picked apart by maggots.
Dick dry heaves and Jason jumps backward with a disgusted expression. “What the fuck, dickhead!?”
“I’m sorry” Dick gasps, willing the nausea to go away. Alfred’s dinner fights valiantly to stay down, but if he doesn’t stop thinking about… that… right now, it’s going to be a losing battle. “I’m so sorry, little wing.”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” Jason snaps, muscles pulling taut under the leather jacket he’s sporting. He looms over Dick, a vengeful shadow, and Dick wishes Jason was able to hit him and not phase right through if they were to try and touch. “You lost that right! You lost it!”
“I know”
Admitting it isn’t worse than all the other times he’d screamed it at himself. If Dick hadn’t been such a fucking jackass back then, Jason would have waited for him to come back before going after his mother. If Dick had been better, he would have noticed his little brother spiraling. If he’d been better, he’d have saved Jason. Or died trying.
But instead, he’d been sky high, hanging from the ceiling of a spaceship to crack dumb jokes while Jason was beaten and blown up in a dusty old warehouse in Ethiopia.
And Tim- Tim isn’t Jason. He will never be Jason.
No one will ever be able to replace his little wing, but Tim makes it… easier. Because this time, Dick will not fail. Not again. He’d sworn on Jason’s grave.
“You would have liked him,” Dick says softly, plopping onto the cold concrete as gracefully as he’s able. He’s going to enjoy this illusionary company as long as his brain lets him, sanity be damned.
Jason scoffs, a sliver of light reflecting sharply off the white streak in his hair. Dick fights the urge to reach out and smooth it over.
“Replacement? I don’t fucking think so.”
“Language, Jay” he corrects mildly, huffing at the offended expression on the specter’s face.
“The fuck is wrong with you, dickface? It’s been years and this is what you wanna get hung up on? My fucking language!?”
“Two months”
Jason’s expression is almost comical like he doesn’t know what Dick is talking about. “What?”
“Two months,” Dick repeats patiently. “Since we saw each other. Remember?”
Jason blinks. “The fuck?”
“I got shot, and you were yelling at me to, I quote, ‘call B or so help me, Dick, I will flush all your cereal down the fucking toilet’.”
“What the ever-loving fuck are you-“
Dick snorts fondly. “As you can see, I did call B. And he’s still not letting me go back to Blüd on my own.”
Jason’s fists spasm at his side before uncurling abruptly, stance loosening into a faux relaxed state. “And you think I still give a shit about whether you live or die?”
No, Dick thinks. Jason wouldn’t. Not after they’d let him die, scared and alone. But his brain is usually kind enough to obscure that part.
Some days Dick likes to pretend that when he’s looking at Tim— the kid buzzed and drunk on the ecstasy of being Robin— and sees Jason’s autopsy report superimposed over the glinting blue of his eyes, that’s punishment enough for what they’d let happen.
And then he makes himself listen to the last minutes of recovered footage from before the explosion to remind himself that no amount of punishment would ever make up for it.
“I like to pretend you would,” Dick admits softly, watching a muscle in Jason’s jaw tick.
“Then you’re a fucking fool.”
Gotham’s cold air stings against the exposed part of Dick’s face, whistling along the rooftop’s ledge before fading into the dark between the alleyways far below.
“Maybe” he amends, inwardly grimacing at the sticky feeling of tears caught behind the domino.
“You’re absolutely pathetic.”
“So you’ve told me.”
Jason’s nose scrunches, combat boots grating against dirt. There’s a hint of teeth when his lips pull back into a vague semblance of a smile, ugly and twisted. “Have I also told you that you’re not gonna be on time for this bird, either?”
Yes, of course. It’s what Dick dreams about every goddamn night. That, and the footage of Jason screaming for him.
“No” he croaks. “I will be.”
“No” Jason laughs “you fucking won’t!”
And then the image of Jason vanishes over the edge of the building, and Dick wrestles the urge to dive after him into submission, strangling the cry for his little brother.
