Chapter Text
The emergency signal she’d given Robin was going off.
Red Robin, Diana reminded herself. Not Robin. The new Robin was that prickly little boy that Batman had been working on for a while now. She could see potential in him, and he’d certainly shown good aptitude for vigilante work, but he was still a bit too rough on the edges. She hoped Dick would be able to smooth it out, so he wouldn’t end up cutting the people trying to help him.
But no, that wasn’t who was calling her right now.
It was Red Robin, the child who’d cried on her and then told her that she was a girl and didn’t know what to do about it. The child who’d refused more active help from Diana, telling her to take care of JLA work instead of focusing on Red. The one who’d finally, after a lot of bugging, agreed to a passive tracker and a distress signal.
A distress signal that was going off right now.
“What is that?” Barry asked, pausing on his third heavy calorie protein bar. “Is that a distress signal?” He started getting out of the chair he’d been perched in, and Diana quickly shook her head.
“I’ll take care of it. I’ll call if I need back up, but I have to go now. I trust you’ll handle things here?”
There wasn’t any emergency going on in the Watchtower, nor anything disastrous in the world. Either way, they had enough people available even without her and Batman to be able to handle things if anything came up.
“Wait, Diana—”
“It’s fine, Barry.” She didn’t glance back as she pulled out the tablet, quickly locating where Red Robin was. She might need medical supplies, too. Considering it was a distress signal. She should’ve given her a comm too, something to communicate with. She had a phone number, yes, which she started dialling as soon as she was moving.
But it didn’t connect.
Her heart was pounding, a kind of terror rising in her that she hadn’t felt in a long, long while as she took off. The closest zeta tube was still several dozen miles away from where Red Robin was, and it’d take her at least fifteen minutes to reach there, no matter how fast she flew. Maybe she should’ve called for Superman, he’d have gotten her there faster with his superspeed.
But Red might not want him there. But that wouldn’t matter if Red Robin died.
No. Diana couldn’t think like that. She wouldn’t let Red die. She’d get there in time.
It wasn’t hard to find her. Or them, really. Even from several feet up in the sky, she could see that there was more than one person. They stood out sharply against the pale desert sand.
Five bodies.
Bodies.
She came down so fast it almost felt like a free fall.
She dropped down to her knees next to Robin, grabbing onto her wrist to feel for a pulse, “Robin, sweetheart, can you hear me?” Her heart was in her throat as she looked at the sword impaling her chest.
A pulse.
There was a pulse, thready, weak, barely there, but it was a pulse.
Robin was starting to stir, as well, her head turning to the side as a bubble of blood leaked out of her lips. Through the white out lenses, Diana couldn’t tell if her eyes were open, but she was twitching nonetheless.
“Dia-na-” Robin rasped out, and her hand seemed to reach out towards another body, “The others— they—”
“I’ll check on them, I promise,” Diana said, let me pull out the sword, okay? I’ll pack the wound, just hold on sweetheart.”
It took a bit of time, and a lot of whimpers and bitten off screams before she could safely think to get away from Robin’s body a little. Despite the painkiller she’d administered, her face was still contorted with pain, and her breaths came out raspy.
She did a quick round of the other people scattered around. Three of them were dead, the forth was a bald woman who was in the process of joining the rest but still gained enough consciousness to try and stab Diana before Diana took a hold of her wrist, “It’s alright,” she told her.
The woman opened her mouth, but only blood came out. “Don’t speak yet, your throat’s pretty badly injured. I’m going to help you.”
“Pru,” Robin’s voice called out, barely audible, and it clearly sent the girl– Pru– into a half panic as she jolted, desperately trying to make her way to Robin.
“It’s okay!” Diana said, louder, holding her down so she wouldn’t injure herself further. First Aid. She needed first aid. It seemed to be some sort of acid, still eating away at her skin in a horrifying fashion.
She did her best. She’d been trained in first aid, of course she had. Everyone in the JLA had that training, but she needed much, much more than the simple kit she’d carried with herself. So did Red Robin.
Diana turned back to Robin, “Honey, I’ll have to take you somewhere safer, somewhere we can actually treat you.”
“Prudence,” Robin said, and by now she’d managed to drag herself a little closer to where Prudence and Diana were. She’d bandaged up the girl, and she’d suffered through it all with a stoic face and no noise whatsoever. Which was worrying, but Diana tried not to think about it too much.
Diana bit her lip. Looking between the two of them, but time was running out. “You trust her?”
The immediate nod she got in response was gratifying, but Pru’s shocked expression was not. Which meant she’d done something in the past to have the trust given be unexpected. But Diana wouldn’t question Robin’s judgement by asking her a second time. This questioning was what had landed her in this position in the first place.
