Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tim,” Bruce says. And Tim is immediately tempted to go the whole nine yards—stick his fingers in his ears, ‘lalalala’, ‘I can’t hear you’—the works. Anything to avoid what he’ll say next—because Tim knows what’s coming. 

Unfortunately, Tim is a mature seventeen-year-old, and 'lalala' is slightly out of range. Instead, he just adjusts his earbuds, pretending like the volume is turned up too high to hear Bruce’s put-upon sigh. Pretending like it's too high to hear what's sure to come next. 

“Tim,” Bruce tries again. Relentless, as always. “I know you heard me, and I know you don’t want to help. But that doesn’t change the fact that Damian needs a ride—that I need you to give Damian a ride.”

This time Tim actually does turn up the volume, blasting his music and attempting to drown out Bruce’s voice. Except then something tugs the left earbud free, ruining Tim’s efforts spectacularly. 

“Don’t ignore me,” Bruce says. He sounds more tired than irritated.

Tim mumbles, “Sorry."

Bruce drops the earbud and, as a compromise, Tim kills the music, plucks the second earbud free. He wraps the wire into a jumbled mess and whirls on his breakfast bar stool, pointing his knees toward Bruce.

“Well?” Bruce says, content with Tim's undivided attention. 

“What?”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Damian.” 

Tim plays dumb, hoping, praying. “What about him?"

“Will you go get him or not?"

And the short, easy answer would be a resolute no. Tim doesn’t want to go pick Damian up. He doesn’t want to spend time confined in a car with Damian insulting him and wiggling around and being a general nuisance. He doesn’t care about Bruce’s meeting—why should Tim have to go get the kid?

But the long answer is…Tim can’t exactly say the easy answer. He can’t just leave Damian to find his own way home—while Tim is perfectly certain Damian would manage it, Bruce Wayne’s twelve-year-old son trekking alone through Gotham City would raise some eyebrows. Plus, Bruce has a thing about treating Damian like a normal kid as much as possible—even if it means giving him rides home from school. 

Tim sighs. “Why can’t Dick do it?”

“In France.” 

“He can Zeta?”

Bruce pins him with a ‘really’ look and Tim just rubs a hand over his face, pushing on his eyes like he can squeeze out the perpetual itch. He probably just succeeds in making them redder. 

“What about Jason?”

“Tim.” 

“Alfred?” Tim suggests, a tad desperate. 

Bruce shakes his head. “He’ll be making dinner.” He pauses to glance at his watch in a way that is clearly staged. He sighs. “I really need to run—can you please not make this difficult? I just need you to pick up your brother and bring him home. Am I really asking for too much?”

“Yes,” Tim says. “But fine. Pretty sure I shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery. But fine.” 

“Thank you,” Bruce says, reaching out with a hair-ruffle Tim half-heartedly tries to dodge. He doesn’t succeed. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yeah okay,” Tim mumbles as Bruce leaves the room, rushing to gather the last of his paperwork and set off for Wayne Enterprises. 

Meanwhile, Tim stares down at his phone blankly. What did Bruce get me into?

The answer? Nothing good.

Chapter Text

Tim pulls onto Gotham Academy’s property. The grounds are congested by end-of-the-day traffic, with fed-up parents and drivers peering back at him irritably from nearby front windshields. Tim glances in the direction of the pick-up station. The line is crawling, with crowds of kids maneuvering around the near stationary cars.

Tim drives, very decidedly, in the opposite direction. 

It’s difficult to merge around tired, cranky drivers, but he noses the car to the back corner of the parking lot, where the space is starting to clear out. He pulls into an empty spot, lowers the windows, and turns the car off. Pulling out his phone, he shoots off a quick text. 

Here, he sends. Back corner, parking lot C. A moment later, the screen lights up with a blue ‘read’ message, but there’s no reply. Of course there isn’t. Sighing, Tim closes out his text conversation with Damian. 

What a brat. Tim shakes his head—it’s not like he wants to be the one to pick the kid up. The least Damian could do is send a helpful 'Be there soon,' or 'On my way.'  Tim would take a simple 'Okay,' or 'Acknowledged,' even. But no. Radio silence. 

It's honestly in line with what Tim expected. It's still rankling. 

Sinking in the driver's seat with a sigh, Tim pulls up some emails to pass the with. He rubs through his forehead at a manifesting headache, drafting replies to coworkers. Before long, his eyes start to itch and his vision starts to blur. He shifts in his seat. The warm air leaking through the open windows is soupy and clinging. Sweat starts to gather beneath his clothes and around his hairline.

Tim pulls up his messages with Damian. Still, no reply. Tim glances at the time. Fifteen minutes since he sent the text…more than long enough for Damian to wrap up his day and walk to the car. 

Tim frowns. He sends another text, 'hurry up.'  This one stays marked ‘delivered’. Tim waits for a couple of minutes, sure that the brat is taking longer just to annoy him, but when five minutes have passed since his second text and Tim still hasn’t gotten a reply or a furious preteen climbing into the front passenger’s seat, he makes his decision. Tim climbs out of the car. 

Dodging vehicles and giggling groups of middle schoolers, he makes his way toward the building. The front entrance is clearing out but still trickling with students and teachers and parents. He slips around them, making his way down the main hall and taking a left, toward the math wing. It’s a Tuesday, and Damian had geometry for his last class of the day. Tim figures that's as good as a place to start looking as any. 

He eyes the room numbers as he passes by. B102, Bl03, Bl04…where’s Bl08…?

There. Tim finds the door he’s looking for and doesn’t hesitate to open it. He expects to find an empty room, or Damian and his teacher. Maybe there will be another student Damian got into an altercation with? It wouldn't be the first time he was held after for class disruptions, nor, Tim thinks realistically, the last. 

Tim does not expect what’s actually inside the classroom.

“Woah,” is what Tim says, coming to an abrupt stop still in the doorway, holding his hands raised in the universal sign for surrender. “Don’t shoot?” 

But the gunman keeps his finger curled against the trigger as he raises his firearm, aimed rigidly at Tim’s chest.

Dammit, Tim thinks. I should have made Damian walk.

Chapter Text

Tim pushes aside his regret—he can abandon Damian to the vicious wiles of Gotham streets next time Bruce needs a favor. For now, Tim focuses on the matter at hand. 

The gunman. 

From the neck down he looks like a normal guy—puffer jacket, holed jeans, converse—like they’ve run into each other getting groceries. The balaclava ruins the look. Tim kind of feels like he’s facing off with a bank robber in a B-list movie. Luckily, Bank Robber doesn’t shoot at Tim’s abrupt entrance. Less luckily, he keeps a loaded weapon trained on Tim’s vital regions.

“Inside!” Bank Robber orders, spit popping between his teeth. His eyes are wide and watery and dark behind his mask. “Now!” 

Tim does not go inside. 

He can see two-dozen trembling, white-faced kids over Bank Robber’s shoulder, and he’s not eager to seal himself and Damian’s class in a room with an armed, aggravated stranger. Tim does a kind of shuffling thing in the classroom doorway instead, succeeding in activating the emergency beacon hidden in his shoe, while placing his heel between the door and the jamb, preventing it from closing.

Apparently, this is not what Bank Robber envisioned. His converse slap against waxed tile as he cuts across the room. Tim sees the hand that claws in the direction of his shirt-front a mile out. If he were Red Robin, he’d grab back, using his momentum to flip the man over his own shoulder and leave him to slam breathlessly against the floor. He’d pull restraints from his belt and clasp them around Bank Robbers wrists and have Damian home in time for dinner. 

Tim is not Red Robin. He doesn’t have restraints. He has pockets, and lint, and a secret identity to safeguard. 

The Bank Robber’s hand snatches Tim’s collar, gathering a fistful of fabric to yank Tim bodily into the classroom. Tim stumbles, shoes squeaking on tile. At his back, Tim can hear the ongoings of an emptying school. Scattered footsteps, the thudding of heavy gymnasium doors closing, friends calling out final thoughts and goodbyes.

And then the door closes, and those sounds are closed off.

They’re closed in.

Bank Robber uses his grip to shove Tim into the teacher's desk. Tim’s hip hits it hard, bone protesting, before he steadies himself on the lip of the wooden tabletop. Red Robin’s had worse— much worse—but this is Tim Drake. He lets out a startled yelp. 

The kids cry out too—startled screams and high, hitching sobs as violence spearheads into their classroom. They’re all still sitting at their desks. Tim does a quick look around for Damian but there’s no sign of him. It’s too early to tell if that’s a good thing. 

“Shut up!” Bank Robber roars. 

Tim twists around, back pressed to the teacher’s desk and kids. Some of the cries stutter, some of the screams stop. Some of the noises get louder. The Bank Robber’s watery, red-rimmed eyes get wider. 

“Shut up!” he repeats. “Shut up.” 

