Work Text:
There’s little room for mistakes, so they keep it simple.
Red Robin goes first. Strategically speaking, he’s the only one capable of surprising Nightwing and throw him off balance, which is something that they really need if they want to overcome him with minimum damage.
Red Hood goes next. His fighting style is brutal and effective, and bruises are not a problem at this point. Besides, Nightwing doesn’t know that he’s not going to use his guns in their most effective way, so most of his focus will be on that and not on the next attack.
Robin’s supposed to go last. Take Nightwing by surprise, work on his sides, distract him enough for Tim and Jason to go for the second round, and immobilize and drug him before things get even more out of hands.
Like with all the simple things, the plan looked good on paper, but a few hiccups here and there were to be expected as a general rule, and they all were prepared for them.
What they were not prepared for, is for Robin to freeze in the middle of the fight.
It’s such an alien concept to Tim, that it takes him three seconds too many to realize what’s happening. And even when he does, even when he turns his attention from the sedative syringe he’s fumbling with to his younger brother, it doesn’t hit immediately.
Robin is exactly where he should be - that is just behind Dick, who’s still trying to recover from Red Hood’s attack - and he’s in the perfect position to strike, but the kid’s posture is wrong, he’s not attacking and he’s not defending himself, he’s just there, arms at his sides, sword just a useless piece of metal in his hand.
Unfortunately, Dick notices it too.
Nightwing spins on his feet, fast and agile as ever, and Robin still doesn’t move, and Tim still watches the scene without understanding it. Nightwing lunges forward, escrima sticks buzzing and sparking with electricity in his hands, ready to seriously hurt, and still neither of the Robins can move a finger to stop it.
Robin is not Robin anymore, Robin is Damian. And Damian is not an arrogant and self-entitled demon brat anymore, Damian is a child.
And who the hell let a child stand in the middle of a battlefield?
Tim did. It was his plan.
Memories of old discussions come to mind. Back in the days, Dick had called him a hypocrite for saying that a ten year old should not be out playing vigilantes at night. He was right, Tim knew. They were all children when they started. What he didn’t say back then was yes, but I was supposed to be the last one.
Memories of worst days follow the course of his thoughts. Damian’s funeral, and how light the kid’s coffin felt on Tim’s shoulder. An empty cave full of grief, ghosts and shouted words, a promise of protection delivered too late, apologies and hugs that never happened.
Now Nightwing is smiling a twisted, feral smile, that doesn’t belong on his face, and it doesn’t make sense. None of this does. Weird that Tim’s noticing it just now, since it’s been at least five hours since Dick was injected by Scarecrow’s new toxin and revolted against them. Five hours of hiding and planning and fighting and now it all feels like a lucid dream. Like they all are a blink of an eye away from reality. Quite there, but not really there.
“Fuck!”
The curse startles Tim out of his trance and he turns around to look at the Red Hood.
Ever the pragmatic one, Jason swears again, doesn’t lose himself in bewilderment, and just throws a batarang at Dick. The sharp edges scratch his arm, blood splatters from there and once again Nightwing spins around and gives his back to Damian, voluntarily repeating the same mistake that should’ve brought him down the first time.
This time Red Robin is ready to cover it, though.
The fight that follows is everything Tim was trying to avoid: vicious, and angry and damaging.
He already feels Bruce’s disapproval on him, on all of them, the unspoken words of truth that he’ll never say and yet they all will hear: I trained you better than this, I trained you to not let this kind of things happen in the first place, I trained you to handle every situation with a clear head and not with your emotions, I trained you to not disappoint me.
And they will all bow their heads, chastised children, unworthy heirs.
“Tim!”, Jason yells, and by the irritation behind it, it mustn’t be the first time.
“What?”
Jason breaks his iron-grip on Dick’s arms and reaches for the empty syringe Tim’s still holding.
“He’s out”, he says, gesturing at the now unconscious Nightwing. “I’ll tie him up, you go check on the kid.”
Tim sways on his feet. He’s bleeding, and he’s sore and he’s once again not really sure to be one hundred percent awake, but he still walks towards Damian, one step after another, wondering about when walking became such a difficult task and on what the hell he’s going to tell the kid anyway. Why on earth did you freeze like that? sounds a bit insensitive even to his own ears. Yet, he’s curious to know.