The subsequent disillusionment would only serve to refracture all the tiny bits and pieces he’d so carefully glued back together again these past years.
“This is Nightwing. En route. ETA five minutes.”
Dick swings himself from the building in the opposite direction that Jason had gone in tandem to the building pressure in his skull.
Jason is dead. But there’s still one little brother he has the chance to be better for.
This time, he will not fail.
He can’t.
—-
Tim is on his fifth… maybe sixth?… pot of coffee by the time he’s half done working through the majority of police reports and internet sites concerning Gotham‘s latest talk of the day.
The Red Hood.
It’s the only thing connecting both Bruce and Dick’s strange behavior; the arrival of the crime lord currently on the rise in crime alley.
Dick‘s been acting strange the last couple of weeks. Stranger even than Bruce, who returns from solo patrols looking haunted and shake. At least as openly shaken as Bruce ever gets, which translates to even more sleepless nights than Tim, obsessive city scouring, and Robin benched for the foreseeable future. Something that Dick wholly seconds, and that’s what makes it so very strange.
Ever since Tim assumed the mantle of Batman‘s Robin, Dick has been nothing short of protective, but ever since that day on the roof, it’s become overbearing.
If Tim leaves the room to get himself some coffee, it only takes a minute for Dick to slink around the corner in the guise of being hungry. If Tim goes to school, Dick will call him at least twice during the day to check if “you’ve eaten today, right?” or “Hey, have you seen my shirt?” and frankly, it’s concerning.
Not that Tim doesn’t like the attention or the casual way in which Dick will press against his side on the way home and envelope him in hugs. It makes every inch of him sing with content-safe-family he knows is nothing more than a very nice daydream he indulges when his parents prolong their stay in another country yet again.
But no matter how nice it is, he can’t deny anymore that something about this situation is inherently wrong.
And Tim is only five percent closer to figuring out why. Four, if Dick’s slip on the roof really was just that.
But Tim knows better. Dick does not stumble. Or slip. The air is his home as much as the ground, and whatever has Nightwing shaken, it can’t be good.
And in Dick’s books a short “not good” means potentially-probably-most-likely-most-definitely-sure-as-hell lethal
And Bruce can’t lose another kid. He just can’t.
Tim managed to pull Batman back from the edge last time, but he’s under no illusion that he’s going to manage that a second time.
Not when Bruce had been so intent on ending himself that it had taken Tim throwing himself headfirst into danger— triggering the instinctive response of Robin-keep-safe-protect Bruce would never quite be able to shake— for Batman to snap out of it long enough to rescue Tim from a couple thugs.
Tim still dreams about the way Bruce had crushed him to his chest, hands ghosting over his body to assess injuries, Jason’s name tumbling from his lips like a broken record.
So no, Batman absolutely cannot lose Nightwing.
The cup in Tim’s hand wavers, and he sets it down rather than risk spilling the steaming beverage all over himself. He can’t remember the last time he slept. Probably yesterday. Maybe.
The caffeine is slowly catching up to Tim’s body though, sending jittery impulses along every nerve ending, making his foot tap erratically against the floor to get rid of the nervous energy hounding him through another set of police files.
As of now, there’s only the bare minimum of solid facts he’s managed to dig up.
One, the Red Hood is elusive.
Two, wherever he goes there’s a bloody trail of bodies left in his wake.
Three, the Red Hood used to be an alias of the Joker.
And logically Tim knows that the Joker’s in Arkham. Knows that that’s the first thing Batman checked up on once the crime lord assumed the name. Still, there’s something that feels wrong about it.
Nobody in their right mind would ever steal one of the Joker’s many aliases.
Four, nobody has ever seen Hood without the helmet. Even Oracle hasn’t been able to catch a glimpse of him without it on camera.
Five, Hood hates Batman. With a passion.