His fist bangs against the classroom wall, and a poster with numbers and shapes and puns that Dick would get a kick out of drops to the floor. The dissent dies down, back to stuttering sobs muffled by balled up blazer sleeves against teeth. 

Bank Robber’s gaze, and gun, turn to Tim. “Who are you!?”

“I—” Tim swallows. Who is he? He’s too old to be a student. But he also doesn’t really want to give this guy his name, or ideas. “Conner. I’m Conner. Today’s my first day as a student teacher…”

Tim trails off, because Bank Robber is staring at him behind that damn balaclava, and Tim knows the look in those watery eyes. 

It’s the same look Tim gets from the drive through barista getting his coffee, from the woman walking her toy-poodle past him on the street, from low-level interns passing him in the halls at Wayne Enterprises. It’s the look that comes with double-takes and raised eyebrows and hands that dip into pockets to pull out phones, camera apps at the ready. 

It’s the look of recognition. 

“You’re lying,” Bank Robber says, and his tone is completely different from the rage he leveled at the classroom a moment ago. The barrel of his gun dips, aligned to somewhere around Tim’s navel, instead of his skull. “You’re the Drake kid."

Tim cannot catch a break today. 

“Who?” he tries obligatorily.

The man ignores him. “But what’re you doing—oh.” His voice catches as he works it out for himself. "You're here for the kid."

The kid. Tim’s stomach clenches. He has to mean Damian, which means the man at least knows Damian attends this school. Did he pick Damian’s classroom on purpose? If that’s the case, where is he? Tim risks a discreet glance in the flatscreen monitor set into the wall in front of him, eyeing the reflective surface for a glimpse of Damian’s toothy snarl in the group of kids pictured. Nothing. 

Not that Tim would have expected the murderous little hothead to sit still and quiet and wait for the authorities to handle this mess. No…Tim’s sure he’s slipped away, into the vents or something, reluctantly activating his civilian emergency beacon and poised to jump into this mess himself if the need arises. 

Tim, himself, does not have the vents as an option. So he pastes Timothy Drake into place, raising careful, open hands to shoulder-length and adopting a wavering voice. "Sir," he says. "You don't need the gun...I can get you money—"

Bank Robber cuts him off. "Get in the chair." 

He uses his gun to gesture toward the teacher's wheeling chair. Tim glances at it—for a brief moment, he wonders where Damian's geometry teacher has gone, but there are no blood splatters or cooling bodies anywhere in the room, so Tim tables that concern. For now, he's more worried about staying upright, mobile. Untied, Tim can put himself between the gunman and the kids. Untied, Tim could lunge for the weapon if it comes to it. Untied, Tim will be easier to rescue when the Bats finally show up. 

Tim wets his lips. "If I could just call Bruce Wayne he'll pay a generous amount for my safe—"

“Shut up," Bank Robber orders. He takes a step closer, gun raised. 

"Sir—"

“Do as you’re told,” Bank Robber tells him. “And no one gets hurt.” 

And then his gun is pointedly turned on a front-row of Gotham Academy middle schoolers. 

Tim grimaces. It might be a cliche, but it's effective. There’s a little blonde girl gasping for breath on his left and a kid with curly red hair and bloodless skin on his right. The kids are freaking out—not that Tim can blame them—and the situation is volatile. Tim knows the Bats are coming. The best thing he can do now is play around. Keep Bank Robber calm. Do not give him a reason to pull the trigger. 

Tim sits in the chair. 

"Good choice," Bank Robber says. His eyes are watery, flitting nervously from corner to corner, as he ducks to gather a coil of rope from a duffel behind the teacher's desk. Rope in one hand, the other squeezed tightly around the gun, Bank Robber hesitates, confliction coloring his dark gaze. 

No, Tim thinks, even as Bank Robbers' lips press together and his attention flickers back to the kids. No, no, no...

"C'mere," Bank Robber says. 

He's looking right at the Little Blonde.

The girl looks petrified. Her sobs pick up as she casts desperate looks from side to side, her classmates shying away from her predicament. 

“Come here!” Bank Robber repeats. 

“I won’t try anything,” Tim promises, because the kid’s knees are knocking together sitting, and he can’t see her making it to her feet. "You can tie me up, we'll all cooperate—"

The Bank Robber glances at him. “Shut up!” 

His rage—more fear than anything, Tim is thinking—is starting to boil back up the longer that girl sits glued to her seat, trembling fingernails dug into her sides as she self-soothes, hugging herself painfully tight. Ideally, Tim wants none of these kids in the spotlight. But Bank Robber clearly has no intention of setting the gun down to truss Tim up. And half of these kids are in better shape than Little Blonde.

“Someone else,” Tim says, a tad desperate. “Pick someone else.” 

“Shut up!” Bank Robber tells him again, except then things get worse, because he’s standing right over where Tim is camped out in that chair—within reach. 

The crack of metal against skin and skull cuts through the classroom and Tim reels. There’s a limbo moment where Tim’s head is snapping to the side and his ears roar and the sting is muted with warning. And then the pain hits. It rattles around Tim’s brain, squeezing and aching and gnawing. Something wet trickles down the back of his neck. 

Tim, and it's not all Timothy Drake ducking his chin to his chest and taking slow, ragged breathes. 

It’s not the worst hit Tim’s gotten to the head—even as just Tim and not Red Robin—but it is not good. Both in that now Tim has an injury to contend with, a head injury at that, but also that the situation has escalated. Throwing Tim around was one thing. This was a solid hit. It did damage. It shows that this guy is willing to hurt them. 

The gun might not be for show. 

At least it wasn’t for nothing—Bank Robber turns, breaths labored, and flicks the gun in a new kid's direction. A boy, who has tears on his cheeks but a glare in his eyes. “You then,” Bank Robber says. “Get over here and tie him up—same as the other.” 

Tim’s ears are ringing and the pounding in his head is only growing, like a round, verses layered and layered until they drown out the white-space-world between. Tim has to claw his way through the disorder. He latches onto that word. Other. 

A bad feeling seizes him. Cold and clinging. 

The kid takes the rope, uses it to wind around Tim. Occasionally, the Bank Robber gives him instructions so the mess of loops becomes a more functional hold. Red Robin could slip them, easily. Timothy Drake is not Red Robin. 

Before long, he’s wrapped up, binds cutting into his circulation. It’s a familiar feeling, unfortunately. Tim’s contributed quite a bit to the kidnapping jar they keep on the mantle. 

But Tim prefers kidnappings when it’s just him. It feels like less pressure, alone. Now, the knowledge that someone else could get hurt, get killed, while he’s sitting around playing helpless victim eats at him. He hates it. 

“Sit down,” Bank Robber orders, and then the kid is gone, back to his seat. There’s a moment where Tim swims in pain. And then the Bank Robber is pulling out…his phone. 

This part is familiar. 

Tim ducks his head to his chest, wincing as lights wax and wane in his vision. Clearly, Bank Robber did pick the classroom Damian Wayne would be in. Clearly, this man is pulling up his camera app, as all ransoms go. Clearly, he’s after money. 

This is…this is fine. 

Bank Robber will send a photo or video off to Bruce requesting millions on millions and Bruce will play the part of a distressed parent and then one of the Bats will swoop in and knock Bank Robber out before the switch goes down. Tim will spend the night observed for a concussion—no screens or emails or work, ugh—and then when he successfully hides the effects of a solid whap to the head, he’ll go on. Just another day in the life. 

Tim plays up the effects of the head hit, letting out a moan. If he seems out of it, maybe the Bank Robber won’t hit him again to ‘show he means business’. 

Except then the Bank Robber…doesn’t step in front of Tim?

“Let’s see how little man’s doing,” he says. 

That bad feeling, cold and clinging, comes back. Oh. Oh no. 

Bank Robber crosses to the supply closet set into the wall beside that reflective monitor—one that Tim hadn’t even given a second thought about—and Tim is given a front row seat for what’s inside. 

Who’s inside.

Chapter Text

It’s Damian. 

That’s the thought that rushes to the forefront of Tim’s mind. It’s Damian with rope wound around him and the chair he’s sat on, curling behind the back and under the seat, clasping his arms together and his legs to the chair’s front supports. He has a duct tape stretched around his mouth and the back of his head, tangling in his hair, cutting into skin. His eyes glare hatefully. 

Tim feels sick. 

It’s not like Robin hasn’t been in a worse predicament—he has. He has so many times. So Tim doesn’t know why his stomach twists at the sight of him. He doesn’t know why he reflexively jerks in his binds. Tim just knows it feels so wrong looking at Damian like that—he can’t help it. 

He glowers at Bank Robber, anger twisting his lips, and snarls. “What did you do to him?”

Bank Robber only shrugs. “He was uncooperative.” 

Tim doubts that—if Damian were ‘uncooperative’ they wouldn’t be having this conversation. His attention flies back to Damian, still in that damn chair, still in that damn closet. As far as Tim can make out in the small, shadowed, space, he’s uninjured. Just ruffled, school uniform pulled out of place and hair swept into an untidy mess. 