He remembers Dick saying that he saw it happen once, long time ago, when Damian was still new to Gotham and to their family. Killer Croc scared the kid good, Dick said, and Tim snorted because he couldn’t picture it in his mind, what a truly scared Damian looked like. Still had trouble imagining it, up to a few minutes ago. After all, Damian wasn’t scared the day he died, wasn’t scared the day he came back, so how could he be scared of anything else to the point of shutting himself down?
Now he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it.
There’s the sound of a soft landing, a very well known voice calling Tim’s name, and then Spoiler’s there, just besides him.
He can’t see her face behind the mask, yet he knows she’s looking at him with concerned eyes, so Tim shakes his head no and tilts his chin towards Damian. Stephanie just nods.
She runs to Robin, kneeling in front of him to grab him by his shoulders. Tim halts his steps and just looks at them. Can’t hear a word of what she’s saying but understands the general feeling by the gentle tone and the way she’s stroking his cheek.
The sword falls off his hand as Damian throws his arms around Stephanie’s neck.
“I couldn’t”, Damian wheezes into her shoulder, loud enough even for Tim to hear. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t.”
Couldn’t bring himself to raise a sword against his brother, he means. Funny, Tim thinks, He’s never had that problem with me.
A heavy hand on his shoulder makes him spin around on his heels, and Tim finds himself staring at his own reflection on Jason’s helmet.
“-kay?”, Jason asks, voice muffled and distorted.
Tim looks over his shoulder, to where Nightwing’s lying, bloody and bruised and tied up with very painful-looking knots.
“Dick’s dead. Couldn’t save him.”
He’s vaguely aware that he intended for the words to be two different questions and not statements. Jason doesn’t answer anyway, but his hand moves to Tim’s neck, fingers searching for his pulse.
Stephanie walks towards them carrying Damian in her arms, and she looks at Tim first and then at Jason.
“Second-hand exposure?”, she asks and Jason gives her a curt nod.
“The brat too. Must be skin to skin transmission then, since neither of us is affected”, Stephanie reasons, while rubbing Damian’s back. “I’m so gonna punch Scarecrow in his less straw-padded parts.”
“I like the sound of that plan, Blondie”, Jason says. “Let’s get the flock back home first, then I’ll gladly hold him still for you.”
Tim’s not understating much of the conversation going on around him, his attention constantly shifting from Dick, still out cold and crumbled to the floor, to Damian, unusually silent while cradled into Stephanie’s arms.
There is something wrong there, something nitpicking at the back of his mind, but he can’t figure it out what it is.
“They were dead”, he says. Thinks of saying. He’s not sure anymore.
“You were dead too”, he continues (thinks of continuing, but does it even matter at this point?), looking at Jason and then at Stephanie.
He feels Jason’s fingers twitch in surprise against his neck, but that’s about the only reaction he gets. Without another word, Jason manhandles him again to get him closer, and before Tim can protest he finds himself being thrown over the Red Hood’s shoulder and awkwardly staring at the ground.
“Jason, what the-”, he yells, grabbing the back of his brother’s jacket with his fists.
“Just don’t kick me, please”, Jason sighs. “Dick’s already busted my ribs, so be a nice and not dangerous fear toxined brother like Damian there, yeah?”
Tim is so offended by that to stop talking to him at once.
-
He wakes up in a gurney, strapped to an IV, still drowsy and with a big headache to the side. None of that comes as a surprise. A freshly showered and heavily bandaged Dick sitting on the chair next to him does.
Tim glances at him from under his eyelashes and frowns.
“You’re not trying to kill us anymore?”, he asks, only half joking.
Dick’s quick to hide the flick of hurt and guilt in his eyes behind a smile - almost quick enough for Tim not to catch it and feel shitty about it.
“Kidding”, he mumbles.
“I know.”
Dick’s smile softens instantly. The guilt stays. Tim can read it in his features, in his posture, in his low voice. He was also expecting it.
“Do you remember any of it?”
A shake of the head, and wet strands of hair fall on Dick’s eyes.
“Not much.”
“Good.”
It was scary, is what Tim’s not going to say. You coming after us, it was one of the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Where are the others?”, he asks instead.
