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Fucking Riddler. Fucking Riddler. The next time Tim sees that guy, he’s going to punch him so hard that his teeth rattle in his head.
It’s not so unreasonable for an almost second-year Robin to want one solo mission to not go awry, right? Tim’s earned it, he thinks.
Bruce was reluctant enough when he gave Tim permission to pursue an A-list villain on his own, even though Tim is already fourteen years old—practically an adult—and more than capable of apprehending a grown man in his sleep. He’s earned some slack on the kid leash.
At first, Tim was riding an accomplishment high. It had been child’s play taking down Riddler on the roof of the apartment building, and that probably should have been Tim’s first clue that something was wrong. But he was cocky. Too cocky.
It’s why Riddler’s cackle as he was being arrested had taken Tim completely by surprise. “What’s small and here for a limited time only, but makes a bang big enough to obliterate the very people you thought you were saving?”
Thanks to Tim not even considering there could be bigger stakes involved, he had no time to look for the bomb Riddler had stashed in the building. His only option was to get the people out as quickly as possible and pray with every fiber of his being that the timer didn’t run out before then.
And it didn’t. Tim had evacuated everyone until each corner of that building was tenant-free. It’s not Tim’s fault he couldn’t get himself out in time.
He was on the fourth floor when the sudden explosion knocked him off his feet and onto the ground. And then even the ground gave in, and all he could see around him was collapsing concrete and plaster. Tim’s cape protected him from the heat of the blast, but it did nothing to save him from the rubble falling on top of him. Then something smashed into his head and he blacked out.
Which brings him to now.
By some miraculous stroke of luck, Tim wakes up not dead. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing once he comes to his senses.
His body is stiff—the first thing he notices. The world around him is deathly quiet aside from water dripping somewhere he can’t see and the distant sound of debris settling. His eyes sting when he opens them; the air so filled with residual heat, dust, and smoke.
Tim tries to sit up, but his straining muscles can’t lift him upright and he realizes something is pinning him down. The beginnings of panic pool in the back of Tim’s throat, but he swallows it down. Okay. Okay, he can handle this. He’s been trained to function in terrifying situations.
First things first: take inventory.
His legs are trapped under what he’s pretty sure is a chunk of roof, and attempting to move them makes it clear that he’s not getting free on his own. All right. Further struggle reveals that his right arm is pinned down as well, so firm he can no longer feel the limb. He hopes that doesn’t mean it’s not still there.
Something warm and sticky—blood?—coats his side, and Tim can feel a sharp something digging into him. A piece of metal? A pipe? It doesn’t feel too deep, but being stabbed by an unknown object with who-knows-how-many dust particles infecting the wound can’t be good.
His ribs are splintered—he can feel it. Tim’s chest burns with every inhale, which is already difficult given the weight on top of him. The best he can do is quick, shallow breaths which make him lightheaded when mixed with the dust clotting in his lungs.
This is so not good.
Tim sucks in as deep a breath as he can manage. “Hello?” he tries. “Is anyone there?” Nothing. Nothing but his own voice echoing back at him. He sucks in another breath to try again but immediately tumbles into a coughing fit, choking on smoke. His chest burns.
He tries to clear his head, tries to think rationally, but the pain pulsing through his body makes it hard to focus. He needs Bruce. Bruce will know what to do. Bruce always knows how to make everything okay.
When he reaches for his communicator to call for backup, however, he finds it crushed on the ground beside him—useless. And there’s no way the tracker in his belt survived the collapse either. Hot, frustrated tears prick at Tim’s eyes. “Fuck,” he whimpers. He smacks his head back against the rock below him. “Fuck!”
He’s going to die here. He’s going to die here, and he can’t catch his breath, and his fucking chest is being crushed, and he’s going to die. He’s going to end up just like Jason: alone and dead in a damn building explosion. It’s almost poetic.
Then he hears something.
“Robin!” a familiar voice calls. “Robin, where are you?” There’s the sound of rocks shifting as someone moves through the rubble. "Tim!"
Someone’s calling for him. Someone can save him. In a surprising act of willpower Tim manages to summon enough air in his damaged lungs to call back, “I’m—I’m here!”
More noises; rocks falling against each other, debris shifting. Finally Dick appears in Tim’s field of vision in full Nightwing gear, and he lets out a relieved breath when he sees Tim. “Tim! Oh, thank god.”
Tim’s so happy he doesn’t even care that Dick is using his real name. The tears that have been building up finally spill. “D-Dick, I—” He’s cut off by another bout of coughing.
Dick scrambles over the rubble. “Bruce and I were following you to make sure everything went okay with Nigma,” he rambles. “We saw the explosion but we couldn’t get to you in time, and I didn’t know— Fuck, I’m just so glad you’re okay.”
He drops to his knees at Tim’s side, taking in the sight of Tim’s predicament. He must see the puddle of blood—or maybe the extent of the damage Tim can’t see, because his face pales. “Shit,” he breathes. “Shit.”
Tim’s shaking now. In the back of his mind he notes that he should probably be upset they didn’t trust him on his own, but all he can feel is relief. Dick is here. Dick is here to make everything okay.
“Tell me your injuries,” Dick says, and Tim recognizes the “let’s get to business” tone in his voice.
“M-My legs are pinned and I can’t—I can’t feel my arm. And my—my chest hurts a lot.” Every breath comes out as a wheeze. “Broken ribs. Internal bleeding, I-I think. And there’s s-something jammed into my left side, I c-can feel it bleeding.”
Dick’s expression grows worse with every word, and Tim knows he’s fucked.
Then Bruce appears from behind Dick, and Tim wants to sob. His eyes widen under the cowl as they take in the scene before him, then narrow again. Detective-mode. “Nightwing, report.”