“He’s twelve,” Tim hisses. “You didn’t need to do that.” 

It must be the school uniform, Tim decides. That, and the duct tape keeping Damian from delving into a usual spiel of insults and disdain for ‘Drake’. They’re masking Tim’s usual perspective of the Demon Brat and his murdering tendencies. Making him feel things he doesn’t usually feel for Damian. Usually, the anger is directed toward him, not on his behalf. 

“It’s not for you to decide,” Bank Robber tells him dismissively, voice edged. He grabs Damian’s chair by the arms and drags it out of the closest. He crosses to Tim next. 

“But—”

Bank Robber hefts the gun. “Quiet.” 

Reluctantly, Tim snaps his mouth closed. Bank Robber grabs the back of the wheeling chair, gun between cushion and hand tilting haphazardly to aim between Tim’s shoulder blades, He tugs the chair over so Tim is sitting next to Damian in front of the closet. Tim’s head pangs as the chair is shifted.

“There,” Bank Robber murmurs, stepping back to check his work. He narrows his eyes at them, and then the rest of the class. “We’re going to take a quick video, send it off to all of your Mommy’s and Daddy’s, and especially Bruce Wayne.”

Here, Bank Robber smiles nastily in Damian’s direction. Damian’s eyes narrow back. 

“If,” Bank Robber says, back to the class. “Everyone behaves for the video, you’ll all be fine.”

No one asks what will happen if they don’t behave—they know.

Tim grimaces as his head throbs and his binds cut and his arms start to pain from being manipulated into uncomfortable angles. He tries to tell himself they only have to make it through this video and sit tight for a bit—A Bat or two will be by to save them any minutes. Tim tries to tell himself it doesn’t matter. 

Except it does.

Tim’s had enough embarrassing videos of him beaten and tied up and mocked by kidnappers leaked over the years. He’s sick of vetting sit-down interviewers only for them to pull up the clips, filming Tim’s reactions to them for clicks and views. He’s sick of logging onto social media to find photos of him wrapped in barbed wire and chained to a clawfoot tub trending. He’s sick of getting through the ransom videos, through the rescues, only for the whole event to be permanent anyway. 

And now it’s about to happen again. 

Not only that—it’s about to happen to Damian.  

Damian—who didn’t grow up around all of this. The League might not be a stellar place to have a childhood, but it's remote. Damian didn’t have to worry about the media, the attention there. 

It’s been several years since he first came to live with them, and that’s come with several kidnappings. Only two of them stand out as being public. Sure the others had news coverage. But there’s a kind of violation that came with the first one, with the damn live stream. And then the next, when Damian’s interview was hijacked by money-grabbing gunmen, the whole thing broadcasted on Gotham’s nine o’clock news. 

Tim can remember Damian’s reactions to both times. The constant tightening of his lip and raised chin. Weeks where he refused to acknowledge what happened. Always scowling, retreating to his room, pulling away and avoiding Dick’s worried eyes and soft hugs. And then there was the day Tim crawled into the kitchen during an all nighter in search of coffee, and found Damian curled up in Bruce’s arms on the couch instead. 

Tim glances Damian way. His expression is still furious behind the binds of his duct tape, his fingers flexing beneath his binds like he’s itching to escape. There’s no sign he’s scared of what’s to come—but that means nothing. It never has.  

“You,” Bank Robber says. The gun is pointed toward a new kid, a tall, brunette girl, who's spent the last five minutes chewing on her hair and staring at where the punned-up math poster’s fallen to the ground. “Up.” 

The girl doesn’t hesitate like the other kids. Her chair slides out with an angry screech and she walks stiffly to the front of the rooms, joints hardly bending. She’s taller than her peers, but in front of the gunman, she looks so much smaller. 

Bank Robber grows impatient, snatching her shoulder up when she reaches the front of the room and steering her the rest of the distance, planting her right on Damian’s side. 

Damian gives a little jerk in his binding, eyes narrowed, as the girl is manhandled. Through layers of blurred vision, Tim sees movement on the boy’s wrist, and knows he’s about to work through his binding. 

Tim gives a harsh groan, capturing Damian’s attention, and shakes his head. 

Tim can read the reluctance, but Damian’s fingers pause. 

Good—the last thing they need is Damain’s hot headed tendencies surfacing in time to unravel over a decade of cultivating secret identities.

“Here,” Bank Robber says, yanking a sheet of folded paper from his puffer jacket. He shoves it into the girl’s hand and her fingers curl, automatic, around it. “When I start the video, you’ll read off everything this paper says. You will not deviate from the wording. You will not try signaling through hand motions, blinking, extra words— nothing. Do you understand?”

The girls nods. 

Bank Robber grins, cold. His hand descends ruffling her hair. “Remember, if you do your job, you, and all your friends can spend tonight at home with Mommy and Daddy. If you don’t….”

His thumb jerks a line under his chin. 

“Capiche?”

The girl nods. 

The gunman goes back to pulling up what he needs on his phone, the girl gives the note a cursory glance. Tim pretends to regain the senses he downplayed—the last thing he needs is Damian getting the brunt of whatever message Bank Robber intends to send. 

“Sir,” Tim tries, a slight slur to his words. “If I could just contact Bruce Wayen directly, he would have your money here in minutes, no need to involve outside—”

Bank Robber levels a frustrated scowl in his direction. “You are asking for it, aren’t you, Drake?”

Tim goes quiet. Timothy Drake wouldn’t push any harder than that—but at least Bank Robber’s ire is once again centered on Tim…

“Everyone shut up,” Bank Robber says, phone raised and ready. “Three, two, one…” 

He gives the girl a thumbs up. 

In a quiet, trembling voice, she starts to read. 

If you’ve heard one ransom letter, you’ve heard them all. Tim half listens to the carefully worded instructions for money to be dropped up—a ridiculous sum. All freshly printed bills, no trackers. Brought inside by an unarmed civilian. The getaway helicopter that’s requested wouldn’t fly in some cities, but this is Gotham. Go big or go home.

It’s only when they’re reaching the end of the note, that things start to get personal. 

“....final message to Bruce Wayne. I have your son. For every ten minutes the requested money is not delivered, I will…” the girl’s voice falters. She shoots a panicked look in Damian’s direction, one that succeeds in elevating Tim’s heart rate to the point he can feel it pounding straight to his toes. “I will take a piece of him as payment for the delay.”

The girl is crying now, tears dripping off her chin. Her voice warbles, but she makes it through the rest of the words. 

“It’s been over ten minutes, but in my generosity, I’ll only give you one example of how sincere my instructions are. Hurry Mr. Wayne, or this will…this will…happen again.” 

Bank Robber raises his gun. 

Damian’s chin tucks, his eyes glare, his muscles tense in preparation. Tim knows he’ll take that bullet. He’ll take the bullet, the injury, the pain. He’ll take the scar, the video, the risk. He’ll take it silently. Like he was trained to do, like he always has. 

Except that’s Tim’s little brother. 

And he can’t let him. 

“NO!” Tim shouts. The ropes press through skin, sucking and saturating with blood, the excess pooling in the divots of Tim’s bound hands. “I’m Bruce’s son too—I’m the heir to his company, he’s known me longer, he’s—I’m enough—I’m enough, take me—”

He can see the white light by the phone camera that tells Tim he’ll have to watch this video, played again and again and circulating the circles he’ll have to sit down and do business with. But dammit it’ll be worth it if Damian gets out of this with one less scar, because Tim knows he has too many. 

“Bruce will pay you, if you leave Damian alone…just, just use me show you’re serious, I swear it will work, I promise—”

And Tim can see the exact moment the frustration fills the man’s gaze. His hand tenses, finger sliding over the trigger. Words from earlier crawl through Tim’s ears…

“You are asking for it, aren’t you, Drake?”

But Tim’s the Robin who chose. Tim’s the one who schemed his way into the uniform, made a spot for himself on Gotham streets, planting himself in the path of criminals and pain. Tim’s the one who carved a place for himself in his family and dug his fingers in and did not let go. Tim’s asked for it his whole life—he doesn’t know not to. 

So Tim grits his teeth and squeezes fistfuls of blood and he waits. 

The gun goes off.

Chapter Text

Tim

Tim must have passed out. 

He blinks against too bright lights, tastes copper between his molars. His head aches like it took a concussive hit, and there’s an awful , red-hot pain spreading somewhere through his middle. Tim can’t pinpoint the injury—the throbbing swallows from his rib cage down like a cavern of boiling, dipping magma. 

Tim tries to move, tries to get a hand to his face, to feel for a mask, but they don’t budge. Restraints—was he knocked out? Tim doesn’t remember going on patrol…

Slowly, senses crawl into place. He breathes sweat and tastes salt. The rough chafing of ropes eats into his wrists, numbness from matching binds to his ankles, around his chest. Blinking a swell of vertigo-inducing light and silhouettes, Tim slowly regains vision. He sees the shapes of school desks and bright posters and kids. His hearing trickles in last—screaming, crying, pleading. With it, comes memories. 