“Stephanie and Jason went after Scarecrow, Bruce is on his way to join them as we speak.”
Tim nods, then looks at him pointedly.
“Damian’s fine”, Dick offers. “He’s sleeping off the leftover effects of the toxin in his room.”
“While I only get the cave’s med bay”, Tim complains halfheartedly.
“Well, you’re a bit heavier to carry. For Alfred, at least”, Dick smiles again. Tim has the sudden feeling that Dick knows exactly how he was carried back home and quickly change the subject. He’ll make Jason pay for that another day.
“Nasty stuff this time”, he comments then, and Dick’s smile falls almost instantly.
“Yes. I was looking at the first results from the analysis, and it looks like Crane enhanced the original formula to make the illusions more vivid, to the point....”
“To the point you start enact them”, Tim finishes.
Dick raises an eyebrow at him.
“You figured it out right away?”
“I’m not that smart”, Tim scoffs. “But it makes sense. Damian was too scared to fight, so there was obviously something wrong. And I couldn’t help. Should have, but couldn’t. My brain went totally banana.”
“But you did”, Dick points out. “Jason said that you snapped out of it and helped him.”
“Barely.”
“You-”
“At first I thought Damian froze in the middle of the fight, but he didn’t, didn’t he?”, Tim interrupts him, but it’s a rhetorical question. “He thought he was going to kill you, so he chose not to fight at all.”
Dick sighs.
“We’re going to have a long conversation about that.”
“Yeah, good luck.”, Tim winces in sympathy. And then, softly, he adds: “I was the one who really froze.”
And that makes sense too.
His parents. Stephanie. Kon. Dick. Damian. Jason. Bruce. They all died. Almost everything and everyone Tim’s ever called family. And for the most part he could never do anything about it. Only watch and accept it, and try to go on anyway.
Dick is nice enough to not add anything to that. He just raises his hand to gently stroke Tim’s arm.
“I’m sorry, kiddo.”
Tim cranes his head on the pillows to look at his brother again, a doubt running all around his mind, a question burnings on his lips.
Because the way Tim’s looking at it, Dick’s reaction to the toxin doesn’t fit. It’s the only one that doesn’t make sense to him, and it’s been bothering him since the first moment Nightwing attacked them. So he licks away the blood from his splitted bottom lip and asks. Even if he maybe shouldn’t.
“Dick? Do you really think one day you’ll kill all of us? Because that’s crazy.”
Dick laughs, but it’s a pained, humorless laugh.
“No, I don’t think I’ll end up killing any of you. I mean, you do make me want to pull my beautiful hair out, and you all suck the life out of me sometimes, but that’s just how family is, you know?”
Tim furrows his brow.
“Then why...?”
Dick sinks back in his chair, head tilted back to look at the ceiling, tensed shoulders and clenched fists, and Tim is overwhelmed by how much he looks like Bruce right now.
“Because I already did, didn’t I?”, Dick sighs, rubbing his eyes. “Robin is good for a lot of reasons, I know that. It was good for us, and now it’s good for Damian. It’s good for Batman, for Gotham, for the kids. But sometimes I think at what cost it comes with and…”
“Dick-”
“...and I feel like I set up a death trap instead of a legacy. Which is ironic, don’t you think?”
Tim shakes his head and tries to sit up, only to be pushed down almost immediately by Dick’s hands.
“Don’t”, his brother scolds him quietly.
“You’re wrong”, Tim retorts. “You know you’re wrong.”
Dick strokes his chest gently, fingers tracing along the edges of the white bandages, and it’s not clear who Dick’s really trying to reassure there, if Tim or himself.
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I am. Maybe it’s just the toxin talking”, he sighs eventually. “So let’s sleep it off, mh?”
It’s the most polite end of discussion he’ll get from him, Tim knows. And maybe it’s okay. Maybe they really need a little time before going there again.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“You’re going to sleep in that chair?”, Tim asks.
“Maybe I’ll snuggle into Damian’s bed later”, Dick admits candidly and with half a smile.
It’s exactly the kind of thing Dick would say in a situation like this, and yet, for some reason, Tim’s pretty sure that his brother’s just lied to his face.