So really, if Tim‘s got to start somewhere, it’s probably Hood‘s identity. Identities lead to backgrounds lead to motives lead to solving this damned puzzle and-
Tim curses, accidentally knocking against the coffee mug in his haste to print Hood’s most common sighting locations, mourning the caffeine’s loss and the fact that he just thoroughly ruined Dick’s old hoodie.
Ok, maybe Tim should take a nap before going out.
Tim had thought long and hard about whether to wear the costume on his trip to Crime Alley and eventually settled for pushing it deep down into the little backpack he’d slung over his shoulder, triple checking his phone and camera battery before leaving a note in Bruce’s study.
Dick and Bruce wouldn’t be back from patrol for some time yet, and Babs is currently on a few days of vacation, only on call for emergencies.
Which only leaves him with the wild card in form of one Alfred Pennyworth, but the butler had gone to bed about an hour after Bruce had left on patrol, pointedly telling Tim to stay put.
Something in Tim still balks at the thought of disobeying Bruce, makes his insides curl and his limbs twitch, but this is too important. Tim needs to find out what makes Bruce and Dick so twitchy about the presence of the Red Hood. Needs to assess the danger for himself. The danger to Dick’s life.
Tim sneaks out through the cave, avoiding as many cameras as he’s able before hailing a cab to take him to the fringes of Crime Alley.
The driver shoots Tim a suspicious look, the way he’s dressed in a black hoodie and pants, ratty backpack slung over one shoulder. It only takes Tim one wave with a stack of cash for the driver to lose interest.
Tim uses the drive to rifle through news articles on his phone, periodically checking any social media for sightings of vigilantes. So far there are none, and Tim doesn’t know whether that’s a good sign or not.
He makes the cab stop at the mouth of an alley leading straight into the bowels of crime alley, handing the driver the cash with a nod.
The cabbie looks at him strangely but takes the money, speeding off with a gruff “be safe, kid”.
Tim shoulders his backpack more securely and turns his phone off, camera at the ready. If Tim is right, Hood will patrol the alleys a few blocks over in about thirty minutes.
He eyes the nearest fire escape and makes his way over to climb to the roof.
Time to shine.
In hindsight, maybe Tim should have stayed home.
He’s dangling from a different fire escape, phone shattered on the pavement below, and clinging with all his might to the frail railing that’s not as stable as he’d first assumed.
And right in sight of the Red Hood and the massacre he’d just made of the alleyway.
In Tim’s defense though, the fire escape was stable until a stray bullet had torn through one of the links connecting it to the side of the building. Then again, Red Hood hadn’t noticed him until after Tim stupidly dropped the phone. So yeah, still Tim’s fault.
He half expects a bullet between his own eyes for the trouble.
It all started out perfectly fine. Tim had found Hood exactly where he’d expected the man to be, arguing menacingly with some drug dealers. Which is cool, no violence and Tim had gotten some very good pictures of Hood’s armor (kevlar) and the many weapons stashed over his body (knives, guns, grenades).
And then one of the men had pulled a knife and everything went to shit.
Read, Red Hood gunned down everyone in that alley in the span of two minutes. It wasn’t even a real fight, it was a slaughter. None of the dealers actually stood a chance against Hood, because Hood is trained. Frighteningly so. In a way, Tim wouldn’t stand a chance in hand to hand combat. Certainly not long range either with all the guns.
And then the friggin railing gives way, and all of Tim plummets to the ground in an impressive display of gravity.
He’s both weightless and not as vertigo grabs his stomach, roiling through his insides, twisting and turning.
The scream escapes Tim involuntarily a nanosecond before he hits the pavement.
All air is knocked out of his lungs upon impact, a sickening crack resounding as his skull slams against concrete, and everything goes brilliantly white.
For a blissful moment, Tim is floating through the ether. Like the moment before waking up, half aware but still firmly removed from reality, waiting for Dick to crush him in a surprise hug and drag him over to the manor for Alfred‘s famous Sunday waffles.
But it’s not Sunday. And he’s neither at home nor in the manor. Tim was… in an alley? Yeah, he was looking for-
When the pain comes back, it comes back in full force. All at once. Brutally.