He’s not Red Robin—he’s Timothy Drake. He’s tied up in a Gotham Academy classroom, bleeding and hurt and—

Damian. 

There was a gun, there was a gunshot.

Tim swallows stomach acid and blood and groans as he lurches, eyes raking desperately through streaky images. There. 

Damian is shouting. 

The gag is still stuffed in his mouth, taped tightly, but Damian is yelling around it, arms flexing and blood streaming from his wrists as he jerks in his binds and spits horrible angry tones at the Bank Robber. 

He’s okay. 

Tim mentally relaxes, even as his muscles shake and his skin shivers. The kid’s okay, and Tim vaguely remembers something about ten minutes—ten minutes is enough. Bruce can be here, with the others. They’ll be okay.

Tim drifts again.

Bruce

Board meetings are the worst part of Bruce Wayne. He doesn’t mind playing airheaded Brucie, tipping punch bowls at Galas, posting sunrise pictures on social media with cheesy captions, leaking sloppy and shirtless photos and leads to keep the media from digging where he doesn’t want them. But board meetings…

Bruce swallows back a yawn, as one of the board members tries to circle the conversation back to cutting funding for a non-profit. Bruce remembers the day Dick picked it out. A foundation dedicated to stopping elephant poaching, rehabilitation of victimized animals, and spreading awareness to the issue. Bruce sat in his office after, digging through images of Haley's circus online, finding candids of a young black-haired boy hugging the leathered gray of an elephant’s trunk, smiling wide and child-white. Smaller than Bruce would ever know his eldest.

Now, Bruce musters up the palest comparison of that smile and, again, reiterates to the board members that they will not be cutting funding.

From the looks on the faces of his board, Bruce guesses his smile may not have been convincing enough. He tries to pull together a lighter expression as the conversation moves on—

In his pocket, his phone buzzes. 

The frowns around him deepen—even on silent, they can hear the vibration. Smoothly, Bruce reaches into his pocket, pressing the power button and ending the disturbance. The meeting moves on.

And then, less than a minute later, the phone buzzes again. The meeting continues, not without more disapproval. Moments later, the phone buzzes again. 

Bruce frowns. At this point, it may not be his coms or an emergency beacon notifying him, but he has too many children, has received too many calls from broken bones on chandeliers and skirmishes during the school day to ignore the phone entirely. He goes to stand, to excuse himself, knowing it will sour today's meeting further—

The next buzz, he recognizes. 

An emergency beacon. 

Tim

He must not lose much time—the next time Tim blinks awake, there’s blood soaked into his shirt, his pants. It smells too strong, too much. Tim’s so dizzy . His head tilts to the side, brain crunching and whirling at the motion. He’s still in the chair. 

The kids have settled down some, even though one or two are on the verge of hyperventilating. Bank Robber is still there. He’s sitting on the teacher’s desk, gaze snapping from place to place, toe tapping a relentless pattern against the tile floor. The gun remains in his hand. Ever-attached. 

Tim groans as a vicious throb clamps down on his intestines, radiating through tissues. He tries to fold in on himself but the bindings pull taut. Buzzing crawls through his ears, and when it recedes, Tim hones in on a voice. 

Damian is staring directly at him, mouth moving around the duct tape. Some approximation of Tim’s name—last, of course—is sounded out. It’s Damian’s way of asking his status. Tim offers him the barest inclination of a nod. I’m alright. 

More accurately, Tim can last. 

As long as Batman comes soon, Tim can hold on. It’ll be a close one, sure to include one of the serious, multi-night hospital visits he hates. Tim would prefer patching from Alfred and Dr. Thompkins, surgery from Justice League connections at the most. But this will all be too public for that—he’ll grit his teeth and deal and in a couple of weeks it’ll be on its way to the rearview mirror. 

Batman just has to show up.

Bruce

In minutes, it’s Batman throwing himself into the Batmobile, pulling up coms. 

“Alfred,” he says. 

“Sir.” The butler is there, as always. But there’s something in his voice, even in that single word. Something tight and unhappy and dangerous. Bruce has heard that tone before, and it never precedes anything good. “Master Timothy’s emergency beacon has been activated on Gotham Academy grounds.” 

Bruce’s stomach drops out. His hands tighten on the wheel, already switching the vehicle to drive—

“I would refrain from immediate intervention,” Alfred says. 

Bruce doesn’t let up on the acceleration. He’s zipping through traffic now, inches between bumpers even as they dive to the side and let the Batmobile barrel down Gotham streets. It’s rare to see him active in the daylight, outside of patrol hours. Outside of emergencies. He’s not surprised to see cars turn around the start in the other direction. 

“Why’s that,” Bruce growls. 

“Gotham PD has gotten reports of several incendiary devices around the city.” 

Bruce has already gathered up every thought of Tim—a smaller Tim, with a gap-toothed smile, baby-fat clinging to his cheeks, a child—and locked it into the back of his mind. Away from his decision making. Damian, with his endearing glower, small fingers gentle as he coaxes Titus this way and that, goes into the same place. 

“Batman,” Alfred says grimly. “One device has gone off at the Gotham City Public Library. Twelve casualties and counting, two confirmed deceased. A note was left, indicating the next device would go off in the Gotham City International Airport at sixteen hundred hours.”

Bruce glances at the time. Six minutes. 

Tim, slurping a milkshake from Big Belly Burger in the passenger’s seat. Then coffee. Then whatever amalgamation of artificial, caffeinated beverages he could cook up. Grinning as Bruce sighed and pulled out an extra water. Nearly begging Tim to at least have them both. 

Damian, sitting on the couch in his office at Wayne Enterprises. Pencil and sketchbook in hand as he nibbled his bottom lip and ignored the reading assignment pushed down by his feet. His gaze shot up when Bruce would move, his hand moving the sketchbook shyly to angles outside of Bruce’s view. 

Bruce clenches his jaw so hard his teeth shift and crack in his ears.

Tim, Damian, his boys. Activating an emergency beacon. Asking for help. 

But, twelve casualties. Two confirmed dead. Six minutes. 

Bruce scrubs a hand over his face. 

He steps on the pedal.

Tim

Tim is getting worried, the next time he swings into consciousness. How many blackouts, however brief, have there been? Whatever number, it’s too many. For some reason, ten minutes it branded in the forefront of Tim’s mind, among swinging senses and listless thoughts. They’re running out of time. Tim can feel it hidden in the layers of agony permeating his gut. 

Tim casts a suspicious look in the direction of the Bank Robber, but he’s occupied with something on his phone. Just in case, Tim’s fingers start to prod at the ropes. He wants mobility to be an option, and his fingers are starting to go numb. He needs to do this now, or he won’t be able to. 

Subtly, trying to hide his actions from Bank Robber, and Damian, Tim works on the knots. His stomach twists, wrenching pain and nausea. Too soon, Tim’s fingers slip on blood binds, job unfinished. His gut pains.

He looks down, trying to get a look at the injury, but someone’s pressed a wad of fabric over the epicenter of the pain, strapping it into place. Tim assumes it was done so he doesn’t bleed out before Bruce’s money goes through. On one hand, Tim’s glad the bleeding has slowed.  On the other hand, Tim just wants Batman to show up. 

In the corner of his eyes, he can see Bank Robber still tapping his phone, eyes narrowing, balaclava shifting with a grimace. 

Tim really wants Batman. 

Bruce

Bruce makes it to the airport. Gotham PD, Swat, FBI, airport security all mill around. Terrified people are being hoarded from the building, to an adjacent parking lot. The Batmobile cleaves through the parting cloud and pulls to an awful, sharp stop in front of the main entrance. 

Bruce hears himself ask. He hears the location. He goes running, following half-digestion directions to the right gate. Two minutes remain. He’s quick to disarm the device—all things considering it’s a rudimentary thing. A basement backpack bomb that sits on an otherwise empty bench. Insidious in its simplicity. 

There’s a note on the floor. Just an address. A time. 

Fifteen minutes. It’ll take nearly that long to get there. 

Sliding back into the Batmobile Bruce asks Alfred for an update. 

“No word from Master Damian nor Master Tim,” Alfred says. “Hood has not responded to communications, Black Bat and Spoiler are returning from Metropolis, ETA to their nearest Zeta tube is ten minutes. Nightwing is fifteen minutes from his nearest.”

Bruce curses under his breath. With Duke’s ankle still hurt, and Kate out of town, there’s no one coming. Not for at least ten minutes. And then, even in Gotham, they have to respond. 

He needs to be in two places at one. 

He can’t be. 

Tim

Tim wakes to fingers in his hair. They trail, front to back, and for a second, Tim is relieved. It’s Bruce, it has to be Bruce. Batman came and saved them.

And then. 