“Okay,” Diana said, sitting back on her heels and taking a deep breath for the first time since she got the distress signal alert, “Alright. Prudence, how’s your strength right now?”
Prudence narrowed her eyes at her, but managed to struggle up into a sitting position before her mouth opened in a silent scream and she fell back down.
Grimacing, Diana shook her head. “Okay, wait.”
Fifteen minutes later, Diana was in the air. Prudence was tied onto her back with her lasso, while she had Robin in her arms in a bridal carry, a loop of her lasso also going around Robin’s waist just in case.
Robin was gripping Diana’s shoulders in a vice like hold, face scrunched up in pain. “Where–?”
“I am taking you to Themyscira,” Diana whispered, pushing herself to the limits to fly faster, reach there quicker, before the child in her arms bled out completely. The bandages were turning red at a pace she really didn’t like.
“But I'm —” Robin rasped out, fear and hope warring over a terribly pale face.
“I told you before, sweetheart,” she said, letting her lips quirk up in a gentle smile despite the situation. And maybe right now wasn’t the perfect time for this, but she had to say it. And she would prove it soon as well. “The body is just that, a body. It is who you are that matters. I myself was made from clay and given life. It does not make me any less of a woman.”
There were tears in Robin’s eyes now, and only now. They hadn’t been there when she’d been bleeding out earlier, hadn’t been there when Diana stuffed gauze into the wound as deep as it would go. Hadn’t been there when she’d realised Prudence couldn’t make a single sound through her ruined throat.
But they were there now, and Robin’s grip loosened on Diana. She only had a moment to worry before Robin was burying her face at Diana’s neck, shuddering ever so slightly in a way that indicated a flood of tears.
She flew faster.
It wasn’t too bad, being the League of Assassin’s prisoner.
Not prisoner, Tam thought to herself, rolling her eyes, leverage. That’s what Ra’s called her. Leverage, hostage, advantage. Trump card.
Not a person, but a tool.
God, she wanted to punch the living daylights out of that smug faced man. Every word that came out of his mouth was coated in grease, oily, slippery, and sickening.
Still. Still. She gotta look at the upsides, right? At least she hadn’t been thrown into the dungeons, not even after Tim had gone missing. She was surprised Ra’s had actually told her anything at all. But he had. Maybe he wanted to demoralise her, he had, after all, very heavily implied that Tim had abandoned her. But, well. He was a manipulative bastard and she would never, in a hundred years, ever take a single word out of him at face value.
And Tam knew Red Robin, and Tim, well enough to know he wouldn’t just abandon her.
But this was boring as fuck.
No technology, no entertainment, a few books written in languages she couldn’t hope to understand. A bed, a bedside table, some clothes. Food delivered three times a day, a pitcher of water twice a day, a bathroom, if one could even call it that. Mostly just a curtained off area with a toilet, and a bucket. At least this place had plumbing. She’d been worried for a bit, there.
Too used to the comforts of her house, she supposed.
They hadn’t let her out of the room since Tim disappeared, and there were guards stationed outside at all times. Silent faced, stoic looking guards, who didn’t say a single word to her, didn’t even twitch, no matter how much she screamed and yelled. If she tried to pull anything, they would just bodily pick her up and cuff her hand to the bed.
She’d remain restrained for the next however many hours before the next guard shift change, who would let her out. She could try again, of course, but it all ended the same way.
The hatred that bubbled up in her was almost enough to drown out the fear that maybe Tim wasn’t coming. And not because he’d abandoned her, no. Maybe he wasn’t coming because he’d died. Would anyone back in Gotham even know? If he were to die?
She knew Dad would be worried about her, but—
God, she should really try to escape. But this was a base full of highly trained assassins. She wouldn’t stand a chance. The room didn’t even have a window she could risk falling out of. No clocks, no windows, no contact with the outside world. She didn’t even have a pen and paper. Just a whole load of nothing.
Creative insults, now that was something she could do. Try and see how badly she could cuss out the guards outside before they blinked. She hadn’t succeeded yet, but she was sure she could. Maybe.
She got up, stretched out her sore muscles from where she’d spent a few hours tied up earlier, and walked over to the door.
But before she could open her mouth, or even put her hand on the door handle, there was a muted thud from outside. A choking, gurgling sound, and a grunt in a very familiar sounding voice.
Tam’s eyes widened and she flung open the door as quickly as possible, coming face to face with Tim.
He looked… different. Very different. For one, he wasn’t wearing his Red Robin uniform, but was rather dressed in… some sort of armour? Earthy shades, a more feminine cut to the clothes, the long tunic cinched at the waist by a utility belt, which gave off the illusion of a skirt, almost. It was a bit reminiscent of the Robin costume the forth Robin had worn, the blonde girl who had held the position for a very short time. It also reminded her of Wonder Woman, actually. Especially when she noticed the braces on his wrist.