Tim‘s eyes snap open, chest convulsing as he tries to breathe through the sharp ache in his thoracic cavity, hands coming up to scramble uselessly at the hoodie.
His hair feels wet. There's warmth seeping out of Tim in waves and when he finally manages to draw a tiny breath, it’s like he’s inhaling needles along with oxygen.
There‘s a high pitched, wheezing whine echoing loudly in Tim‘s ears.
It hurts and it feels like he’s dying and he wants Bruce or Dick to come and get him but he hasn’t told anybody about going out and the panic button is in his backpack and how is he supposed to reach that when his entire body feels like it’s being stabbed repeatedly he needs help oh god he’s going to die in some alley and Batman- Batman-
Red.
Red floats into Tim‘s vision, coalescing into the vague shape of a head (helmet?) with white lenses.
“-cement. Flying solo straight into my outstretched hands. How nice.”
Pressure on his chest, building, and building. Distantly, Tim identifies it as a hand, splayed over his sternum and pushing down, down, down.
Something pops.
Tim screams.
Hood laughs.
“Look at you, birdie. Breaking your own wings before I’ve had my chance.”
Tim gasps through the pain, uselessly scrabbling at Hood’s arm, desperate for reprieve. His vision swims in and out of focus, alternating between darkness and dingy alley with Hood looming over him.
“Don’t- please-“ Tim’s mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, his head ringing in shrill intervals. Something is definitely wrong with his head. A concussion, if he’s lucky. “Please-“
Hood laughs, the mechanized sound breaking through the fog in Tim’s brain. “Funny, that’s how I begged, too!”
Something hard slams into Tim’s side, and he curls up into a ball, gasping through the sharp sting of broken ribs. Wetness slides down his face, droplets mixing with red… on the ground? Blood?
“Shhh, Replacement. It’s ok. You know, it took me much longer to start crying.”
Silver steel glints in Tim’s periphery, and it takes a moment for him to register the sharp press of a knife against his throat, digging into the delicate skin.
“Much, much longer to break.”
The horror he expects to feel remains absent, filtered through the haze of dizziness and other injuries.
“I wonder, when’s daddybat’s gonna come looking for his wayward bird?”
He wants to go back home and sit beside Dick on the couch, watch a movie. Hoping that Bruce will join them. Maybe trick Dick into cuddling with him for a moment.
Dick always gets that sad, faraway look in his eyes when he does, clutching at Tim like he’s about to disappear or fracture beneath his fingertips.
“N’t comin’” Tim mumbles, lost in thought as the knife digs into his neck, drawing a slow line… somewhere. Nowhere. Maybe.
Absently, Tim wonders if his head’s going to end up in a duffel bag, deposited on the GCPD’s doorstep. Wonders if somebody would take the time to tell his parents.
“Bullshit!” Hood growls, the sound distorted through the voice modulator. The hand on Tim’s chest presses even harder, and the sensation of bones shifting out of place is just an afterthought for his addled brain.
Something hot bubbles up between Tim’s lips, spilling over with a wheezing lilt “not comin’. Left’a- left’a note-“
There’s a beat of silence, so long and pronounced that Tim feels himself falling in and out of consciousness, using the little energy he does have left to stay awake because maybe- if he- if he holds out long enough Bruce will-
No. No, they won’t be back at the manor yet. They won’t- but maybe-
“… A note.”
Tim hums, fingers going lax against the arm Hood’s pressing to his sternum, hands sinking until they’re lying loosely on top of the crime lord’s own.
“You left a note.”
The helmet emits a staticky noise, and suddenly the pressure on Tim’s chest is gone and bones shift back into place and Tim’s heart gives a confused stutter before his lungs get the memo and expand.
Oxygen floods back into his system, and Tim convulses, the pain coming back more clearly.