Clutching, pulling, yank ing. The pain crawls along skull sutures, like his cranium is about to be pulled apart, his brain scraped raw. Moisture leaks at the corners of Tim’s eyes. His stomach aches. 

“Maybe Wayne needs some more motivation,” Bank Robber is snarling. His tone drips with fear, anger, desperation. Desperation is dangerous. 

“He’ll send it,” Tim mumbles, slurring. If Bank Robber is worried, he’s more likely to start making crazy moves. Tim needs to get the situation under control, needs to keep Damian and the other kids safe. “Just…some time. He’ll send it.” 

“He’s out of time,” Bank Robber snarls.

Vaguely, Tim sees him crook his finger at that brunette girl—when did she sit down? The girl isn’t crying anymore, her eyes are glassy and her skin pale and she wobbles her way up to the front, fingertips trembling around the new piece of paper that is folded into her grip. Tim loses time, and then the Bank Robber is there, phone in hand, white recording light glowing. 

Tim blinks, and the camera is so close. The hand is back, shifting his face up, twisting him this way and that. Tim squeezes his eyes shut. 

“...show you I mean what I say. Ten minutes have passed as as promised—”

Ten minutes. 

Take a piece of him as payment for the delay…

Ten minutes. 

Tim can’t let it happen. He drags himself into coherence, gripping the chair tight enough to crack nails and grits out. “Me.” 

Damian erupts, growling into the tape, eyes alight with anger, insults speared at the gunman and Tim. Tim catches motion behind his back, and he makes his eyes hard. Damian can’t get loose, he can’t expose them. Not yet. He has to let Tim handle this—they have to wait. 

Tim wrestles together Batspeak, using every nonverbal cue he can to indicate that Damian can’t. 

And, it works. 

Damian stills, eyebrows furrowed, sweat beading on his forehead. His eyes are so angry. That’s okay, Damian’s always angry at Tim. As long as he waits, as long as he lets Tim figure this out. 

“...next time you might be too late, Mr. Wayne. Here’s your second warning…” 

Tim’s head rolls. “...Me,” he begs, around blood and tongue and tense teeth. “Me, please, please me, it’ll work…” 

Something hard, metal, driven into the meat of his thigh. 

A second shot. 

Bruce

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, as he slides himself back in the Batmobile. “There is a video.” 

And with every word Alfred delivers, every update on the boys situation—a hostage situation—Bruce feels his heart tighten. Ten minutes…he’s out of time. He needs time. 

There’s no time. 

Tim

Does Tim wake up again? It’s hard to tell. He drifts through different images. Crying kids, pencils and open notebooks, blood on tile. Damian’s face overlays most of it. Furious and frustrated, twisted with wide eyes and duct tape ripping away from his red face. A spray of blood has landed on the white of his Gotham Academy uniform undershirt. 

“Dmn,” Tim says. He groans, head listing. “Dam’n.”

And then Bank Robber is there instead. “Shut up,” he hisses. “You were wrong, Drake,” he says. “Clearly Bruce Wayne doesn’t care about you as much as you think—you have four minutes until he shows up—otherwise the next bullet goes in his son. His real son.” 

“No,” Tim breathes, and then his biting his lip and keening as something is pressed into the wound on his thigh. 

Bruce

Cassandra is coming. Stephanie too. But the girls won’t make it, not to the site of the next bomb in time. Bruce has to choose. The gunman is getting impatient, Damian and Tim, they can’t hold out. Not without compromising their identity. 

Bruce’s eyes squeeze shut. 

Lifting Tim by the waist so he can reach the top cabinets, getting a pan to make nachos while Alfred is away. Him giggling as Bruce struggles with a can opener. 

Hoisting Damian onto his hip as he carries him up to bed, even as his child tenses all over, clearly awake, but not pushing him away. Finally allowing his head to dip into the crook of Bruce’s neck and shoulder. 

Bruce needs to pick, between Tim and Damian, and Gotham Medical Center. 

Between his children, and countless lives. There’s only one choice. Bruce noses the car in the direction of—

Coms, crackling. 

“Hey old man,” comes Jason’s voice, perpetual sass in his tone. “Heard you needed a hand?”

Tim

“— unhand him! If Timothy succumbs to injuries delivered by your unworthy hand I swear to you, I will find you in your imprisonment and bestow tenfold the damage you’ve done to my brother—”

Tim blinks languidly. Damian, he realizes, has lost his duct tape. 

“Shut up,” comes Bank Robber’s voice. “Before I give you something to cry about. 

Not good, not good. 

Tim’s eyelashes flutter. He manages to twitch his fingertips, wiggle his toes. The pain binds the rest of his limbs better than the rope. 

Batman...

Bruce

Bruce drives. Roadway gives to parking lot. 

He runs. Lawn changing to interior tile. 

There. The door. 

No time. 

Tim

Tim blinks, gray vision, pain. He’s injured. Testing—limited mobility. 

There’s screaming all around. Victims? He can’t tell how many. Tim has to get up, he has to help. He tries to shift, blinking around gray vision and shapes. There’s more shouting, and some of it might be Tim. He breathes through nausea. Mobility is limited. Very limited. He needs backup. 

Backup…something about ten minutes? 

What does that mean?

Tim’s head lolls, his eyes blink. The scent of metal, fear-sweat, and industrial cleaning supplies fills his nose. 

It hurts. It hurts a lot—but there’s still shouting. Tim needs to get up. He needs to…

He recognizes that voice. 

Mustering every ounce of will-power, Tim centers his focus in the direction of the voice. Furious, clipped, and familiar. It’s the only clarity in the sea of pain and chaos. Something is wrong, something is very wrong. Tim needs to…

Is that a gun? 

The gun presses against a familiar, dark-head of hair, and Tim feels a spike of something like lightning lace through him, jerking his fingertips. 

Damian. 

And suddenly, there’s something other than ‘ten minutes’ at the forefront of his mind. Suddenly, it’s just Tim’s little brother with a loaded gun to his temple. Suddenly it’s someone willing to pull the trigger letting the gun trail down to Damian’s shoulder—a projection that might be non-lethal, but dammit with bullets you can never tell. 

And then Bank Robber is saying something that’s washed away in the roaring between Tim’s ears, and his hand is tensing, ready to pull—

Tim wrenches his body free—

But there’s ropes. There are binds. And Tim is stuck. 

“Damian!” Tim yells.

Chapter Text

“... eyes, Tim. Open… Tim—”

Like knives, fingers close around him. Grips tighten. 

“...my count…”

“Sir!” The voice is loud in Tim’s ears. “Can’t…in here…”

“— Son—”

A hand in his. 

Sandpaper dragging up his eyelid. A light, laser-sharp, peering into his eyes. Sharp biting at his clothes, pulling, and then cold. More cold to add to the freezing, swirling abyss. Except this isn’t an abyss…it hurts too much. 

“...right here, Tim.” Squeezed fingertips. “...help you…”

“...everyone out…” 

Something happens to his leg and Tim’s vocal cords react, a howl fills the room. 

“Hold him!” 

Tim opens his eyes to the blur of medicated vision.

The distorted beep of vitals on monitors, door-muffled voices, and distant footsteps fill the air. Tim tries to twist his head side to side, to move, but is stopped by a wave of pain and reluctant muscles. His nerves seem to melt. His bones bolt to the hospital bed. His body lies still. 

Tim squeezes his eyes shut, trying to breathe. It’s not easy—there’s something in the way. Something that tickles and kind of hurts. Pressure on this chest, in his throat. A familiar feeling. One he doesn’t like. He tastes, smells, the bitterness of plastic and sterility.

Tim knows there’s something he needs to do. Something he needs to know. 

But then the voices in the hall get louder, the footsteps come closer. He tries to hold onto the feeling of purpose, but his brain starts to heat up, senses liquidizing. Tim blinks again…

Into reprieve. 

Tim tries to sit up again. There’s a beeping noise, crawling between his ears. Numbness eats his fingers, chews up his ankles. The longer he’s awake, the more the pain sets in, throbbing swallowing the whole of his thigh, radiating from the epicenter of his stomach. His head feels leaden and achy. 

Tim makes a noise. Groaning around the familiar feeling of airway intervention. 

He hears voices, overlaying the vital tones being played from a bedside machine. Familiar voices. 

Silhouettes swirl overhead, dark heads of hair. Features merge and shift, fading into the light of their backdrop. 

Tim tries to say something—to ask something. He coughs instead. 

He blinks, breathes, and the beeping continues. 

A flurry of motion surrounds him. People in scrubs peer over him, checking lines, asking things, hands closing around Tim’s body. Helping him, he’s sure. But right now, they just feel like a barrier, between him and the people he recognizes. The people with answers. 

Tim needs….Tim needs…

Tim fades in and out several more times. Snatches of conversation, sensations, teasing his consciousness, bordered by the timelessness and dark of sleep. 