The colours of the new costume also brought to mind an owl.
“Hey, Tam,” Tim said, smiling at her, standing over the unconscious bodies of the guards. “Sorry I’m late.”
His voice sounded different, too. She might not have been able to place it as Tim’s if she hadn’t been looking at his mouth moving and heard the sound come through at once. A little higher pitched, sort of androgynous.
None of that mattered, though. What mattered was that Tim was alive, and he was here, and there was a very real possibility right now that she would be getting out of here.
Her shoulders slumped, all the tension leaving her in a way not very different from how a balloon deflates. “Tim,” she whispered, moving forward to hug him, but froze when he flinched. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her heart rate spiking up.
“Don’t, uhm, I’ll explain later, but please don’t call me that?” he said, and Tam paused. She looked over the new costume again, a bit more thoughtfully this time, and the new voice.
She nodded. “Alright, Red Robin. Can I hug you?”
Red Robin relaxed, and nodded, and Tam didn’t waste anytime in flinging her arms around her rescuer without restraint, tightening her grip until she knew it must have been painful, but unable to make herself let go.
The past few days had been fucking horrible, but god, she was out now. She knew she was out now. It was only a matter of time.
After a few seconds, Red gently unlatched her arms, but didn’t let go of the hold on her wrist, as if making sure she still had a pulse.
“Alright, listen to me, I’ve disabled security here for a bit, it might come online soon, but it might not. Either way, Ra’s would’ve been alerted, and his assassins will start swarming the place soon enough. We have to run, there’s a getaway vehicle waiting for us outside. You have to run after me, yes?”
Tam nodded, and Red grinned at her, pulling out a— was that a fucking gun?
“Is that for me?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice, because god was she ready to shoot some assholes in the fucking face. Had been ready for a while now, actually. Had been born ready, if she said so herself.
“You bet it is,” Robin laughed, handing it to her, “I trust you know how to use it?”
“You fucking bet I do,” she said, feeling the comforting weight of it in her hand, and then disengaging the safety because fuck if she was going to wait even one second before shooting someone. “Let’s go,” she said.
They didn’t actually come across a lot of assassins on the way, which Tam found suspicious but Robin apparently expected, seemingly unconcerned. That’s not to say that she didn’t get to shoot anyone, though. The place wasn’t completely deserted, after all.
And she took great joy in shooting people, in the face. Her aim was off a few times, but Red Robin took care of the stragglers. Or, well, maybe it was the other way around. Tam took care of the stragglers, shooting out people’s knees and backs and heads.
This was dangerously cathartic. Maybe she should ask someone to keep an eye on her for the next few months, in case the power got to her head.
She almost wished she’d come across Ra’s, just to put a bullet between his eyes. But the bastard probably wouldn’t even die and was probably too big of a match even for Robin, considering his six hundred years of experience and the fact that he was the head of the League of Assassins.
They eventually made it out, and Tam had to actually pause for a second to catch her breath because, fuck, she was outside. The air was dry and the sun was starting to set and she was out. She could make out a few faint stars. Or maybe it was Venus. Who knew? She’d never been big into astronomy.
She was big into being able to go outside, though.
“Come on,” Robin said, a tad gently, as if aware of just how much she’d needed this one moment to breathe but still reluctant to linger.
“Hey Red,” someone said, a woman, twirling a rifle in her hand with her boot on top of the head of an unconscious assassin. Her voice was rough, and her throat had some horrific looking scars across it. “And hey Tam. Looks like you got out okay, huh? Ready for a girls night out, then? Come on now, I’m Pru. Plane’s just half a minute away.” She grinned, a smile stretching wide across her face and making her look slightly manic.
Girls night out. Tam chanced a glance at Red Robin, who didn’t appear to have noticed the wording, already shooing her ahead while taking up the rear in case any assassins decided to give chase.
Tam didn’t delay, she could ask questions later.
The place really was just half a minute away, at a steady jog. It looked somewhat like the Batplane, a bit smaller, perhaps. And without most of the bat stylizations. She climbed in, and Red was already in motion, sitting down on some sort of screen thingy. The plane took off with the deafening sounds of jet firing, and Tam had to hold onto the wall at the vertigo that hit her at the sudden take off.
Pru took up the spot at the door they’d climbed through, not closing it yet, but pointing her gun outside. Robin and Pru seemed to work together like a well oiled machine.
A few minutes later, during which Tam just caught her breath, turned on the safety on the gun and put it away somewhere it wouldn’t just go off on its own, there was the sound of a distant explosion.