He moans, trying to shift away from Hood and getting as far as lifting his head before vertigo shoots through him, immediately rendering all efforts null and void as he plops back into the previous position.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Hood says, still leaning over Tim like an avenging angel, shoulders hunched, knife dangling from a loose grasp. “Another Robin. Another fucking note.”
Another Robin.
Another Robin?
Robin.
Tim’s brain short circuits.
Hood knows he’s Robin.
He knows.
Because Tim, like a damn fool, had stuffed the costume into his backpack and Hood had found it. Tim’s not even wearing a domino.
Oh god. Oh god no.
Robin is done.
Tim is done.
Batman is-
Unbidden, Tim’s mind zeroes back in on the knife in Hood’s hand.
He thinks of duffel bags with heads.
Thinks of his own head, gift wrapped like a Christmas present and delivered back to Batman. Maybe a body part for each calendar day.
Thinks of how bad it was the last time Robin was gone.
No, no, no-
Hood can’t kill him like this. Anything but this.
This- it would break Batman. He can’t lose another Robin. He can’t- Dick-
At least it’s not Dick’s head. Bruce wouldn’t survive that.
A sob breaks out of Tim.
Bruce is going to survive Tim. But- but- Batman needs a Robin. Needs someone there to ground him. And- and Tim knows he never even remotely compared to Jason, but at least Tim managed to keep Bruce alive. Someone- anyone- Gotham needs Batman. Batman needs his Robin. It’s just a universal truth.
Tim isn’t Bruce‘s son. He‘d always just been a poor substitute for what Batman lost that day in Ethiopia, scrambling left and right to glue the vigilante‘s broken pieces back into place. Over and over again. Because Tim isn’t Jason, isn’t the Robin Bruce needs, but Jason is dead and there was nobody else to see how much Bruce tried to join Jason.
And now Tim had gone and screwed up everything because he’d misjudged the stability of a fire escape.
“Fuck… FUCK!”
The red helmet disappears from Tim’s view, but there’s only the barest moment of relief to ease over him when hands slide under his shoulder blades and knees, lifting him up and into the air, and Tim shrieks.
Pain lances through every inch of his being, settling into abused bones to stay, narrowing Tim’s world down to the most base of sensations.
He’s going to die. He’s going to die at the hands of a psychopathic murderer. Because Tim’s life is a joke, and his death is the punchline.
A soft click and hiss sounds somewhere above Tim. He opens his eyes (when had he closed them?), but his vision is too blurry to properly make out anything distinct except the swaying shape of a pale face, dark hair, and glowing green eyes.
It’s familiar somehow, like a dream he once had, but the details are all wrong.
A hand cradles the back of Tim’s neck, lifting his head up to rest against something hard. Another stab of pain shoots down from the base of his skull and down his spine, losing itself in the spreading numbness of his chest.
How did he get hurt anyway?
Tim was at the manor. Waiting for Dick and Bruce to get back. Drinking way too much coffee again. Probably.
Or maybe they’d been watching a movie?
Tim isn’t sure.
But Bruce is going to be upset if Tim isn’t at the manor when they get back from patrol.
Unless it’s Bruce carrying him right now?
“B’ce?”
“Not coming, baby bird.”
Oh, right. Dick then.
“Not the big bird either, replacement.”
If not them, then who?
Colors. Traffic lights and smiles.
Tim sighs contentedly, snuggling deeper into the arms holding him despite the screaming protest of every working pain receptor in his body. He’s safe now. He’s safe.
“R’bin” Tim slurs, turning his head infinitesimally until his forehead rests against the cool texture of kevlar, the steady thrum of a beating heart calming Tim’s own erratic one. “Y’came”
“The fuck-“
Tim smiles happily, finally allowing his mind to drift off.
“Hey, Replacement!”
He’s safe now.
“Hey, hey! Keep your damn eyes open!”
Robin‘s got him.
“Fuck!”
Something jostles him, none too gently, but Tim doesn’t care. Because Robin is here. And he will make it stop hurting.
“Don’t you fucking dare die on me now!”
Robin’s here.
He will keep Tim safe.