And then, finally, he wakes up, and the tube is gone. The pain is still there, as is the beeping. Tim listens to it grow faster. 

“Tim?” The voice is gentle, prodding. Something tight, bracketed on all sides by the pain of injury, loosens in his midriff when he hears it. “Can you hear me?”

Tim tries to nod. The motion is jerky, disjointed. 

“That’s it,” says the voice. “Good job.” 

Tim doesn’t think he’s doing a very good job. His brain is running on half-speed, his arms won’t listen, won’t sit him up. His throat is a desert, serrated with cactus spines and craggy rock. 

But it’s like the voice knows this. Something cold is pressed to his lips, melting. Tim is quick to swallow for immediate relief. He wants more. “Here,” says the voice, pressing another ice chip to his parted lips, another hand running through Tim’s hair. “Relax, there’s more.” 

Tim nods again, the movement incrementally better. He clears his throat, wincing. 

“What’s wrong?” the voice asks immediately. 

And now Tim’s vision starts to straighten, the pain settling as he gathers it and shoves it to the side, acknowledged but separate. Tim blinks at the person sitting at his bedside, recognition dawning. Something tense and flighty in Tim’s muscles loosens. 

“Br’ce.”

Bruce frowns, shifting forward in his chair. His hand drags carefully through Tim’s hair again. “I’m here,” Bruce says. 

Tim’s eyes scrunch together—the light overhead is too bright. “What…” 

“You’re in the hospital,” Bruce says. “Dr. Thompkins has been by—she’s optimistic you’ll make a full recovery. You just need to focus on resting for now.”

Tim frowns. He knows all about full recoveries, about weeks or months of bedrest, longer without patrol. He knows what Bruce isn’t telling him. But his head feels heavy, his limbs even more so. His thoughts drift and spin out of place. He doesn’t want that timeline—not yet. 

“What…” Tim pauses. “What happened?”

Tim didn’t realize how good the fingers carding through his hair felt until they stopped. Bruce’s hand falls away as he sighs. “What do you remember?”

Not much. Right now, Tim’s short-term is mush. Pain, blood trickling like viscous, red sap, screams in his ears louder than the heartbeat drilling along next to them. It’s the normal, for situations like this. He lets his face reflect that. 

Judging from Bruce’s sigh, the point comes across. 

“You intervened in a hostage situation,” Bruce reveals.

Tim ponders that. Bruce’s tone is cold, factual, like every debrief. But, barely there, Tim hears a waver. 

“Hostage situation?”

Bruce is slow to respond. “...At Gotham Academy.” 

Damian’s school. 

Bruce reaches out quickly, planting a hand on Tim’s shoulder, keeping him from instinctually sitting up. It doesn’t stop the wave of pain that comes from a try. 

“Damian,” Tim says, suddenly more alert than he was. There’s an edge of panic to his voice, one that doesn’t crop up often, but something Tim can’t even think about tamping down, because there was a hostage situation at Damian’s school.  

“He’s fine,” Bruce is saying, keeping his hold on Tim like he’s liable to throw himself out of bed. It’s a valid thought. “He’s okay, Tim. All of the kids are. You’re the one—”

But Tim is watching Bruce’s face. His eyes are blue overhead, in color, and in the concern that twists lines around them. For his worry to bleed through into his expression, there’s something wrong. Something is seriously wrong. 

And Tim can’t trust Bruce to give him the truth while he’s lying in a hospital bed. When everything is tipping on its axis. When Bruce’s thumb is rolling circles on his upper arm, his brand of awkward comfort that doesn’t come close to soothing this one. 

Bruce’ voice is tuned out. His silhouette deepens, darkens. The light behind him is milky, streaks of luminescence with fogged borders. Tim feels like he’s trapped in the haphazard overlap of an abstract painting. He squeezes his eyes shut—to block it all out. 

To let the rest trickle in. 

White, hot pain—electricity and frothing waves—consumes Tim. It roars between his ears, drowning out the screams, and the crack of a swung door colliding with plaster wall. But it can’t drown out everything. 

Gunshot. 

Like thunder in the hurricane, a discharged weapon breaks open Tim’s white-out world. The pain recedes in the place of terror—sprawling through his body as a spastic reflex. And Tim shifts. 

Binds biting, vertigo vicious, Tim rolls through his senses to find himself strapped to a tipped chair, with tile, dust, and wax pressed to his cheek. Tim’s gaze shoots up before his mind catches it. It’s as he takes in the body, small, dark-haired, laying across from him the broken remnants of a chair, that Tim remembers. 

Damian…

Everything is fuzzy—blurred recollections of a baklava covered face, knobby-kneed kids under gunpoint, Damian’s wrists red and raw and wrapped in rope. 

And then the door burst open…

And the gun to Damian’s temple—

And the gunshot.

Tim tried to save him, he tried to get to him, but he didn’t—couldn’t. Logically, there should be blood seeping through tile gaps, crawling closer to Tim in a growing pool. Damian should be dead, spreading brain slick and cooling blood clots. But Tim looks across the classroom, at the pile of Gotham Academy uniform and chair parts. And sees Damian, whole, intact. 

Alive. 

Tim didn’t make it—but Batman did. 

Fog in his vision blurs the sharp lines that Batman, his cowl, his cap, cuts through the classroom. He’s already disarmed Bank Robber. Gun dismantled and discarded to a desktop. Now, Batman is stalking in the direction of the man as he stumbles back, toe tips and heels sliding unsteadily until his hands hit a wall, scrambling across a window sill for purchase when his knees quake. 

“Please, please I wasn’t going to kill any of them, I wasn’t going to…I wasn’t…”

And Tim knows this part. This is where Batman pulls out cuffs, binds the perp, calls Gordon for a clean-up crew. This is where things get swept away neat, tidy. By the letter, to a book Tim was trained methodically to emulate. 

Batman does not pull out the cuffs. 

Faster than a blink, faster than Tim’s compromised vision can see clearly, his fist rears back for a punch that connects with Bank Robber’s nose. Snap, bone crunch, blood in the air.

The kids are screaming. Some are in their chairs, too petrified to move. Some crowd into the back wall of the classroom, limbs entangled in a net of terror and clinging hands. Others run out the door. Blurs of movement in Tim’s line of sight. 

Tim looks back to Damian. He’s started to move, shifting in wreckage and slack ropes, hoisting his weight onto his wrists. Damian turns, scanning the classroom, and Tim sees red streaming from his headache. It’s a garish streak in Tim’s weak vision—he can’t make anything further out, like glassy eyes or dilated pupils. He’d guess they’re there. 

Tim’s stomach rolls, pain and nausea. His leg spasms. His head aches. The miasma of pain is so hot it’s cold, ice numbing his body, freezing it still. Tim blinks, once, twice. Slower. 

The kids are still screaming, but Bank Robber is the loudest of them all. 

He shouts as his nose breaks, screams as a knee crushes a rib, maybe too. Another punch. An elbow to the collarbone. Tim blinks and Batman is holding Bank Robber up by an iron grip on his collar. Blood dribbles between his teeth alongside a moan, and Batman’s fist is still raised—

But this is Tim’s job. He’s the one who reigns Batman in when he goes too far. He’s the one to drag him away from the edge. To keep from sprawling fully into the dark. 

Tim claws through cracking ice water, nails biting floor wax, teeth grinding cusps and edges. He means to be firm, loud. But what comes out is a whisper. 

“Ba’man…” 

Ice closes in. 

“Tim….Tim can you hear me?”

Tim gives his head a shake. Bruce is there, half stood over the chair he’s dragged to Tim’s bedside. He looks about one second away from calling in the whole hospital of doctors and nurses if it’ll just get Tim to just hear him.

Tim reaches out, hand clamped around Bruce’s wrist. That horrible evening curdles together into an amalgam of pain and terror and helplessness. It's...a second ago, Batman was beating that gunmen, and Damian was on the floor...

“Bruce,” Tim says, fingers tightening. “Bruce, there was a gunmen, and, and Damian—What—?”

“Is fine,” Bruce says again. His other hand rests on Tim's, massaging the uncompromising hold. Bruce says it again, and again. And one more time. Damian's fine...But that doesn’t matter. Bruce would call in the entire hospital to get Tim to quiet down, to relax, to heal. Bruce would move mountains. Bruce would lie.

“I need to see him,” Tim says, unrelenting. “Where is he?”

Bruce shakes his head. “He’s with Dick—at the cafe. He’s okay, Tim—”

“The cafe,” Tim repeats. 

The Cafe. Damian is okay, and at the Cafe with Dick. With Nightwing, highly competent acrobat and crimefighter. The smell of coffee and preservative-filled pastries in the air. He’s probably dodging hair ruffles and glaring at Dick and asking when they can return home. 

So why is the image of Damian, gagged and bound, glaring at Tim around a trigger-happy gunman, locked at the forefront of his head?

“Dick has him,” Bruce confirms. 