Pru cheered, tucked her gun back in and settled in more comfortably inside the plane, gesturing for Tam to sit down too. Robin also got off the computer, grinning in a way Tam hadn’t really seen before, and made a gesture, representing a ‘boom’. “Gone, all the League bases I could find through the servers. Blown up.”
“You blew them up?” Tam asked.
Robin looked at her, “Uh, yeah. I did give them a warning, so most might have evacuated, but the bases themselves are gone, yep.”
“Good fucking riddance!” Tam said, unable to control the relieved laugh that overtook her, “God, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a really long fucking time. Other than seeing you alive, of course.”
Smiling, and looking relieved, Robin gestured at her hand, “Let’s fix you up, shall we?”
Tam blinked down, and realised that yeah, maybe her chaffed, bruised wrists could do with some ointment. While it had been easy to ignore it before, they were starting to sting and ache a bit. She shrugged, but followed Robin.
Taking out a small box labeled with the quintessential red cross, Robin took her wrist in hand, and Tam finally asked the question that had been bugging her, hoping she wasn’t crossing a line. “Girls night out, huh?”
Robin stiffened for a bit, and Pru spoke up from behind, “Oh fuck, did she not—”
“It’s fine, Pru,” Robin cut her off, before turning to Tam with an expression that looked sheepish. “Yeah.” A shrug, and then, added almost belatedly with a smaller voice, “I’m a girl. I guess.”
Tam took her wrist out of Robin’s hands, who only had half a moment to look devastated before Tam was throwing her arms around Robin for the second time today, grasping her as tight as she possibly could, “Thank you for telling me.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Robin’s arms came around Tam, for a moment the grip was gentle, before she was hugging back just as fiercely as Tam.
“Um, let’s get your wrists bandaged, yes?” Robin said after some time, and her voice sounded a bit wet. Tam nodded and let go of her, offering up her hands again so Robin could finish the first aid.
“So, what do I call you?”
“Oh, um,” Robin flushed, “It’s still pretty new to me, so I haven’t thought of a name yet. Not really. Haven’t had the time to, considering, you know,” she chuckled, “Been sticking to Red Robin for now. Sometimes shortened to Red or just Robin. Or Roe. Not– um, not Rob, though, don’t do that.”
“Got it,” Tam said, feeling slightly giddy. Maybe it was just the high of getting out of that place, or of knowing that Robin had just decimated the place down, or the fact that Robin had trusted her enough to tell her this, or just— anything, really. Especially given all the trust issues she might have from the way things had been going for the last few months.
A small giggle burst out of Tam before she could trample it down.
Robin frowned at her, “What is it?”
“Nothing, I just, it’s kinda funny. In a very not unfunny way, but still. Like, you know. You being in the girls club even before you were out.”
Robin blinked at her, but didn’t seem offended, so Tam went on, “You know how women are often called hysterical, too emotional, irrational, all that bullshit, right?”
A pause, and then— “Oh.” Robin snorted. “ Oh, I see.” Another snort, which turned into a half giggle. She shook her head, finishing up with Tam’s wrists.
With a sigh, Robin took off her mask, it was the same one she’d had in the Red Robin costume. Actually, now that she looked a bit more carefully, there were more than a few bits on the new costume that were from the older one.
“I like the new changes you’ve made,” Tam commented, gesturing at her costume as they both sat down, Pru throwing a couple of granola bars in both her and Robin’s direction before opening up a thermos and chugging down whatever’s in it without any grace.
“Yeah. It’s a bit of a long story, but both Pru and I were injured, I called Wonder Woman, and she took us to Themyscira for healing. That’s the island she’s from, by the way. Place of the Amazons. Couldn’t really find a replacement for the damaged bits of my Red Robin costume though, so ended up borrowing some bits.” She was fidgeting with the bracelets on her wrists, the ones that had reminded Tam of Wonder Woman. Which, well. That made a ton of sense now, didn’t it?
Tam leaned forward, “So, are you an Amazon now?”
“No, no,” Robin said with a laugh, “I don’t think you can become an Amazon just like that, like the way they got their super strength and stuff, but, well. These are sort of… a symbol of acceptance, maybe. Or maybe I am an honorary Amazon. I don’t know. The entire trip feels a little surreal to me.”
“It suits you,” Tam said, a smile tugging at her lips. “The colours of your costume, I mean. As much as the red did. Although if you stick to this you might have to change your name, too, considering Red Robin doesn’t seem to fit very well right now.”
“Does it?” Robin asked, running a hand across the cape, then down her sides, “Any suggestions?”
“Well, when I first saw you today, I thought your new costume reminded me a bit of an owl.”
Pru snorted, “At least it follows your whole birds and bats theme, no?”
“I guess it does,” Robin said, a relaxed smile on her face. Peaceful and comfortable. She repeated, almost a whisper now, contented, “I guess it does.”