Dick rattles off Tim’s injuries, but as he talks, Tim finds himself zoning out. Dick’s voice becomes a background wobble, and Tim’s thudding pulse takes the mic. Should it be that loud? His heartbeat pounds in his head and throbs in every bruise until it’s the only thing he can follow.
Something warm grips his hand. Tim opens his eyes—when did he close them?—and sees concerned blue eyes staring back at him intently. “You with me?” Dick asks.
Tim’s hand is shaking. “It—It hurts.” The last word comes out as a whine. He tries to struggle, tries to do something, but the instant his torso shifts a deep, burning pain erupts in his rib cage. He cries out, blinking back a fresh flood of tears.
Dick squeezes Tim's hand, grabbing back his attention. "Hey, hey, hey. Don't move, you're just going to make it worse."
Tim whimpers.
"I know it hurts, but we’re gonna get you out of this, buddy. I promise. Just stay still, okay?”
Tim nods, but he’s quaking. He struggles to draw a full breath, but the weight crushing his ribs makes it impossible.
Bruce is examining their surroundings. He eyes the ceiling suspiciously. “This place isn’t safe. The slightest wrong move could cause the damage above us to cave in.”
Dick nods. “What’s the plan?” His fingers tighten around Tim’s—trying to comfort him in spite of his own fear. Tim appreciates the effort.
“We get him out quickly, keep him alive, and pray we don’t jostle something holding up any major structures in the process.”
Tim tries to pay attention—really, he does. But the shock is beginning to wear off, and every inch of his body hurts. The concrete on top of him digs into his skin, bruising and crushing and breaking.
He squirms involuntarily, trying to get away from the inescapable pain. His wriggling causes the debris to shift, and more weight presses down on his already sore chest. The piece on top of him nudges another, which invokes a domino effect.
Crumbling pieces of drywall and rock fall, several of which land on Tim’s already-battered body. A piece of concrete pinning one of his legs shifts, grinding into the bone, and Tim gasps, whining as white flecks spot his vision.
“Robin—Robin, stop,” Bruce says, as close to panicked as Batman can get. “You’re shifting the rubble. If you keep moving, the place is going to fall and crush us all.” He’s picking carefully through some of the fallen concrete and plaster surrounding Tim, trying not to disrupt the pile more than necessary.
Tim chokes on a sob. He does as asked and tries not to move, but everything hurts so badly he’s sure he’s going to be sick.
Dick is petting his hair back like he doesn’t know how to do anything else. “It’s okay, Tim. You’re gonna be fine. We’ll get you out of here, alright? Just don’t move.”
Tim doesn’t have it in him to be embarrassed that he’s crying anymore.
Bruce has gotten to work on removing the debris crushing Tim. He’s lifting the mound of concrete off of Tim’s arm—slowly, trying not to move too suddenly. Or maybe he’s trying not to hurt Tim more than he already is.
He needn’t bother; for the moment the weight is gone, blood shoots back through the limb, and the agony crashes into Tim all at once in a horrible jolt. He screams before he can stop himself, sobbing as he feels the snapped bones in his forearm grind and scrape together with every movement.
His back instinctively arches in spite of how little it does as he sobs, trying to squirm away from the pain. It shifts the chunks of building and Dick curses and quickly takes hold of Tim’s shoulders, pinning him in place.
“Tim—Tim, it’s okay,” he’s saying, but Tim can’t hear him over his own nerves shrieking. Bruce works faster, most likely trying to get all of the pain over with at once. He jostles the mass of rubble on Tim’s legs, making threads of panic course through Tim’s broken body.
“Stop, stop, stop!” he cries, fighting against Dick’s grip. “Stop, it hurts, stop it—” His lungs scream, demanding air he can’t have because the weight and the dust and the pain make everything else in the universe irrelevant.
Dick only tightens his hold. “I know it hurts, bud, but you need to stay still. Just a little longer.”
Tim doesn’t care. It’s impossible to care when his ribs are snapping and his side is bleeding and his arm is burning and he can’t fucking breathe. He tries to inhale, but every time it gets harder and harder.
His vision fuzzes around the edges until even Dick’s face above him is blurry. Dick’s moving his lips, a stream of empty reassurances, but Tim can’t hear him anymore.
As his consciousness slips away and he lets the inky bliss take hold, Tim wonders, Is this what Jason felt when he died?
Bruce has been counting Tim’s breaths for the past hour.
It’s a mindless sort of thing. He didn’t even realize he was doing it until it had already been well over ten minutes, and after that he just kept it up. It’s better than focusing on the plaster casts that encase his son’s limbs, or the bruises riddling his body.
Tim’s sleeping from the sedation now. He didn’t wake when Bruce and Dick managed to free him from the rubble or on the ride back to the manor, and Bruce refused at the time to accept the possibility that he wouldn’t wake up at all.
Now that he knows Tim is safe and sound, though, he’s content to let him sleep. He loosely holds Tim by the wrist, if only to feel the steady thrum of his pulse fluttering under his fingertips—a constant reassurance that he’s alive and staying that way.
When the building had exploded, all Bruce could see in that moment was an Ethiopian warehouse being blown to bits, knowing that Jason was inside and being unable to do anything but watch as a precious life was snuffed out before its time.
It’s a miracle Tim’s even alive right now, and Bruce does not take that gift lightly. He doesn’t plan to.
He sent Dick up to bed hours ago. He only agreed to leave when he was sure Tim was all right, and thanks to Alfred’s handiwork and a lot of luck, he is now. He’s going to need some time to heal, but he’ll be okay.
And Bruce is prepared to stick with him the entire time.