And that should be enough. Dick’s the best of them, Tim trusts him with his life. But still… 

“I need to see him.” 

Bruce goes quiet at this. It’s monumental, the effort it takes for Tim to turn his head in Bruce’s direction. But he manages it. “Bruce…” he says, voice trailing off. 

“You’ll see him,” Bruce says. “For now…just rest Tim.” 

Maybe it’s something in his tone. Tim is one of his Robin’s, his soldiers. When Batman calls, he comes. When Batman tells him to do something, he listens. Maybe something in his tone is the order Tim needs. 

Maybe Tim is just barely on the right side of a coma. 

Because he closes his eyes. 

And drifts. 

The next time Tim wakes, a doctor is there.

 She shakes Tim’s hand, checks him over, and walks him through the findings in his chart with a gentle but no-nonsense approach. She’s efficient at her job, which Tim likes. Both because he respects competency, and because he wants her out of the room ASAP. 

They must have adjusted some meds, or maybe Tim’s just had a moment to catch his breath, because Tim’s all-consuming need to have eyes on Damian right now has abated, just enough to sit still and be compliant. But it hasn’t gone away.

The whole time that she’s prodding around him and delivering very subpar news, Tim keeps his gaze just over her shoulder, where Bruce lingers. His Brucie Wayne mask has slipped into place as he asks questions he’s known the answers to for years. Smiles and dorky jokes for the doctor. But the concern is still there, wrapped around his eyebrows, tightening his shoulders. 

Tim doesn’t like it, being in the dark. He needs information, to make a plan. And right now, Bruce has what he can’t get for himself. 

When the examination is finished, Tim is exhausted and weighed down with the knowledge of his injuries. His eyelids are heavy, and he struggles to stay awake for the doctor’s goodbye. 

“Get some rest Timothy,” she says. “I’ll be back to check in.” 

Bruce walks her to the door, thanking her for her help. By the time he returns to Tim’s bedside, he’s almost gone. 

“Damian,” Tim mumbles. He hasn’t forgotten. 

Bruce is quiet, taking his hand in his and squeezing. “Sleep.” 

Tim drifts in and out. Nurses pat him on the head and fiddle with his IV, the doctor thumbs through his chart at the end of the bed, Bruce is there with water and quiet words—until he isn’t. 

“Timmy,” Dick says, bowed over his hospital bed, a soft smile spreading into place as he takes in Tim’s flickering eyelids. The older man looks tired, eyebags and shadows above his cheekbones. His hair is messy. “You’re awake.”

Tim blinks against the fatigue, fed through his veins like an automatic pump has a vendetta against him. It takes a second to process Dick being there, in Bruce’s chair. Dick. Here. Alone. 

Tim mumbles, “Cafe.”

Dick’s eyebrows fumble together. He scooches Bruce’s chair closer, grabbing Tim’s hand in two of his own. “What’s that, buddy?”

“You,” Tim says. “Bruce said, you were in the cafe. With Damian.” 

Dick frowns, and Tim knows immediately it’s been days since that. Days of in and out. Days of asking for Damian. Days of being denied. 

“Dick,” Tim says, clearing his throat when his voice cracks down the middle. He knows he sounds pathetic. He knows Damian is probably laughing at him, hacked into hospital surveillance or something just to watch Tim grovel for a look at him. He knows he should be better than this, indifferent to the parasitic little brother that wormed his way into their family by carving a place one day at a time. He knows he should be able to paste a smile into place and tease Dick about his bird nest hair and forget all about the hostage situation, and Damian’s part in it. 

But he can’t. 

And Dick is there, fingers trailing to prod at Tim’s pulse points despite the monitor beeping away steadily, like Tim isn’t going to notice. Dick, who embraced one brother and sister after another. Who took each under his wing, this way or that, and loved them unconditionally. Who loved them so fiercely. Dick, who needs to understand. 

“I need to see him,” Tim says. “I need to know, that he’s alright.”

Dick squeezes his hand, hesitating. “I know Timmy,” he says. “...Soon, okay?”

Tim frowns.

Bruce’s twisted eyebrows of concern are one thing. He’s always worried, always balancing one too many things on his plate. But for Dick, the closest thing they’ve got to a Damian whisperer, to paste a glassy smile into the place at the mention of his vicious little tag-a-long…

Tim clutches Dick’s hand like a lifeline. “What’s wrong?”

And Dick hesitates...and explains. 

Damian's not coming.

Tim regains consciousness and stays conscious after that. He’s still sleeping long nights, paired with frequent naps, but his schedule slowly becomes something more recognizable. So he has a pretty good idea of how the timeline plays out.

It starts with Steph and Cass. They come in together, balloons in hand. Cass places a get well card on the bedside table as Steph climbs right onto the bed at Tim’s side. “You’re a mess,” she mumbles. 

Tim nudges an elbow into her side. “At least I have an excuse,” he says. “What the hell are you wearing?”

Steph doesn’t so much as blink. “Shut up,” she says. “I look perfect, as always. How’re you doing?”

Cass creeps up on his other side. She’s quiet, not even signing, and Tim knows that he scared her good this time, even as her hand crawls forward to rest on his knee. 

“Fine,” Tim says, for as little as they ever believe each other when someone pulls out the ‘F’ word. 

Bruce, camped out and leaning against a wall of windows, kisses Cass’s cheek and nods to Steph as he makes his escape, already dialing on his phone as he sneaks out of the room. Tim knows he’s fallen behind in Wayne Industry needs, especially considering no one will let Tim near a phone or computer. It’s been…boring. 

At least Steph and Cass break through that blur of monotony. They go through the motions of hospital visit incidents. Tim and Steph mull over recovery times and lower their voices to chat about the hostage situation. Gotham Academy is still closed. The media is having a field day tracking down Wayne family members to interrogate them over the whole incident. Steph confirms with a wrinkled nose that one of the videos Bank Robber videotaped is circulating the web for vulturous social media goers to feast on. Tim moves on from that topic fast. 

Cass remains a silent sentry over Tim’s shoulder, but her hand squeezes his knee when Steph delivers news about Bank Robber, injured, medicated, and tied to a hospital bed of his own. So Batman didn’t kill him. Tim is surprised to find how little he would have cared. 

Tim starts to yawn about halfway through their visit. Steph glances toward the door, but Cass just scooches her chair closer. Tim is grateful. Days of sleep and Bruce brooding at his bedside has set a mood Steph tears right through like a shiny, new bulldozer. And having Cass there, sharp eyes scanning, senses in tune with their surroundings like no one else Tim knows, always puts him at ease. 

He relaxes with them around.

Part of Tim wants to break the peace that settles over their trio. His mind circulates, as it has traitorously tended to do these past few days, to Damian. He wants to ask…something. He wants an update, because right now, all Tim can think of is Dick’s grim face, darkened by the kind of protective anger he always simmered with when one of them gets hurt. But...Tim can't bring himself to do it. To ruin this first taste of normalcy. 

So instead, Tim forces a grin, and asks Steph why she would choose such a garish yellow for her nail polish. Only for Cass to pout, because, turns out, she helped with the decision. Reaching out, she tugs on his ear. Hissing, Tim quails away, Steph laughs, and Cass immediately signs at him to be careful as her gaze jumps sharply toward the monitor. 

With a placating smile, Tim rests his head against Cass's shoulder. Stephanie recounts the shitshow that was her latest college lecture.

Eventually, Bruce will circle back. Tell the girls it's time to let him rest. But for now...

Tim smiles. 

It’s Dick’s turn to camp out in the hospital room. He started out in the chair, laughing and poking fun of Tim because the nurse brought him a horrible, artificial pudding cup that clamps up his taste buds like vanilla motor oil. But he quickly found his feet. Pacing around the room, rotating from place to place. Endless energy. Always. 

For once, Tim’s not bothered by that. 

More so, he’s bothered by Dick being an overbearing Dick. 

“I’m fine,” Tim grits out, again, when Dick circles closer to puff up his pillow. 

“Sorry, sorry.” Dick says, hands raised as he backs away. “Did I hit your head? Do you have a headache? I can call a nurse—”

“Dick,” Tim growls. 

But before he fend Dick and his good intentions off for a millionth time, a knock comes on the door frame. 

It’s Duke, poking his head in with a sheepish grin. “Am I interrupting?”

“Please interrupt,” Dick says, planting one of his raised hands on Tim’s head and ruffling with careful fingers. “Before this one bites off my head.”

Tim shrugs Dick off, a little short with him. Being cooped up in the hospital room, no work to occupy him, spending his time sleeping and watching television, has grown old fast. He addresses Duke, “C’mere.”

Duke comes in, casting a final glance over his shoulder. “Man,” he says. “Talk about security. I think I passed a dozen security guards in the last hall alone.”

Dick is rolling his eyes. “Their names are Frank and Joe and there’s two of them.”

“That you can see.” Duke adopts a lower tone, the hint of mischief twisting his lips. “I think I heard one in the air vents.”

“Paranoid,” Dick and Tim both say at the same time, and that cracks a smile out of Tim’s mood. 

Duke collapses in Dick’s vacated chair, slouching over in a posture that would make Alfred frown and tap between his shoulder blades. “So what’s new?”

At least he doesn’t ask Tim how he’s feeling. He’s had enough of that question.

They chat for hours. Duke tells them about patrol, quietly, with frequent glances toward where they can hear Frank and Joe milling around in the hall. The television mounted across the room plays on in a murmuring volume, and Dick elicits an agreement from both Tim and Duke to accompany him to an advertised summer movie. At one point, a nurse, Sylvie, circles in with a bubbly smile as she checks Tim over and sets a meal in his lap. Sylvie’s the motherly sort, already taken with Dick’s dimples and more than happy with Duke’s pleasant ‘Hello Ma’am’. 

When she leaves, Tim bequeaths a second pudding cup to Duke, exchanging a knowing look with Dick, only to sit up in outrage when Duke has the gall to like the sweetened motor oil. 

“What?” he giggles, dodging the pillow Tim throws at his face. “What, what?!”

They’re still, laughing, when the television changes. 

The previous program is done, a commercial break finishes, and what pops onto the screen next is an unassuming news channel report. At least, until Tim recognizes the building being recorded. Familiar grounds, familiar memories of floor wax and math posters and blood on desktops as kids screamed and—

And then, comes the caution, in a cold, automatic warning that sticks up Tim’s smile like black and sour tar. 

“Viewers are warned. The following video contains potential triggering or violent content, including graphic depictions of—”

Dick comes up with the remote, plunging the room into quiet. 

Tim’s stomach has dropped, his hands tightened on the blanket. 

“Tim?” Dick asks. He and Duke are looking at Tim, eyebrows furrowed. Duke looks a little like he missed a step going down the stairs.

Tim forces a smile, reaching over to steal his pillow projectile back. “What,” he says, nodding toward the half-finished pudding cup. “Aftertaste catching up to you?”

Duke sinks into the normalcy like a lifeline. “You wish.”

And if Dick’s hand ends up on the back of Tim’s neck, offering a comforting squeeze, that might be a bit of a lifeline too. 

Alfred arrives early the next morning. 

Cass is already there, sitting on Tim’s windowsill and filling out one of the destressing coloring books Sylvie dropped off when the television proved too strong for Tim’s concussion. Tim thumbs through a paperback that Jason recommended over a year ago. One he hasn’t had the time to get to until now. 

They both look up when footfalls come down the hall. Tim is far from alarmed—between the security the hospital, Bruce, and Gotham PD has designed for the VIP section of the hospital, and Cass’s presence, lounging just behind his shoulder—he’s almost certain whoever is about to walk in is a friend, or hospital personnel, and not a threat at all. It doesn’t stop Tim from watching sharply for their entrance. 

And then Alfred walks in—Tim didn’t realize he could become more relaxed until he does. Stress bleeds away as his pseudo-grandfather offers him a close-lipped smile and steps calmly to the bedside. 

“My,” Alfred says. “You’ve certainly found yourself in a predicament, Master Timothy.”

Tim grins, setting the paperback aside. “Hi Alfred.”

There’s something different about the way Alfred hovers, something no-nonsense and smooth in how he adjusts the blankets and refills bedside water and reads over Tim’s chart with a critical eye. It’s not fussy like Dick, or awkward if well-meaning like Bruce. 

Tim likes it. 

It’s a short visit—Alfred has to return home to make dinner. He nods warmly at Cass, extracts a promise to rest and mind his limits from Tim, and tells them that he’ll see them both soon on his way out. 

Tim watches him go, running his goodbye over in his head. 

That’s right—he’ll be discharged tomorrow morning. After the blur of medicated, white-wall days, it almost seems too good to be true. He’s dreading leaving—the actual process. Trying to smuggle his way past the reporters sure to still be camped outside, picking away at hospital staff as they pass in and out every day, is sure to be a challenge. He hopes a well-placed hat and glasses gets him through unnoticed. Considering his luck, he knows it’s a big ask. But maybe he’s due for one. 

And then, after, once he’s back at the manor. Bruce is sure to hover, Alfred will be a formidable defense against getting any actual work done. Duke will send him commiserate looks from across the room as he’s helped—or hindered, depending who you ask—up the stairs to his room. Dick will pull Steph out of the room, chiding her to give him space, let him rest. Never mind that Tim’s had more than enough of both. Cass is unpredictable. Maybe, she’ll pop up with a treat for him, maybe she’ll paste herself to the end of his bed like a cat. Jason won’t come, Tim knows that much. 

And Damian…

Well, Tim will have to see him tomorrow.

Tim expects to be shaken awake the next morning by early morning rounds. Instead, he startles into awareness in the bleak hours where morning merges with night. There’s someone standing over his bed. 

Tim reacts instantly, throwing the blankets off of himself, sliding off the bed. One hand snaps back to grab the panic button hidden beneath his pillow by a paranoid Bruce—

“Woah, Timmers,” Jason says, snatching him by the shoulders and dropping him back onto the bed. His other hand knocks the button, unpressed, from his fingers. “Relax, man.”

“Jason,” Tim says, shaking minutely as adrenaline recedes. Pain ignites, lapping his thigh, stabbing his stomach. His headache stirs. It’s the sharpest movement he’s done the entire hospital visit. Hopefully, he hasn’t damaged anything further. “What are you doing here?”

Jason shrugs. “Was in the neighborhood.”

Tim, who has memorized his patrol routes, does not call him out on the lie. He does cross his arms and points out, “The hospital does hold visitor hours.”

“More of a suggestion.” 

Jason shepherds him back to rest against the pillows. Tim grimaces at the movement.

“Alright?” Jason asks. 

Tim nods.

Jason’s face is shadowed, but no hospital room is ever completely darkened, even at night. Tim picks out the disbelief in his expression and hurriedly turns them away from that can of worms. 

“Did you come just to laugh at me?”

Jason tugs a bag off his shoulder. He’s not in his Red Hood getup, but in black tactical gear. A little dramatic, for a hospital visit, but it’s Jason. “That’s a bonus,” Jason says. “Brought you this.”

And then he pulls out Tim’s laptop, and immediately becomes his favorite person. 

Tim holds out ‘gimme hands’. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Uh huh,” Jason says, handing it over, mumbling something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like ‘Ipad kid’. Tim doesn’t let it bother him. He’s too concerned with running careful fingers over the cover of his long-lost laptop. He’s already stressed about catching up with Wayne Industries, which is sure to be a complete mess— at least he doesn’t have to come up with a cover story there, even if he will have to deal with well-meaning employees offering stilted condolences for his experience, and the whispering around hallway corners whenever he venture too far from his office. And then there’s his Red Robin cases to worry about…the others have kept up the most important of his surveillance, and Dick and Cass handled one of his planned busts the other day. But there’s still so much data to analyze. Too much lost time. 

“Thank you,” Tim says, already popping the laptop open, knowing he’s too keyed up to get any further sleep—

Jason’s hand comes down on the laptop lid before it can fully open. The artificial, blue light from within dies, plunging them into the fog of day-vision and darkness. “Hold up,” Jason says. 

“What?” Tim snaps. 

“Before you go all workaholic, I brought it for a reason,” Jason says. 

Tim, because it is three A.M and his fuse is short, says, “You’re so goddamn cryptic.” 

“Maybe you’re too plain." Jason grins. It's his roguish, bared-tooth grin, which tells Tim it’s more than forced. Tells him Jason's tip-toeing around a topic he doesn’t want to breach. But, again, it’s three A.M. Tim isn’t in the mood for one of his verbal mazes.

“C’mon Jay,” Tim says. “What’s wrong?”

And here, Jason sighs. He kicks out the bedside chair, sinking into it with a groan that belongs to a man thrice his age.

“What’d they tell you about Damian?”

“...not enough.”

Jason crosses his arms behind his head, exhales slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Figured that’d be the case.”

“What is it?” Tim presses. “What’s wrong with him?”

Jason lets his arms fall...and then—he explains. 

Tim listens. His stomach, throbbing, starts to sink. The longer Jason goes on, the more confused Tim is. This…doesn’t sound like Damian. His first thought would be that Jason is messing with him. But the toothy grin is gone, replaced by hands that run through his hair, tap against the armrests, pull on the buckles of his gear. Fidgeting, flighty. And still, he talks on. 

No, Tim believes him. 

And if Tim believes Jason, that means the situation with Damian is worse than he thought. This isn’t Damian not caring whether or not Tim wants to see him. This isn’t Damian refusing to go to the hospital on the grounds that ‘Drake is being too sentimental’, ‘too weak to uphold Father’s legacy’. This is Damian…Tim scrubs a hand over his face. 

Well, tomorrow, he goes to the manor. 

It’s time to unravel this whole mess. 

Himself.